US Ignite: Collaborative Research: Focus Area 2: Rethinking Home Networking for the Ultrabroadband Era

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH

Investigators

Abstract

With the capacity ultra-broadband residential networks provide we have the opportunity to re-center our digital lives around our residence. This re-structuring offers societal-scale benefits. Rather than spreading our digital lives across myriad services and providers across the Internet, we will enable individuals to retain control of their resources while at the same time sharing them with friends and trusted services, as needed and on demand. The advent of ultrabroadband residential networks facilitates this change, as individuals will now have the resources to serve their own data in a way they see fit, rather than being beholden to large service providers for the required resources. This project develops the technology to fruitfully leverage the raw capacity of ultra-broadband residential networks to shift a residential user's digital hub to his or her residence. The project focuses on two themes. The first theme is centered around an appliance in homes -- a home point of presence -- that provides a variety of services to the users in the house regardless of where they are physically located and hence connected to the network. A base-level service is a 'data attic', or a single place for users to store all their information that leaves them in direct control over the use of their data. We introduce infrastructureless Content Distribution Networks that aim to leverage homes with ultra-broadband connectivity to move us away from delivering content from large service providers and towards massively distributed delivery that is ultimately cheaper and faster. Our second theme involves monitoring the operational Case Connection Zone ultra-broadband fiber-to-the-home network to better understand how protocols and applications can be extended to work better in such high-speed residential settings.