Autonomics in the home

Home networking environment is acquiring more and more relevance from the business and technical perspectives. Currently users are left alone in coping with the networking and integration intricacies of putting in place a really working home network solution. Moreover things are getting even more complicated due to the introduction in the homes of new technologies like sensor networks and to competing ecosystems that falter to cooperate (computer vendors, telcos, consumer electronics). There is an urgent need to relief users from the burden of managing the home networking environment. In this context the autonomic architectures represent the enabling solution because an autonomic network is capable of sensing and adapting to environment changes whilst performing self-* capabilities (e.g,. configuration, healing, optimization, protection). This paper presents technical challenges, opportunities and some architectural and application scenarios for the introduction of autonomic capabilities in the home networking environment.