Back in January, Bob Frankston at CircleID published a story about how, in his opinion, "Carriers Are Trying to Take Back Control of the Home Network":
Two more recent efforts—the HomeGrid and ATIS—go a step further in imposing the ITU/Carrier vision of networking on our homes. It's as if they view the physical layer as the network and problems like Quality of Service (QoS) can be solved with the right hardware. It reminds me of IEEE-1394 that failed for this very reason. You can't depend on QoS lest applications fail if the circumstances change. We see an example of how 'cable" video fails by breaking up whereas "Internet" video fails gracefully by reducing resolution and/or adaptive buffering.
While I don't agree with him on the main issue (I don't think HomeGrid/G.hn technology is an attempt to control consumers' home networks - HomeGrid/G.hn technology is neutral on this, given that the same technology will be used for consumer-centric and carrier-centric applications), he makes interesting points on the issue of QoS and how applications should behave when QoS expectations fail.
Go read the whole article and the comments, as there is an interesting discussion on topics such as QoS, user control vs carrier control, network neutrality, single media vs multiple media standards, etc.
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