WHAT IS A HOME NETWORK?

For years, the electronics industry has awaited the arrival of home automation. What was envisioned was a new generation of controls that would change our lifestyles forever. As we start the 21st century, technologists, business strategists, and market planners are rapidly dismantling the old vision of home automation and replacing it with a more practical concept for developing and selling electronic products and PCs that work together. The newly defined concept is home networks. Home networks embraces home theatre, home office, intelligent appliances, smart objects, and telecommunications (the products and systems that present content and information to the consumer), as well as the whole-home and subsystem controls (security, heating/cooling, lighting, and energy management) traditionally associated with home automation. The underlying theme for the home networks of the new millennium is to connect everyone and everything.