INSIDE THE HOME GATEWAY SERVER

Consumer Technologies Come Home | Related Sun Press Releases

by Martin Hardee

January 6, 2000 - Imagine a tiny piece of software running on a small box in your living room or garage that can actually make all of the appliances in your home smarter.

That's exactly the job of a new type of technology called the home gateway server, which uses Java^TM and other open technologies to enable consumer appliances to communicate intelligently with each other and with outside networks.

A refrigerator Web panel, part of the .com Home at CES 2000

"The home gateway software bridges all of the devices on your home's network with external networks and their services," says Sun senior product manager Raj Mata. With such a bridge in place (most likely running in your home's high-speed modem, set-top box, or other networked device), lawn sprinklers can be scheduled and communicate with the weather bureau, favorite TV programs and popular music can be automatically downloaded and stored in your home theater system, security cameras can talk to mobile phones and TVs, power hungry devices like the dishwasher can be scheduled to automatically start at discounted periods, and myriad new services can be brought into the home from outside networks.

This new type of software and associated emerging standards perhaps couldn't come a moment too soon. With home networking technologies beginning to take off with a vengeance, homes are soon expected to contain dozens and dozens of networked consumer devices. "One of the challenges in the networked home is to keep things simple for the consumer," says Sun Consumer & Embedded director Curtis Sasaki, who explains that there will not only be scores of devices, but hundreds of available services running in some homes. "It's impossible to imagine trying to hook up and configure each individual device to talk to the others. That's one of the big problems that the home gateway server solves, especially when it works in conjunction with Jini^TM technology."

Cisco's Internet Home Gateway Server powers a networked home at CES

The world's first look at this new concept came at the Consumer Electronics Show 2000 in Las Vegas, where a home gateway server enabled an elaborate and interactive ".com Home" demonstration. Already, Cisco systems is showing its own Home Gateway Server - a digital subscriber line (DSL) modem running a home gateway server based on Sun's Java Embedded Server software.

The Home Gateway: What It Does

Home gateway software provides a number of important functions that will become essential in the networked homes of the near future:

Gateway services to the Internet and high-speed networks.
An important principle of the home gateway server is that it provides a standard framework with which consumer devices can connect to services on the Internet and high-speed networks. Hundreds of thousands of these services will be available to the home via service providers. "The gateway server moves the focus of the home Internet connection from the PC to a specialized, less expensive, and frankly more reliable device such as a set-top box, modem, or even a black box designed to be a home gateway server," says Mata. "It's what you need in networked home populated with small, smart appliances."

Verify who is at your front door before you open it

Delivery of services on demand.
With a home gateway in place, service providers can develop and offer new services for the networked home, without having to install new hardware in the home. Consumers will be able to take advantage of the numerous services for their networked devices and order (or remove) these services on demand. "Truck runs to install Consumer Premise Equipment are a very expensive proposition for service providers," says Raj Mata. "A home gateway provides service providers an extensible platform in the home for the delivery of services that they have not even envisaged today"

Simplified device connection.
If today's PCs and their peripherals seem complicated, imagine a home with dozens or even hundreds of networked devices. Even if the devices themselves are simple, enabling communication between them could get complicated quickly. A home gateway can run Jini technology lookup and proxy services, which enable devices to cooperate with one another and can even allow legacy networked devices to provide services on the network. The gateway simplifies the technology requirements for the new generation of networked devices and enables a much larger universe of devices to be connected to the home network and the Internet.

Zero service administration.
Typically, the home gateway server will be completely invisible (and perhaps even unknown) to the homeowner. Diagnostics, software life-cycle administration, and other tasks are handled automatically or via instructions from a service provider. "The box containing the server software is simply connected the internet or a public network, and some service provider or aggregator is managing it for you," says Mata. "It's like the cable box on top of your TV today -- you don't need to worry about it."

Familiar Technology and Standards

If you follow trends in Java technology, you may already be familiar with the technology and emerging standards behind the home gateway server. The current home gateway server software is based on Sun's Java Embedded Server^TM 1.2. software. Work on the home gateway software is tracking an in-development standard, the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi)

click to enlarge

OSGi is an industry group working to define and promote an open standard for connecting the coming generation of smart consumer and small business appliances with commercial Internet services. The Open Services Gateway specification will provide a common foundation for Internet service providers, network operators and equipment manufacturers to deliver a wide range of e-services via gateway servers running in the home.

