May 12, 2009

Home network owners are still grappling with networking basics.

That's one of the findings of a new survey by technology research company ABI Research. A sneak preview of the survey reveals that one in three home network owners struggles with setting up and maintaining their home networks – even as home networking edges toward what Cisco Systems believes is a major market transition.

In an effort to address these and other home networking headaches, Cisco today launched Cisco Network Magic 5.5, the latest incarnation of a software suite that company executives say greatly simplifies such common tasks as sharing files and printers, troubleshooting networking issues, and setting up a protected wireless environment. Deepening Cisco's push into the consumer market, the launch is the first Cisco-branded offering of the Network Magic software the company inherited when it acquired Seattle-based Pure Networks last August.

For more insight into the home networking market, how it's evolving and how software tools like Cisco Network Magic can address the challenges home network owners face, News@Cisco spoke with Jason Blackwell, a senior analyst with ABI Research.

ABI Research recently conducted a survey on consumer attitudes and behaviors around home networking. What can you tell me about that?

Jason Blackwell: We did an online survey of 1,000 home network owners to gauge where the consumer pain points are in term of the home network. The survey focused on things like setup, wireless security, connecting new devices to the network, as well as overall network management and troubleshooting after setup, and making sure that consumers can keep the network running over the long term. We plan to release the complete survey findings in a series of research briefs.

But in summary, what we found is that around 30 percent of respondents had experienced difficulty in setting up their home network. Beyond that, we found that there are five key problem areas for the consumer with a home network: 1) the wireless network connection, 2) printer sharing, 3) troubleshooting, 4) connecting new devices, and 5) wireless network security. These are the kinds of issues that consumers are running into when either setting up or maintaining a network. And this is where a home network management software tool like Cisco Network Magic can really make the difference for the consumer in terms of easing that frustration, and easing the setup and maintenance of that network.

The home networking market is notoriously fragmented and hard to define. How would you define it, how big is it, and what is its growth rate?

Jason Blackwell: At ABI Research, we take a device-centric approach to the home network, so we define the market by breaking it up into four different device categories. The first category consists of home gateways and routers; the second category consists of home adapters, bridges and network interface cards (NICs); the third is home network storage; and the fourth is entertainment networking, including devices such as media adapters and wireless home audio.

In terms of growth, we think the home router market has reached a point of saturation to some extent, at least in North America, Western Europe and Asia. A lot of people who want a home network already have one. There certainly are some developing regions where home networks are growing, but the overall market for gateways and routers is relatively flat over our forecast period.

The growth is in entertainment networking, and so the challenge for vendors is to reach into that next level of consumer – meaning the consumer who hasn't thought of the need for a home network at this point, or the consumer who may have tried it and returned a device because it was too difficult for them to set up. Those are the two areas where we expect to see continued growth. There are a lot of consumers who are on dial-up, surprisingly, and they have no need for a home network. But as broadband becomes more prolific, we certainly see some opportunity there for expansion of the market.

The home network has become the next battleground, so to speak. Companies like Apple, Microsoft and Sony are all trying to control it so they can become the main company that's bringing content around the home and providing the main device for accessing that content. So there is a lot of opportunity there. We are going to see widespread adoption of connectivity and a huge number of devices. TVs, DVDs, game consoles – just about any device in the home at some point is going to have some sort of connectivity to the network. And the number of companies that are involved in the home network is going to expand even more.

So how do vendors reach this new level of consumer?

Jason Blackwell: With any of the home networking devices, whether it's a router or a network-attached storage device or a media hub, really the challenge is consumer education and awareness. It's a tremendous marketing challenge for the network vendors to overcome because consumers walk into a retailer and they just aren't sure of the benefits. Why do I need a media hub? Why do I need an 802.11n router when my 802.11b router works just fine? So education and awareness are huge hurdles.

What is the state of home networking today? How and why is it changing?

Jason Blackwell: We're seeing a move from data-centric networks – connecting personal computers, laptops and occasionally things like network-attached storage – to home networks that are more media-centric. This brings in a whole new level of connectivity with devices that aren't typically computer-oriented, such as TVs, set-top boxes and game consoles. It's really bringing the living room into the home network.

What's driving this is a growing desire among people to stream media from the personal computer and the home office to the living room, whether that be premium content that they're accessing over the Web or user-generated content that perhaps they have stored on their own home computer, such as photos and music. We're seeing an influx of connectivity in all sorts of devices – things like TVs, DVDs, Blu-Ray Disc players and set-top boxes, whether from service providers or non-service provider offerings such as Apple TV or VUDU.

What challenges do these new types of media-centric home networks present for the average user?

Jason Blackwell: They bring in a whole bunch of different challenges because these new devices aren't computer-centric. Devices coming from the consumer electronics space don't necessarily have the same type of user interface you would find on something like a personal computer or laptop.

This makes it much more difficult to connect such devices to the network and to make sure they're connected securely, not just open to anyone to access. For example, when you have wireless security enabled on the network, you want to make sure you can enter your key into something like a TV to connect it securely to the network. That can be a challenge for some people. And parental controls can be an issue, too – making sure that someone cannot access certain content that you don't want them to access.

How effective are tools like Network Magic in addressing home networking challenges?

Jason Blackwell: A home network management software tool can provide centralized control for these new types of media-centric home networks. Typically, what you run into is that there are different ways to manage your router or your network. Your computer operating system has some of those tools, the router software or the router firmware has some of those tools, and then you might have another piece of software like an antivirus program that may have some network management features as well. A home network management software tool can bring together those types of programs into a centralized point of control, so you don't have to go to two or three different places to manage your network. It's centralized, it's easy to use and it's in consumer-friendly language.

What is the role of standards in home networking?

Jason Blackwell: I think standards will continue to play an important role in driving the home networking market forward. As consumers try to connect and discover devices on the network, it's going to be very important that those devices are standards-based. Wireless is certainly the most prolific of the home networking standards, and we think it will continue to be so, especially as we move to the high-speed 802.11n standard and the sort of bandwidth that that can bring in terms of enabling media streaming throughout the home. But there is also certainly opportunity for other wired standards. For example, we're seeing a lot of activity for coaxial networking as well as power line networking, which enables content to reach areas where perhaps wireless doesn't reach or where the wireless bandwidth isn't up to par.

Where do you see home networking headed in the next few years?

Jason Blackwell: I think we'll continue to see the evolution toward entertainment networking and a movement toward seamless connectivity and a cross-domain content flow where content is streaming around the network and consumers are not necessarily aware of where it's coming from. It could be premium content from a cable TV or IPTV provider, it could be content that's streamed over the Web from a Web video service such as VUDU, or it could be personal content that's stored locally on the network, whether it's on a personal computer or a media hub. We see the next stage of the home network as enabling this cross-domain flow of content and the connectivity of devices.