Design and evaluation of an Ethernet-based residential network

Author

Deng, Shuang ; Bugos, Alan R. ; Hill, Paul M.

Author_Institution

GTE Labs. Inc., Waltham, MA, USA

Volume

14

Issue

6

fYear

1996

fDate

8/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1138

Lastpage

1150

Abstract

When the information superhighway arrives at the neighborhood, a residential network will connect home appliances to the community access network. These appliances include personal computers, printers, and video clients. Among all local-area network (LAN) protocols, Ethernet is the most economic and the most popular. The unique characteristics of residential networks call for new performance studies. A residential network typically has few nodes and runs different applications than business and academic LANs. Consequently, residential networks have traffic characteristics different from the subject of existing studies. We constructed a residential network testbed to collect typical application traffic statistics. Additional live traffic characterization was obtained from campus networks. Also, we investigated the suitability of Ethernet for video distribution through simulation. This paper discusses the design issues for residential networks and presents a network design that is based on Ethernet technology. Traffic models are established from the actual traffic traces and used for the performance evaluation of residential networks. Furthermore, several future data traffic scenarios are considered with bandwidth up to 6 Mb/s by scaling up current data traffic. The simulation results of the performance suggest that Ethernet can be used as a cost-effective residential network for video and data communications

Keywords

data communication; local area networks; performance evaluation; protocols; subscriber loops; telecommunication traffic; visual communication; 6 Mbit/s; Ethernet based residential network; LAN protocols; bandwidth; campus networks; community access network; data communications; data traffic; home appliances; information superhighway; local area network protocols; performance evaluation; personal computers; printers; residential network design; residential network testbed; simulation; traffic models; traffic statistics; video clients; video communications; video distribution; Access protocols; Application software; Ethernet networks; Home appliances; Local area networks; Microcomputers; Printers; Telecommunication traffic; Testing; Traffic control;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8716

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/49.508284

Filename

508284