Design and Implementation of CWMP-Enabled Multipath Management Mechanism in Home Networks

As network technology evolves, telecom operators provide a variety of home network services such as Internet Protocol television (IPTV), voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video on demand (VoD), and other smart home solutions have become common. These services have led operators to expand the management scope from solely home gateway to a more diverse customer premises equipment (CPE), including set-top boxes (STBs) and home mesh Wi-Fi routers. These devices typically acquire an Internet Protocol (IP) address through IP over Ethernet (IPoE) and use the CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP) for remote management. However, operators cannot control customers’ improper operation of the devices, such as incorrect firewall configuration or wrong physical network connection. These issues cause the device to be unable to obtain an IP address and, thereby, cannot be managed via CWMP. This paper presents a multipath management mechanism based on CWMP, which manages CPE in the IPoE-based managed network and maintains the devices that cannot obtain IP through IPoE utilizing the Internet path. Experimental results show that the management efficiency of devices using this new mechanism reaches 93%, significantly higher than the 69% efficiency achieved with the original CWMP standard alone.