In another item, Mike McNally said there's going to be an explosion of
networked devices in the average home.  This is for discussing what he
is talking about.

290 responses total.

In Item #36, jep wrote:

> I would be fascinated to hear more about homes having a lot more network
> devices.  

Thirty years ago (1976), home computers as we know them now were only barely
beginning to exist and probably nobody you knew had one.  (The Apple II,
for instance, didn't come out until 1977..)

Twenty years ago (1986), computers were still largely the province of
enthusiasts and businesses but everybody (in modern, industrialized nations)
knew someone who had one and it seemed like everyone who didn't have one
was thinking of buying one.

Ten years ago (1996) more or less every affluent and most middle class homes
had a computer and many people were hearing about something called "the 
Internet" for the very first time.

Now it's 2006 and computers have become part of the daily life of everyone
who is reading this and probably most of the people they know.  Many households
have multiple computers.  What's more, powerful computing and storage devices
have worked their way into the personal effects that people are accustomed
to carry around with them -- cell phones, MP3 players, PDAs, etc..
Pretty much everyone agrees, computing is becoming ubiquitous and as this
happens many of our devices are starting to talk to each other.

John asks what kinds of things we can expect to see connecting to each
other via computer networks in the near future.  Let's start with the obvious:
computers and computer peripherals.  Many families are multi-computer now
and some are approaching one (or even more than one!) computer per member
of the family.  In some places kids are bringing home laptops that are
provided by their schools.  And In families that have high speed / broadband
internet access people are finding ways to share their connections between
multiple computers.  They may also be sharing other things, which may or
may not live directly on the network.  For example, while it may make sense
for many families to have more than one computer, not too many families (yet?)
have a need for more than one printer -- most share.  Some share by connecting
the printer to a networked computer and having the computer take care of
spooling print jobs but it's also quite easy to buy a network-aware printer
that can connect directly.  Expect to see similar arrangements with things
like digital (still) camera docks, digital video cameras, hard drives
(check out the rise of home NAS (network-attached storage) appliances like
the Linksys NSLU2) and all kinds of other things.  Peripherals are moving
off the computer and taking on a semi-independent existence on the network.

All the while this is happening there's another revolution going on, too,
in digital entertainment.  Technology pundits have been predicting digital
hubs in the living room for years now but we're really getting there.  
Depending on your tastes and those of your family members, some network
devices you might have in your living room include:  PVR devices such as
TiVo and ReplayTV, videogame consoles such as the PS2 or XBOX (regular or 360),
media appliances which stream your music (and increasingly, your videos)
from your computer's hard drive to your living room stereo, and more.

What about other rooms in the home?  Well, a lot of families have televisions
and telephones in family rooms and bedrooms.  You might not know it yet but
the PSTN (public switched telephone network) gives every appearance that it's
dying.  It was seriously wounded by affordable cell phone service and VoIP
telephony stands ready to deliver the coup de grace.  Very soon now your 
telephones will either be network attached devices or you'll have an 
adapter which sits on the network and mimics POTS over your home's phone
wiring.  Television is changing, too.  There's a collossal battle brewing
between phone companies, cable companies, and ISPs and by the time it's
over you will more than likely be buying what the industry calls "the
triple play" (voice, video, and data services) from a single provider.
(You might have more than once choice of providers, but the idea is you'll
buy them all from the same company and they'll come into your house on the
same wires.)  VoIP phone service and television over IP video service are
already here in my home in Ketchikan -- how long could it possibly take
before they're available through most of the rest of the country?
too.  

 A little bit more about the services I'm buying from my employer,
 the local phone company..

 Like pretty much every other house in the USA and Canada, I've got
 a phone line connected to my house.  Except in my case, instead of
 getting a POTS service over that line, I get no POTS service, just
 high speed ADSL2+.  The speed we can get over that link varies 
 according to the quality of the wiring and distance from the central
 office but for most customers we can give them 15-20 Mbps over their
 regular copper phone wire.  We partition that network connectivity
 into several different virtual circuits which are assigned to VLAN
 groups -- on a per household basis there's one virtual circuit that
 carries video data over IP, one that carries phone calls over IP,
 and one that carries data traffic to/from the internet.  Reliable video
 requires a huge amount of bandwidth but with 15-20Mbps to work with
 we can easily provide three 3-4 Mbps video streams and still have
 plenty of bandwidth left over for phone calls and, say, a 1 Mbps
 data service.  Or, if the customer doesn't have a need for three
 simultaneous video streams (e.g. TVs in three different rooms, or
 two TVs and one video recorder, etc..) we can give them more data
 bandwidth..

