Rethinking Home Networks in the Ultrabroadband Era

The advent of ultrabroadband Internet connectivity brings a 2-3 orders of magnitude jump in the capacity of access networks (a.k.a. the "last mile"). Beyond mere capacity increase, this leap represents a qualitative shift in the overall Internet environment. Therefore, we argue that only by seizing the opportunity to re-think the way we structure network applications and services can we realize the full potential ultrabroadband provides. Specifically, with ultrabroadband residential networks, we have the opportunity to re-center our digital lives around our residence, similar to how our physical lives generally center around our homes. To this end, we introduce a new appliance in home networks-a "home point of presence"-that provides a variety of services to the users in the house regardless of where they are physically located and connected to the network. We illustrate the utility of this appliance by discussing a range of new services that both bring new functionality to the users and improve performance of existing applications.