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LAS VEGAS -- Interest in home networks, especially wireless setups, appears to be growing rapidly in the United States, but confusion over standards and a plethora of products may well leave consumers on the sidelines while they wait for clear winners to emerge.

Besides standard Ethernet networks, there are now three competing wireless standards as well as products that work over home wiring and home telephone wires.

Nevertheless, here at Comdex it is clear that manufacturers see home networking as a lucrative market among home users who want to marry PCs, notebooks, printers, stereos, and handheld devices and link them over a network.

At stake is a market that is expected to be worth $585 million this year, according to Cahners In Stat. Home networking is expected to grow even faster in 2002. According to the Yankee Group's annual Technologically Advanced Family Survey, 35 percent of PC-owning households are very or somewhat interested in home networking products, compared to 31 percent of those surveyed in 2000.

Watching Wireless

Wireless offers the most appeal among networking options because it does not require cables and affords mobility. And now that broadband Internet hookups and multiple PCs are in millions of homes, the capability to share files and bandwidth is just the beginning. Sony and Proxim are among the companies looking at ways to use home networks to share broadcast movies and support telephone services.

Sony President Kunitake Ando announced Monday that Sony, AOL Time Warner, and Nokia will work together on a home networking initiative that links both PC and non-PC consumer electronics devices on a robust home network.

"Next year you will see a number of Sony consumer electronics devices tied to a home network," says Ko Togashi, Sony senior business development manager for the Vaio desktop division. The first of them will begin selling a television wirelessly connected to an 802.11a network for sharing video feeds, he says.

Wi-Fi and Beyond

While 802.11a is drawing a good deal of anticipation, much of the current action surrounding home networks is centered on the slower, but more widely adopted 802.11b, popularly known as Wi-Fi. Leading networking vendors like Linksys say the standard is by far their most popular wireless networking choice of customers.

Notebook computer makers like Dell, IBM, and Compaq have also helped popularize the standard by building 802.11b wireless technology into their notebooks. Their support has driven adoption into the home market where workers want the same wireless access option for their notebook at home as they do at work. Compaq even recently announced a suite of IPaq home networking products using 802.11b.

But while the standard has soundly dominated the competing standard HomeRF, 802.11b runs the risk of being usurped by the faster 802.11a technology. Sony, for example, says it will sell 802.11a home networks next year and will likely use the wireless standard in a network friendly television set to be released in 2002.

An 802.11a network can move data at 54 mbps, fast enough to transmit video smoothly. Products with this capability are just about to hit store shelves and will compete with 802.11b products, which been adopted widely by businesses and by HomeRF wireless products. An 802.11b can theoretically move data at 11 mbps and the latest HomeRF 2.0 networks have a theoretical top speed of 10 mbps.

Proxim, Intel, and Sony have all now announced consumer products using the faster 802.11a protocol will ship within months.

"There is no other way to transmit quality video signal over a wireless network today without 802.11a," Togashi says.

The downside is 802.11a isn't backwards compatible, meaning 802.11a devices won't work on an 802.11b network and vice versa.

Win XP Boosts Nets

Speed and wireless connectivity won't be enough to overcome long-held consumer anxieties about setting up their own networks. Numerous surveys have shown that the biggest block for consumers is the worry that they won't have the technical know-how to make a network work properly.

However, many vendors believe that networking anxiety can be assuaged by the adoption of the recently released Windows XP operating system. The system improves support of Universal Plug and Play and provides friendly wizards for network setup. The OS allows devices such as computers and possibly consumer electronics to automatically discover each other and communicate on a network.

"Universal plug and play has to work or there is no way this industry is going to thrive," says Patrick Lo, NetGear president and chief executive officer.

Multimedia Friendly

Other vendors are looking ahead to networking standards that are more suitable for streaming multimedia and handling advanced voice applications, which require data to arrive in a more timely manner than 802.11b guarantees without stuttering and other artifacts. Proxim isn't giving up on HomeRF, and says the standard is ideal for multimedia and unmatched in its support for voice applications. Proxim has also increased speeds of the wireless technology up to 10 mbps with the HomeRF 2.0 spec--up from 1.6 mbps last year.

Early next year, Proxim plans to release a wireless home gateway product that integrates voice services. Because HomeRF uses the same frequency as cordless phones to transmit data, Proxim can route calls through its wireless gateway to conventional cordless phones.

Cordless phone giant Siemens is partnering with Proxim to allow consumers to create sophisticated phone features like multiple lines in a home, call forwarding, and Internet access to Caller ID data and to voice mail. On display Proxim's Comdex booth is a preview of a wireless digital music player called SimpleFi, made by Motorola, that works on the HomeRF standard.

HomeRF has lost a lot of momentum among networking firms that have rallied around 802.11b. Intel, once a key backer of HomeRF, said it would no longer support the standard for lack of demand. Compaq remains a key supporter of HomeRF networks.

Power Line Nets Zap Back

Linksys and NetGear flipped the electric switch on at Comdex and demonstrated 14-mbps home networks based on a recently ratified HomePlug Powerline Alliance specification called HomePlug 1.0. Both also released entire suites of products that let you use existing electrical wiring in your home to create a home network for both PCs and consumer electronics. Since most homes have several electrical outlets in each room, backers suggest the technology will be easier to use than other types of networking.

Linksys says it will start shipping product in December. A two-PC network linked to Ethernet PowerLine EtherFast 10/100 Router will run you about $450.

NetGear expects to have its own Powerline suite available early next year for similar prices. One drawback of this early HomePlug specification is security. Vulnerability lies in outdoor power outlets that are exposed to outside hackers. Other issues include network performance degradation when major appliances like a refrigerator kick on. These issues are taken care of in the upcoming HomePlug 2.0 release of the specification, says Vivek Pathela, NetGear's director product management and marketing.

Future Net

Where are home networks headed? Today, there is a dearth of applications and hardware that can take advantage of the bandwidth a home network can deliver. About the only application in the home that fully utilizes the kind of bandwidth that 802.11a can deliver is streaming DVD quality video over a network.

Also, since DSL and cable hookups tend to top out at 1- to 1.5 mbps, the additional bandwidth of 802.11a won't speed up Internet access anyway. Even products that are enhanced with high-speed access like making phone calls over the Net, network games like Quake, and products like the Philips FW-i1000 boom box that connects to a PC library of digital audio files or streaming audio on the Internet do fine on today's average wireless home network that shuffles data at about 11 mbps.

That's why NetGear and other firms prefer to focus on helping consumers share files and broadband Net connections, CEO Lo says. "Home networks today are as mature as PCs were ten years ago," he says. As the perennial saying goes among executives of technology firms, "the best is yet to come," Lo says.

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