Subject: [homegate] Home Gateway Initiative thoughts on Homegate

From: "Duncan Bees" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:54:31 -0700

Hi All,

I have collected some thoughts/concerns about Homegate from within the HGI
(Home Gateway Initiative). I won't be able to make the IETF meeting, and I
don't believe anyone from HGI's Management Committee (MC) will be at the bar
BOF, hence this note.

The HGI represents more than 60 companies in the Home Gateway ecosystem and
is led by the HGI Service Providers, who relay their concerns and
requirements to the industry via the MC. 

HGI's Release 2 Residential Profile , HGI-RD001-R2,
(http://www.homegatewayinitiative.org/publis/HGI_V1.01_Residential.pdf),
describes the use cases and technical requirements for Home Gateways that
support managed and unmanaged services. 

Overall, the HGI thinks that it could be useful for Homegate to address
protocol gaps and issues, but only if they can't be addressed in existing
groups. The following specific points are mostly about what not to do,
(given that we haven't currently got a list of protocol deficiencies to put
forward).

*	Because the HGI already does this, we don't see a need for Homegate
to describe box-level requirements for Service Provider-Managed Home
Gateways, including HGs sold in a retail model.

.        HGI thinks Homegate should not create new management models for
Service-Provider-Managed Home Gateways. This is already done by Broadband
Forum, and HGI closely cooperates with BBF on this.

.        The terminology of Home Gateways, as used by the HGI and commonly
in the industry, is primarily a Home Gateway managed by a Broadband Service
Provider. To avoid confusion, HGI would not recommend describing unmanaged
routers (including those subtended from an HG) as Home Gateways.

.        The name Homegate is quite similar to Home Gateway Initiative, and
if the group goes ahead, consideration could be given to finding a different
name to avoid confusion.

.        QoS - A QoS architecture including requirements for classification,
shaping, marking, congestion avoidance, etc. are detailed in HGI's
HGI-RD001-R2. Also, see the HGI QoS white paper HGI-GD013-R2,
(http://www.homegateway.org/publis/HGI-GD013-R2.pdf)  As far as HGI is
concerned, additional QoS mechanisms are un-needed, however any suggestions
or points of clarification from Homegate would be welcomed. HGI doesn't see
any need for Homegate to describe overall QoS requirements for managed Home
Gateways. HGI suggests that any work on QoS by Homegate, for either managed
Home Gateways or unmanaged Home Routers should consider the approach set out
in HGI-GD013-R2.

.        IPv6 - An end-end broadband architecture incorporating IPv6 in
Service Provider networks is being dealt with in BBF A&T group.  HGI is
cooperating with BBF, and dealing with IPv6 deployment implications on the
Home Gateway. It isn't clear that Homegate would need to develop additional
requirements here.

.        Multicast to Unicast Conversion  - while HGI describes requirements
for mcast to unicast conversion within the home network, (see requirements
in HGI-RD001-R2), IETF standardisation of these techniques could be useful,
possibly by Homegate.

Thanks for reading and have fun at the bar J

Best regards

Duncan Bees

Chief Technical & Business Officer, Home Gateway Initiative

Vancouver, Canada

 <mailto:[email-masked]> [email-masked] or

 <mailto:[email-masked]> [email-masked]

mobile +1.604.418.8997

skype: duncan.bees1

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