IPv6 and Power Line Technology
by Alexander Ramia

Rupert walked across the oak threshold of his front door and a familiar female voice greeted him as if emanating from the walls — "Hello Rupert, welcome home. Should I indicate you are available or offline?" Rupert responded "Offline, and include my private list please."

Rupert placed his keys on the tray beside the hall lamp and walked into the kitchen. He went to the fridge and perused the display on the fridge panel, scanning the list of available meals he could conjure out of the meager contents inside. The milk was expired, the eggs were on the verge of hatching, however, the panel suggested the vegetables could provide a decent salad.

Rupert growled something unmentionable at the flashing message symbol on the screen. Before he touched the icon, he knew what the message was. Only billing or 911 messages got through his offline state, and he could not remember the last time an emergency message had flashed there. He touched the icon and the screen popped up and played his video email. "Rupert Widlow, your grocery account is past due. Your grocery delivery has been suspended until we receive your payment. If you would like to pay your bill now, press the 'pay now' key and it will automatically debit the amount from your bank account." Rupert pressed the key while his stomach growled its encouragement. A welcoming ding acknowledged his transaction and a new delivery date flashed on his screen. "Great, right after work" he said.

Well, at least he would eat well tomorrow he murmured while turning to the microwave and touched keys on the display. He reached down under the counter and grabbed a can of soup, held the can under the reader and the microwave displayed a standby mode. He opened the can, poured the contents into a bowl, opened the microwave door, pushed start and heated the soup.

Rupert left the kitchen and headed upstairs to his bedroom. The terminal beside his bed displayed a list of emails he had not yet read and the voice mails he needed to listen to. He ignored it. As he pulled his work clothes off and changed into shorts and shirt, a voice resonated from the walls and indicated that his meal — Uncle Tom's Hearty Soup was hot and ready. Rupert went back downstairs, grabbed his hot soup and plopped himself onto the couch.

He touched the remote at his side and the wall before him came alive: what used to be a somewhat tan wall with mundane pictures on it, dissolved into brilliant color and action from the last movie he viewed. Pressing a button, he displayed the last set of recorded items and reviewed the upcoming recordings. Confirming that his favorite show had been recorded, he switched off the display and headed back upstairs to his bedroom. He switched on the display there and scanned for his show. He started it up, sat down to devour his soup and watch the bedroom drift away in a flicker of color and liquid sound.

Rupert's garage has intelligence that links to the house and interfaces with mobile devices embedded in cars and/or motorcycles. Rupert's home assistant is imbedded in a changeable CE device that he added to his home. His home presence is controlled by this device and any incoming requests are screened for relevance before notification.

Rupert has complete control over his online interactions, and a direct interface to many intelligent devices that enhance his quality of life. How is this intelligent communication delivered over a reliable, physical flexible, scaleable common platform? The answer lies in two technologies that are now emerging into CE devices. The first is IPv6, which is needed to maintain growth on the Internet. The second is Power line communications from Panasonic know as HD-PLC technology that enables simple installation of intelligent devices in existing homes.

At the 2005 Coalition summit, a demonstration of this technology was shown for the first time, combined with IPv6 transport protocol to beam Voice and Video from an IPv6 camera to a PC. That simple demonstration has continued to mature into the cusp of a whole new line of intelligent CE devices expected to arrive on the market very soon.

The Rupert scenario is today's reality in a segmented device market with an Open Systems Interconnection stack that needs upgrading. By aggregating commercial off the shelf technology systems (COTS), entirely new service models and products can be created that when combined into a functional supportive structure, will completely effect the Home Automation of today to resemble the version that Rupert experiences. While this is true for a limited market segment, it is not available for the general mass due to the OSI.

The glue that binds the OSI mold is the transport Physical layer (PHY) and the Machine Access Layer (MAC). The PHY has been constrained to three fundamental methods: wireless, wired and optical.

The optical solution (fiber) has been and still is very much in the business world due to the Physical cost, and the complexity of installation. It does provide the fastest and most secure method of Physical communications. If this were a perfect world, we would all communicate over fiber.

The wired solution is the next best method for the Physical layer; it can support tremendous speeds and is fairly secure. It is found in almost all businesses, and in varying types, in some homes. In comparison to fiber it is easy to install and is far more cost effective. Wire has been the cornerstone of our modern communications, from the first telegraph to our current high-speed Internet communications. Wired also referred as structured wired for data is offered as twisted pair. It supports tremendous speeds, but requires planning and is not easily moved once installed.

