HomePNA

Ethernet has been the de-facto standard for local area communication for a long time. Initially there was 10Mbit, then came 100Mbit and now its not rare to find 1GBit Ethernet. But the need for the communication medium has also been changed. Now a days the trend is to become wireless. But the often forgotten phone line can also provide a decent performance when it comes to a communication that is not very bandwidth hungry. During the mid 90’s a company provided its own technology for providing data access through telephone lines at 1Mbps and it became very popular. Then different companies like AMD formed an alliance named Home Phone-line Network Alliance (Home PNA) to provide standardization for the telephone line communication. They developed a data transfer standard based on the Tut Systems' technology for telephone lines and called it HomePNA 1.0. The first version of this standard was identical to the Tut Systems' technology - 1 Mbit/s, 25 computers in the HomePNA 1.0 network and a communication range about 150 m. Then they released network cards (PCI and USB), different communicators, Ethernet-to-HomePNA bridges etc. The HomePNA technology is a usual Ethernet with 1 Mbit/s (HomePNA 1.0) and 10 Mbit/s (HomePNA 2.0) in all aspects. The CSMA/CD, IEEE-802.3, MAC addresses are applicable not only for the Ethernet but also for both HomePNA standards. This technology differs from the Ethernet only on a physical level. And installation of HomePNA cards doesn't differ from that of HomePNA adapters. Operating systems operate with these adapters as with usual Ethernet ones.

HomePNA 1.0 is used successfully in office buildings - practically all of them have their own telephone network, which can be used for the Internet as well. It is very convenient both for clients and providers. HomePNA networks can be built in those buildings which have phone jacks. I.e. you don't need hubs and switches, but only HomePNA cards. Theoretically, the HomePNA 2.0 standard has every chance to reach 100 Mbit/s speed!