 In my house, then, I've got the copper phone pair coming from the
 phone company to the outside of the house.  It's hooked into a 
 big NID (Network Interface Device) which decodes the ADSL2+ signal
 and separates it into the three LAN groups.  The telephone wiring
 inside my house is hooked into this NID and the NID also has an
 analog telephone adapter built into it.  If I pick up my phone I
 get a dialtone, but not from the phone switch at the phone company,
 it comes from the NID on the outside of my house and when my phone
 conversation leaves my property it does so as IP packets flowing
 over the high-speed DSL network.  The other two LAN groups are
 carried over twisted pair cabling to jacks in my living room, where
 I've got a wireless access point / network switch combo box plugged
 into the data jack so I can share the data connection among multiple
 computers and I've got twisted pair that runs to the set-top box
 attached to the (so far) single television that's using the service.

 In most respects the television service isn't that different from
 a regular digital cable service but there are some cool things we
 can do with it.  Unlike a regular digital cable service, which is
 generally all multicast (every channel gets streamed to every 
 cable box that's allowed to receive it, all the time..) our network
 can also do some cool stuff with unicast which makes for some
 interesting potential with video-on-demand.  Unlike a cable company's
 pay-per-view, our video-on-demand isn't multicast, it's unicast 
 straight to your set-top box and the box can talk back to the server
 that's streaming it the content.  That gives us the ability to do
 some things pay-per-view can't, such as start a movie any time the
 customer wants it (not just when it's scheduled and pause, rewind,
 or fast-forward the movie that's streaming from the video on demand
 service.  In about a month, when our full service launches, our
 customers should be able to pick from about 6,000 titles, any of
 which they can rent (for 24 hours) and start watching at any time.
 I'm quite optimistic that it's going to beat going to the video
 store in the rain..  Intriguingly, since we control the video-on-demand
 service we'll have the ability to offer free local content.  Want to
 watch the high-school football game or tune into last night's town
 council meeting?  Well, maybe not, actually, but the point is we'll
 be able to provide community oriented programming on demand.

 Now consider -- we're a small company on a remote island and this is
 the first, or maybe second generation of this type of service.
 What will your (much larger) provider be offering you 5 years from now?

well, I just bought a palm.  but I am still waiting for my Dick Tracy 
wrist TV.

I can't speak for your setup, but here in Seattle, Comcast's Video On
Demand service is multicast used in an attempt to simulate unicast.
There's a block of channels (I believe it's about 40) set aside for VOD,
and when you select a program it allocates one of those channels to you
and runs your program on it.  You share those channels with all other
subscribers on your "neighborhood node" which has something on the order
of 400 of your neighbors.

This means that if more than 10% of Comcast customers are using VOD at
once, it fails.  That's not necessarily a big deal, most utilities are
allocated that way, and it's always going to be possible to scale the
service by making more nodes which each service a smaller customer base.
But it also means that if you have a QAM-256 tuner (which many HDTVs do
these days) you can just flip through the VOD channels and see what your
neighbors are watching.  You can't tell which neighbor it is, of course,
and if the neighbor pauses or fast-forwards the content then you'll see
that right along with him.  I believe this works even for premium VOD
content though I haven't really tested it.

Unfortunately, they're still struggling to figure out how to make VOD
work well.  The UI at the moment is crappy, and the navigation options
are very limited (you can fast-forward and rewind but only at once
speed, there's no chapter settings or menus or bonus content.)  Very
little of the content is HD, and a lot of it is pan-and-scan (ugh.)
Most people are reluctant to pay $4 to watch a movie on VOD when the
DVD becomes available for rental or purchase weeks earlier and gives
you more for less.  But I understand why the cable companies are
pursuing it -- it's one service which DBS would have a very hard time
doing given the nature of the technology.  But I still predict that VOD
will remain a niche product, not due to limitations of the technology
but due to business decisions.