Finally, we have wireless transport. Wireless is the cheapest alternative and least expensive to install. It is also the least secure and due to its price and flexibility, it is becoming the most prevalent means of connecting to the Net and a contender for traditional voice communications. However, its reliability and security are some ways off from perfect. It functions well to enable online presence, exchange data or stream voice and low resolution video, but new CE devices require wireless to support high quality video and maintain reliable communications. The physical technology is not mature enough to support the addition of this new demand.

All these physical mediums are and continue to evolve and adapt to this new technological world.

As industry develops new CE devices, more demand is placed on the Physical layer for communications and more inventive ways are developed to ensure the Physical layer will connect. However, as the industry evolves, so does the service market evolve, and new demands are made on CE devices, but more complexity in these devices requires more reliable communications and extreme ease and flexibility in installation, which starts to dwindle down the choice of Physical connections to a limited few. This has curtailed the evolution of the CE market and limited the introduction of technology.

As the Physical layer choices are eliminated due to speed and security requirements wireless is always the fist to go. Fiber is next and we are left with the most overall cost effective method. Wire! Due to this demand, the CE industry has produced some ways to address this problem.

Some wire examples are the evolution of Coax cable from it humble beginnings as a voice transport to in-home Video, Data and low Power; single pair wire for telegraph and voice to twisted wire for extreme data speeds comparable to early fiber technology. More recently is the evolution of the most ubiquitous wired medium in the world — AC wiring. Its presence is a requirement for every device. Over the years, The CE world has experimented with it as an audio alternative to phone wire, with limited success. Low speed data devices arrived at the turn of the century and now the first high speed version is just around the corner. This new method of transporting high speed quality controlled data supports data streams that approach 200 Meg, satisfying the most demanding entertaining CE device on the market today, HDTV, and as frequency spectrums are released, higher speeds can be expected.

This independent evaluation of the Physical layer is chugging along at its own pace assuming that the MAC (the next level in the transport layer) will continue to support the evolution of CE technology. Luckily the creators of that numbering system anticipated the need for a large number. MAC addresses are 12-digit hexadecimal numbers (48 bits in length) designed to keep up with the somewhat smaller transport layer.

However problems arise and this numbering advantage starts to change as we develop more CE devices that require connectivity, but thankfully we have much more time to develop the MAC system due to the size of the numbers.

This is not the case with the Internet Protocol found in the transport layer. As CE manufacturers develop intelligent devices that take advantage of power line and the high-speed quality controlled content — the weakest link in the ISO model is strained to a breaking point. The transport layer is the fundamental layer that all applications rely on to be found, recognized and communicate on the Internet. These applications can be transported in mobile devices or in a fixed central location irrespectively they require this transport layer identification.

The transport layer is fixed at a length of approximately four billion addresses, of which about 200 million can be used globally. Sections of these are reserved for a plethora of different services, and, almost at their conception, have been assigned to companies, universities and governments in not the most orderly fashion, requiring a sort of redo of the assignments. Usage of the addresses pool is now served with calculated caution, all the while knowing that it will be only a matter of time till all the numbers are assigned. Inventive ways have been created to extend the use of the current number, and I am sure more ways are to come, but each method opens more doors and restricts commerce and evolution of the Internet.

Today, according to American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), there is no real emanate shortage of numbers. In fact, almost 70% of the newly structured IP pool remains unclaimed. Yet we all know that demand will far exceed the small number of IPv4 address remaining. Today, most of the Internet is confined behind a network address translator (NAT) masking the true utilization of the address pool.
It is much easer to transition now while few devices are in use, than 10 years from now when billions more are online.

The onslaught of intelligent CE devices has started and there is no end in sight. Home automation is just another trickle that will evolve to the size of the Ohio River and flex seasonally as newer services are introduced. The new option of a single method to transport power and telemetry over a single ubiquitous connection opens new areas of the home that were limited to spotty wireless technology. This power line technology will change commonplace devices into intelligent responsive device that can be installed in all homes, old and new. These devices will have the ability to communicate more than just a nod or a wink they will be able to provide informative information.

Rupert's world is a combination of the old and new. Services cannot flip a switch and covert, but must transition and faze into the next network evolution. IPv4 is just like the old rotary phones; remarkable as they were in 1919, they will still work 80 years later with the most advanced digital switches.