Sun is a founding member of OSGi and a major contributor to the technical foundation of the Gateway specification. The initial specification will be based on Sun's Java Embedded Server 1.0 technology and will focus on a thin-server framework in order to standardize the delivery of services to gateways. The first release of the OSGi specification is expected in the first quarter of 2000.

While home gateways are just one application of open services gateways (the software is expected to run in everything from gas pumps to soda machines to power substations), the home is an important and visible market for this new concept.

"Having a standard service framework for the home is extremely important," explains Raj Mata. "If a utility had to develop a proprietary system for meter reading, and the dishwasher company went and put in a proprietary system for their machine, and the cable company put in a proprietary system for their set-top box, you'd have lots of proprietary systems in the house. It would be a mess, and it would be expensive.

"If we have one common gateway which all of these can share, that's a huge benefit for both the customer and the provider. It gives you a complete service delivery framework. And from there, you have an open platform onto which anyone can create value-added services to run in the environment... where it's a set-top box, DSL box, or something else."

Architecture of the Home Gateway

The server software is written to the Java platform, so it runs on a wide variety of devices. And the base server itself is tiny, weighing in at just 500K, making it small enough to fit within the footprint of just about any target device. "It's definitely the 'Mini Me' of server technology," quips Curtis Sasaki.

What makes the framework so small and yet so versatile is a concept of a very small core framework of about 100K called a "ServiceSpace". Plugging into this ServiceSpace are servlet-like objects called "service bundles," which represent the modular services that can be deployed over the Internet. Required administrative service bundles such as http and log services take up another 400K. But the magic of the home gateway server is its optional, custom service bundles: To provide and manage services for consumer devices around the home, optional service bundles can be loaded into its ServiceSpace framework on demand. These optional bundles could handle everything from "phone dialtone on demand" to home security services to live pay-per-day sports scores or other services.

As an example of the architecture, a set-top box could be running the PersonalJava platform, on top of which would run the Java Embedded Server software, serving as the home gateway. Plugged into the Java Embedded Server layer could be a variety of services, ranging from http service to transcoding services for images that get shuttled around the home's many devices. And the services can be downloaded dynamically when the device gets attached to the network.

The gateway provides a mechanism to start and stop bundles, automatically schedule a time for them to run, manage dependencies between bundles, and remove bundles when they've complete running.

Universal Bridging and Jini Technology

Recently, there has been a tremendous surge of activity in the home gateway space, driven by the number of new technologies available for the home network (power line, phone line, wireless) and broadband connections to the home (cable, DSL, satellite or even POTS). "Sun's home gateway software, based on Java technology and open standards, provides the perfect platform to unify these diverse trends, and can easily support any of these networking technologies," says Mata.

Sun is actively working with its partners to build service bundles for HAVi, Lonworks, Bluetooth and other home networking technologies.

In addition, Jini technology provides the mechanism for these devices to spontaneously interact across the diverse networks. With Jini technology services plugged in as optional service bundles, legacy networked devices can coexist and interoperate with brand new devices enabled with Jini and Java technologies.

"The home gateway box can say 'Gee, I won't have the Jini technology service to run this particular device... and the device basically talks to the home gateway box and understands what its capabilities are... and the home gateway box can go to a URL and download that service -- and you're up and running. "

How to Get Started with Gateway Servers

The best way to get started is to download a free 90-day evaluation copy of the Java Embedded Server software from http://www.sun.com/software/embeddedserver.

"You can get started today, because the base technology is available today" says Mata. "You can start by using the existing version of Java Embedded Server 1.2 and start your prototypes and proofs of concept. We are closely tracking the OSGi specification, and will offer a seamless upgrade path to an OSGi compliant version of the Java Embedded Server, which will be available shortly after the first release of the OSGi specification in March, 2000".

In addition, Sun has put together specially priced "Residential Gateway Starter packs", that include all the technologies that you require to build a home gateway device, Java Embedded Server for the device, software for service provisioning, development tools and technical support.

See Also

Sun's CES Press Releases
(http://java.sun.com/pr/2000/01/ces.press.html)

Consumer Technologies Come Home
(http://java.sun.com/features/2000/01/ces.overview.html)

The .Com Home
(http://www.sun.com/consumer-embedded/cover/ces/)

E-Living, "If it's not Internet-ready, it doesn't belong in your home"
(http://www.sun.com/dot-com/perspectives/e-living.html)

Technologies in the .com Home
(http://www.sun.com/consumer-embedded/cover/ces/vendors.html)

Scott McNealy Keynote Webcast
(http://www.sun.com/webcast/ces2000/)

[ This page was updated: 11-Jan-00 ]