To: af-all@atmforum.com Subject: AF-ALL: 95-0214: Residential ATM Common Aspects ATM Forum/95-0214 PROJECT: ATM Forum Technical Committee ************************************************************************ SOURCE: David Greaves Advanced Telecommunications Modules Limited Mount Pleasant House 2 Mount Pleasant Cambridge UK. CB3 OBL djg@atml.co.uk +44 1223 566919 ************************************************************************ TITLE: Residential ATM Common Aspects ************************************************************************ DATE: Feb. 6 - 10, 1995 -- Burlingame, CA ************************************************************************ DISTRIBUTION: Residential Broadband ATM Working Group ************************************************************************ ABSTRACT: This contribution offers a set of Baseline Criteria for consideration with all proposed solutions for Residential ATM service provision. ************************************************************************ NOTICE: This contribution has been prepared to assist the ATM Forum. This document is offered to the Forum as a basis for discussion and is not a binding proposal on the the contributing company, or any other company. The statements are subject to change in form and content after further study. Specifically, we reserve the right to add to, amend or modify the statements contained herein. ************************************************************************ 1. Overview ATM is the accepted networking technology for wide-area broadband services and, through the ATM Forum, has acquired tremendous support as the in-office LAN network. ATM is also now being deployed as a means for metropolitan-area delivery of digital CATV and interactive services to the home. This contribution recommends that the access point for broadband services within the home should be a UNI-complient ATM port known as the `Homepoint' and defines further baseline criteria that all residential ATM solutions should adopt. The Homepoint is offered on a network terminator (NT) unit at the point of entry to the home. It is the contractural boundary for the wide-area network service and the boundary between privately owned, domestic equipment and the service provider's equipment. The NT provides network protection and management functions, including electrical isolation, source-rate policing, admission control and tariffing support. It is a goal of the Homepoint specification, that the same connector and protocols can be used not only for the outside world connection, but also to interconnect residential equipment within the home. 2. Baseline Criteria We recommend the following Baseline Criteria: o A Single Connector A single connector must be defined which can support digital cable television, including VoD, hifi, security, computer home working and all other network applications. POTS telephone service is specifically excluded although can be accessed indirectly through value-added network services. (POTS may be offered as a separate connector on the NT by some companies.) o Standard ATM Forum UNI available in the home Residential ATM should conform to the same basic specifications as ATM LANs. These specifications cover the physical layer, signalling and management. This provision enables equipment sold for the office to be used at home and vice versa. o Access Method Independence The wiring and protocols within the home should not depend on the media technology used to bring ATM to/from the home (i.e. PONS, Coax, Radio, HDSL....). The `Homepoint' connector operates at one standard rate only. Cell-rate adaption is implemented behind the Homepoint in the NT to match the standard rate to the rate(s) provided by the metropolitan area media. o Bidirectional and Symmetric The Homepoint should be bidirectional with symmetric bandwidth for receive and transmit. Most installed homes in practice will have asymmetric wide-area provision, but admission control and cell-rate adaption should be used to restrict the outgoing traffic, rather than reduced physical rates at the Homepoint connector. All installations should provide for upgrade to symmetric bandwidths on a per-home basis. o Switchable The system should enable miniature, domestic ATM switches to be installed at any point to fan-out the ATM network within the home. o Proxy Management Service Small ATM objects in the home will not support the full ATM signalling stack themselves, so lightweight signalling to a Proxy Server is needed. This requires additional permanent virtual circuits to be configured within the residential ATM system to carry the lightweight signalling. o Automatic Nameserving Residential ATM systems must include a Namespace Administrator and any related services required to completely automate configuration of new equipment so that it can be plugged and played. The Namespace Administrator could be a distributed algorithm or implemented at a single point which is initially the wide-area Homepoint. o Topology Independence and Daisychaining We wish to support all physical network topologies in the home, so signalling cell semantics must be available which are decoupled from the physical `port' they appear on. In particular, we wish wish to support daisychains where each ATM device offers a `thru' port that replicates the switch port (or other thru port) that it has been plugged into. All of these ports are Homepoints. o Power Service Homepoint equipment should be designed to support phantom powering. This can eliminate separate power cords to such devices as speakers, microphones, flat-screen displays and security cameras. All equipment must be able to tolerate applied power voltages but it is not a requirement that all equipment provides or uses such power. 3. Summary - The Homepoint Concept The `Homepoint' is the universal ATM connector supported by the to-the-home ATM service and extended throughout the in-home wiring. It may be used for entertainment, home-office, security, data networking, and other applications. Find them in planes, trains and automobiles and airport lounges and hotels too. 4. Annex. We note that the ATM25 specification that has been submitted to the ATM Forum offers a proven and cost-effective 25.6 Mbps physical layer suitable for home use. As well as being able to operate on the twisted-pair or coax already found in many homes, the use of an office LAN-standard in the home will felicitate market convergence between such areas as commerce, residential, schools and libraries and the home-office. END. /*