I just built a networked home.  It's out in the sticks surrounded by thousands
of acres of Texas ranchland.  I have ethernet in every room in this 4,500 sf
home with a fiber optic line coming in here in 4 days from now.

Can't wait to fire it up.

I have Comcast analog cable, and Comcast Internet service.  I expect 
I'll have to go to Comcast digital TV at some point, but right now it 
carries nothing extra that I want.  I only watch sports on TV, and 
never want to watch anything which isn't currently live.  I need ESPN, 
and a few other channels which carry the games I want, and that's it.  
But my step-family are TV watchers, and they're likely to want a lot 
more than that.

So, right now I am faced with the task of re-wiring my house.  There is 
no cable TV in any of the bedrooms.  I run a splitter from my sole 
cable entry point, and that gives my computer it's Internet service.

HDTV is coming like a train.  I might as well be braced for it.  I 
guess cable TV will allow old TVs to work for a long time yet, but 
eventually all these TV watchers are going to get digital TVs.

If I have to do cable TV, there's no reason in the world not to do 
Internet service to the bedrooms, too.  My son already has a computer 
in his bedroom.  (He has to come downstairs to use the Internet, 
though.)  Currently I consider it best to have your Internet-connected 
computer in a central location.  It keeps kids out of all kinds of 
trouble.  But how long can you expect that to last?  The kids need the 
Internet for school these days, and do much of their homework in their 
rooms.

Now here comes Mike McNally, saying my vision is out of date and every 
dang thing in the house is going to be connected to the network some 
day.  All right, a media hub, I can comprehend that possibility.  I 
just don't know how it will work.  A central repository for DVDs and 
music, fed to gizmos around the house, I guess, is that the idea?

But I don't need to know the details.  Right now I need to know how to 
plan for it.  People are talking about fiber optic.  Shucks, I have 
several network cards I got from Jim and Sindi, used, years ago, which 
have RJ-45 and BNC connectors.  What network cards use fiber optics?  
Or aren't we talking about computer network cards, but interface jacks 
on appliances which aren't even available yet?  How do *I* know what to 
run now, so it'll all be ready in 2010 when Mike's network-connected 
future hits me in the head?

Dangitall, what was wrong with 14.4K modems and twisted pair phone 
lines, anyway?  I could run phone lines.  (My house currently doesn't 
even have that.)

So basically what my initial intention is, is to run cable TV and some 
sort of network jacks to all the bedrooms, with neat little plates 
stuck in the walls that you can plug your computers and TVs in to.  The 
cable TV cable is easy to choose.  Well, mostly... mcnally and/or 
marcvh say to use CAT-6 and not Cat-5E; some day I will want it.  I'll 
do that, and I appreciate the tip.  But for the computers, should I 
plan for fiber optics instead of the network wiring which looks like a 
thick phone cable?  Can I get network cards for my computers now, which 
will work on that?

re #2
Is the NID powered by the phone company?  If not, what if you have a power
outage? Can you still make phone calls?

re #4
Do you need to be a digital subscriber to utilize your QAM-256 tuner on the
cable? (i.e. as an analog subscriber, could I use this?)

re #6
I would recommend WiFi for running Internet throughout your home.  Just ensure
you're using WEP with it.  Also, you can have the cable company come out and
run more lines for you.  They're charge you an extra $5/mo if you want to use
their cable boxes but otherwise the extra line install is a one time fee.

Re #6: Running fiber to each room is purely a future play.  Fiber is
expensive and hard to deal with, and its not clear that there will ever
be a need for fiber to each room.  Personally I wouldn't bother; I'd just
pull enough cables (at least two coax and two data; more for main places
like a home office or the main TV room) for future needs.

