Multi-residential gateway: an innovative concept and a practical approach

A new concept of multi-residential gateway (MRG) capable of managing several residential units (e.g. homes, flats) simultaneously while offering new additional services is presented. Apart from the typical recommendations proposed for residential gateways, specific new requirements are introduced in order to overcome the multi-residential challenge. A novel MRG has been developed fulfilling all the previous constrains. Both the core and the management architectures are explained, with particular emphasis on the networking aspects and its modular firewall/QoS design. An OSGi based platform has been introduced as the best management framework, and its validation is done with the addition of a MRG parental control service.