A Home Network Service Environment for Wide-Area Communications

Information appliances and broadband networks have become increasingly popular, and home devices have progressed to the stage where they are connected via networks. Although users want to communicate using these networked appliances, it is not easy, or sometimes impossible, for current appliances to set up all the required appliances so that they work together. We propose a home network service management environment that enables interactive coordination between diverse services that target multiple information appliances, including SIP protocol utilization for wide-area network connectivity. By using SIP for wide-area connectivity, home network users can communicate with their friends, not only using communication appliances like telephones, but also any appliance that can input/output sound such as televisions and stereo systems. We successfully confirmed implementation of this environment and sample services using the OSGi service platform