A friend recently learned a painful lesson about this.  When his home
was built, they ran a coax line up to the roof for convenient mounting
of a rooftop antenna for OTA or DBS; he used it for a DBS dish.  Now, he
wants to upgrade to add a second dish to get more channels and HD
content and such.  Unfortunately, the second dish would need a second
coax line, and only a single one was run during construction; the line
goes behind cinder blocks or something and there's no practical way to
get back in and add another.

Now, he would need to buy some sort of magic switching box which would
let the two signals share a single cable; it would cost something like
$400, and it would become obsolete within a year when they change to MPEG4
and he would have to buy another one.  So that's a cost of $800 to try to
fix the problem of not having a second cable (and even then the problem
wouldn't be completely fixed, since he wouldn't be able to watch content
from both dishes at the same time.)  If the builder had simply put in
two coax cables instead of one, the extra cost would have been more like
$2.  My friend decided to give up, lose the dish and get cable instead.


Its not clear how long analog cable will continue to exist.  Cable
companies would love to get rid of it and move to digital everything,
because digital transmission makes more efficient use of the spectrum
and so they could fit a lot more channels, or other services, on the
line.  However, it would also piss off most existing customers when
their "cable ready" TVs stop working, so I'm not sure how they dig
themselves out of that one.  But at least for cable companies its purely
a business decision, while for OTA it's politics.

Re #7: As an analog subscriber, if you have a QAM-256 tuner, you should
be able to watch all the digital content which is unencrypted.  This
includes digital versions of many analog channels, and HD versions of
most locals, and any VOD content your neighbors happen to be streaming.
You would not be able to initiate interactive services like VOD or PPV,
and you wouldn't be able to watch encrypted channels like HBO.  There
would be no guide, and the channel numbers would seem weird and annoying
and would change from time to time for no apparent reason because you're
not watching in the intended fashion.

The cable company will install jacks for you, but theyll do it by
stapling the wire to the outside of your home and drilling in at various
locations.  Some people find this disagreeable, but it is the most
convenient option.

Re #7 re #6: I certainly do use WEP in my WiFi network, but I'd like 
changing the security codes to be easier - in fact, automatic. If they 
were automatically reset daily in both the base station and adapter it 
would be nearly unassailable. I think improvements in the WiFi systems, 
including security options, will improve to the point that the buggy-wheel 
practice of installing cables will disappear.

Also, when someone visits with their own laptop, they can use it anywhere 
in the house and grounds. I don't have a laptop with WiFi yet, but if I 
did this local roaming capability would be very useful. 

I have a largish and very old house.  Will a WiFi signal go through the 
walls and floors without causing a problem?  A wireless solution sounds 
easier than running cable if it works well enough.

 re #6:  
 > Well, mostly... mcnally and/or marcvh say to use CAT-6 and not Cat-5E;
 > some day I will want it.  

 Most importantly, do multiple runs, even if you leave most of the cable
 unterminated in the walls..  Twisted pair is pretty versatile stuff.
 Maybe you won't use it for a data network -- perhaps you'll use it for
 telephone, or for speaker wiring.  The important thing is that it'll be
 available when you want it.

 > But for the computers, should I plan for fiber optics instead of the
 > network wiring which looks like a thick phone cable?

 Running fiber within the house isn't likely to make a lot of sense --
 fiber is (comparatively) expensive and difficult to work with.  Good
 quality twisted pair can carry gigabit ethernet which should provide
 more than enough point-to-point bandwidth for several more generations
 of home network devices..

 Also remember that with the data networks, within a room you don't
 need a wire running through the wall for each network device, you can
 install a small hub or switch and connect several devices via one
 cable run.


 re #7
 > Is the NID powered by the phone company?  If not, what if you
 > have a power outage? Can you still make phone calls?
 
 No, the NID in my house is DC powered, fed by a wall wart that's
 plugged in inside the house.  It consumes too much juice to be line
 powered.  But it has an interesting failover mode.  If it loses 
 power the last thing it does is bypass the analog telephone adapter
 circuitry and switch things so the inside house wiring is connected
 back to the incoming copper pair.  Then when the softswitch which
 provides my VoIP service discovers that my NID has gone dark it
 can automatically reprogram the Nortel switch that used to provide
 my dialtone to re-enable that pair, essentially switching my voice
 traffic back to POTS for the duration of the power outage.

re #11
That's hardcore.  I like the idea of auto-POTS for failover.

