IEEE Draft Standard for a Convergent Digital Home Network for Heterogeneous Technologies

An abstraction layer for multiple home networking technologies that provides a common interface to widely deployed home networking technologies is defined in this standard: IEEE 1901 over power lines, IEEE 802.11 for wireless, Ethernet over twisted pair cable, and MoCA 1.1 over coax. Connectivity selection for transmission of packets arriving from any interface or application is supported by the 1905.1 abstraction layer. Modification to the underlying home networking technologies is not required by the 1905.1 layer, and hence it does not change the behavior or implementation of existing home networking technologies. Introduced by the 1905.1 specification is a layer between layers 2 and 3 that abstracts the individual details of each interface, aggregates available bandwidth, and facilitates seamless integration. The1905.1 also facilitates end-to-end quality of service (QoS) while simplifying the introduction of new devices to the network, establishing secure connections, extending network coverage, and facilitating advanced network management features including discovery, path selection, autoconfiguration, and quality of service (QoS) negotiation.