Anywhere in the home

The home PC, and the home computing environment in general, has undergone a significant evolution. We trace this evolution, and argue that the time is ripe for the development of an integrated networking infrastructure within the home, with the home PC as the focal point. Consumers to whom we have talked have definite ideas on what they would like to do with this infrastructure, and we discuss both their desires and their concerns. We present a high-level architecture for home networking, and describe IBM products and prototypes that represent the early stages of implementing this architecture.