Yeah, thats the first time I've heard of that before. hardcore indeed.

It is pretty sweet.  I still haven't dropped the POTS (my wife likes it)
but we really should.  I suspect that VoIP backed up by mobile provides
sufficient reliability for most residential uses these days (I wonder
how it compares with what Ma Bell provided back in the day?)

One important thing to note to jep is that all of these recommendations
are premised on the idea that it is easier for some reason to pull wire
now as opposed to adding it later, e.g. because the drywall is open
anyway or the holes are accessible or whatever.  If that's not true for
your situation, and adding wire later would be no more difficult than
doing it now, then there's little reason to run more wire than what is
needed for your immediate uses.  That's how my own house is set up;
unfortunately there wasn't a lot of connectivity put in place in
advance, so I just add new stuff as I need it.

There's a good chance that your immediate needs could indeed be serviced
by a WiFi setup, but obviously that won't help get cable TV into multiple
rooms.

I like POTS cuz its cheap.  

Two story homes are horrible for running cable inside of. I'm currently
looking into the suitability of running plenum rated cables through the
ductwork.

If that doesn't work, maybe I can rip out some baseboards along the
stairs and run cables in them.

If you can run cables when you build the thing, RUN PLENTY. Others will
thank you later on.

I suppose the ideal house to wire would be a ranch (we call them
ramblers) with an accessible attic and basement (or at least crawl
space.)  But a two-story with both can work OK too; that's what I own.
The worst houses I've ever seen to wire are either old (like a hundred
years old, with lathe & plaster walls and knob & tube electricity) or
brand-new (split entries and townhouses, built on a slab and with
cathedral ceilings which mean no attic access.)

My house was built in 1850.  It's been added on to several times over 
the years, and updated a great deal, but it's still an old house.  
Parts of the basement and crawl spaces are nearly impossible to get 
into.

I can get to the rooms I want to run cable into, but if I know I'm 
going to need wiring in some rooms, then I'd rather run it all at once 
than to go back and do it again later.  That part of your suggestion 
made sense to me.

I'd still like to know more about how and why household appliances, in 
addition to media such as televisions and stereos, are going to be 
connected to networks.

Re #18, last paragraph: The "dream" as so often articulated by
what-the-future-will-be-like "prophets" is that, say, your refrigerator will
notice when you're out of milk and tell you (or, in some versions, order it
automatically). Similarly, I heard (second-hand) a news story about a
university where the washing machines in the dorms are on the network so it's
easy to remotely see how close to being done one's load is or what machines are
currently free.

I have x10 in my house but its all RF.  No need for wiring nor WiFi other than
the x10 RF transceiver for the serial port on my PC.
x10 interacts with all sorts of appliances and home security devices and you
can script most of it with perl into a web interface simply enough.

X10 primarily operates via signals sent over power lines; RF is
secondary and only some X10 devices support it.  I used to have a bunch
of X10 stuff but it was so flakey that it proved more annoying than
useful.  The controller box was super smart, and I could program it to
turn my porch light on at dusk and off at dawn; it would automatically
adjust to different times of the year.  But once a week (or so) it would
lock up and leave the light on or off all day, requiring that I reboot
it and resynch it with my PC.   My wife told me the result was annoying
and useless, and I had to admit she had a point.

The most obvious application for a wired refrigerator today is the
fridge with a TV built into the door, which obviously requires you to
have a cable outlet in the area.  You can already buy one of these right
now, if you really want to.

Some people have suggested that their fridge could automatically keep
track of its contents, and use the Ethernet to warn you when the milk
starts to go bad or you're out of cheese.  I'm kinda skeptical of this
application.  Remember 25 years ago when everybody was talking about how
you needed to buy a PC (or Apple ][+ or whatever) and get a database
program so you could enter all your recipes into it and use it to look
them up later?  Did anybody ever actually do that?

A network connection might be a good way to monitor the fridge's
operational parameters.  You could pull up a page that would tell you
things like how many hours the compressor has been running lately and
how that compares with the long-term average, how long since the water
filter has been changed, and whether some idiot left the door open.
That would be reasonably easy to use, and would have some value; most
importantly it doesn't impose an extra burden on you to inform the
refrigerator of your daily goings-on.  If things advanced to the point
that it was only an extra $5 for a fridge that did this, hey, why not?

(I didn't say this wasn't "pie-in-the-sky.") But the assumption is that by that
point you'll be doing your shopping over the Internet anyway, and everything
will have tracking chips in it so that you won't have to tell it what's in
there because it'll detect it when it goes in.

(I don't think this'll happen anytime soon -- but, then again, I'm more and
more wishing for the simpler time when the Internet was a network of
universities and "going online" meant Grexing.)

They had coke machines on the Internet when I was at RIT.  You could see how
many were left in the machine.  This was 15 years ago.

I primarily use the x10 controls for motion sensors..

 re #18:  How about your thermostat?  In multiple rooms?  I think
 more sophisticated climate sensors may start to become more popular.
 After you take your shower would you like the fan to come on in
 your bathroom and then shut off again automatically after the
 humidity had dropped below a certain level?  I probably would,
 living as I do in a very humid climate..  Or maybe you'd like your
 blinds to come down when you're out of the house during the day to
 save on your heating and cooling bills.  Maybe your heating oil
 tank could use a sensor, if you have one.  We're still waiting
 for someone to do the Smart House concept right (cheap, reliable,
 and useful..) but eventually someone will make it attractive.

 re #21:  Marc's response brings up another category of things that
 might benefit from network connectivity -- major appliances that have
 defined maintenance cycles.  If it's cheap enough to put a web-based
 control interface into a wireless router that sells for $20.00 it
 ought to be cheap enough to put such an interface into, say, a hot
 water heater or a furnace.

I guess the computerized refrigerator doesn't realy grab me.  But, I 
can imagine some useful things which could be done via a network, 
allowing parts of the house to be controlled by computer.  For example:

1) If I could control power outlets from my computer, it would sure 
make it easier to turn my Christmas lights on and off according to the 
time of the day.  It's a little bit difficult to coordinate mechanical 
timers, even if they are the same type.  I had 5 of them this year, and 
they turned my lights on/off over a half hour period.

2) It'd be nice to have the computer control my furnace.  I'm getting a 
timer which can turn the heat down during the day.  The trouble is, I 
work 8-5 some days, 11-8 other days, 9:30 - 6:30 yet other days, and 
I'm home on weekends.  If I worked 8-5 every day, a thermostat timer 
would be great.  It'd also be nice to be able to log on from work and 
tell it I'm working late so don't bother to heat up the house for 
another hour or two.  Or that I'm coming home from vacation a day early.

3) As I recall, the X10 company got really nutty and started 
advertising things like spy cameras to put in the bathroom, for use by 
pornographers.  Didn't they get sued out of existence for that stuff?  

But remote cameras ought to be useful, to show who's at the front door, 
monitor the driveway, be able to see the baby in the next room, etc.  
Webcams are pretty popular to provide video conferencing.  (I'd get one 
for my mother, who would doubtless love it, but then she'd be able to 
see what a mess the house is.)

4) Why not hook up an alarm clock so it can tell the coffee pot when 
you're getting up?

Remember that movie The Demon Seed?  Yea, that was cool....awesome!!
   <said in enthusiastic Chris Farley clamor>

Was that satire?

X10.com pissed a lot of people off with a combination of pop-under ads
(they were among the first to use this new annoying mechanism to get
their word out) and ads for cameras which included clip art that could be
inteprepted as meaning you should use them to spy on women in the bathroom
or changing clothes or something.  I don't think the quality of video they
produced would be good enough for any self-respecting pornographer.  They
still exist, and their ads still feature pictures of attractive women but
they're not in changing rooms or other vulnerable settings.

I'm not sure that automated window control systems will become practical
anytime soon.  There are motorized automation devices you can buy (the
DrapeBoss and its successors) but they run, when coupled with
controlling infrastructure, something like $100 per window.  They'd have
to put a pretty big dent in your heating bill just to break even during
the few years the device will likely last before it flakes out.

I tend to be a believer in a "less is more" theory of home automation
now.  For example, I have a motion-sensitive light switch in my
bathroom; when I enter, the light comes on, and stays on for a few
minutes after I leave.  It's self-contained, very basic, and works
reliably.  Next to it is a timer-switch controlling the fan, so if I
find that the bathroom is in need of fresh air, I just hit the "10
minute" button and the fan will run for that long and then stop.  It's
not fancy, doesn't sense humidity or anything, but it works well enough
without becoming annoying.

x10 is available off the shelf

For video surveillance, I wouldn't waste my money on x10.  You can get a whole
setup for less than a grand to cover most small business or homes.

First, re #10: yes, WiFi works through walls and floors. I use it between 
the older (wired) computer LAN on the second floor and the cable entry 
point on the first floor. I have, when I've chosen to check, found other 
WiFi servers somewhere nearby (because they haven't blocked their SSID 
signal). The range might be up to a couple of hundred feet.

I also have X-10 over the powerlines, but for one-way control only. I use 
a stand-alone transmitter that I program with my computer. I don't like 
the idea of two-way systems that require that the computer always be on. 
My X-10 system has been very reliable. It controls some 30 lights. Once in 
a while a light doesn't go on or off - some noise burst, probably, has 
interferred with the system. What you can do is program duplicate on or 
off signals a minute apart to reduce such rare malfunctions even further.

The X-10 system offers several benefits. I found that as soon as I had it 
installed that our electric consumption took a significant dive. The 
reason is that lights don't get left on accidentally. I also run the 
outside lights slightly "dimmed", which increases their lifetime 
considerably. In addition, the X-10 system makes the house appear occupied 
when we are away. It includes a random timing feature so the same lights 
go on and off at different times within a window of an hour or a half 
hour. I am considering getting a drape drive, but primarily as another 
security feature. For that, I can justify $100.

This response has been erased.

I've been meaning to put in an X10 system on my front porch so when I or
the wife walks up to the front door, the sensor will detect motion and
turn on the porch light to make it easier to find the correct key. X10
seems to be well suited for tasks such as this.

Of course, thats on my list to do right after I input all of my recipes
into a mysql database...and then write a program where I tell the
database what ingrediants I have available, and it suggests recipes I
could use with them.

You can buy lights at the hardware store that come only when they sense
motion, only if it is dark out.  The settings are adjustable, and they can
be set to stay on for different durations.  You can also run your bathroom
fan on a dehumidistat and/or timer, so it comes on only when it is humid and
stops when it is dry, or you turn a mechanical knob to start a mechanical
timer that will run up to 15 minutes, or an hour.  None of this is
whole-house.  It is good for your health to pull shades up and down.

 It is good for your health to pull shades up and down.
Not if you are a former President in the 24 series

My telephone service is provided through my cable modem thanks to a wireless
router.  Perhaps someday, my phones will support 802.11g or some similar
wireless protocol, and then I won't have to have the phones wired into the
wall outlets (though they still need power)

Apropos of this, last night my WiFi network stopped working.  First it
got really slow and unresponsible, and then it stopped functioning at
all.  Even when my laptop and my WAP were only two feet apart, they
couldn't see each other and nothing would work.

That happens every once in a while; when it does, nothing seems to fix
it, but a few hours later or the next day it's working fine.  I also
wasn't able to detect any of the other WiFi networks in my neighborhood
(there are 5 of them within range) which suggests some kind of systemic
interference rather than a local equipment problem.

I'm told by others this is far from uncommon; not sure if it might be
caused by sunspots, atmospheric conditions, a neighbor using a
poorly-shielded microwave, or what.  But it happens from time to time.
A hard-wired LAN will probably have availability of four or five nines,
while WiFi seems to be somewhere between one and two nines.

My wifi connection is quite reliable. In fact, I have never had it go
out. A lot of times it comes down to the quality of your equipment. A
coworker reports a similiar problem with his d-link wireless router. He
has to cycle the power in order for it to start working again.

I do agree that wired networks are many times more reliable.

I also find that power-cycling the router helps. You might want to try that,
Marc.

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