The expansion of ICT technologies in the last decades has been accompanied by an increase of technical complexity for the installation and use of various technologies and services, which becomes problematic at home where non experts are deploying networks. The diversity in the connectivity offer, with new devices and services, becomes potentially more confusing. The customer has the feeling of being a bit lost in the choice of appropriate technology for a given service.
Recent progress has been made to integrate heterogeneous connectivity into a single network (FP7 OMEGA project); this has been realised with the insertion of a convergence sub-layer below IP and above the MAC layers of underlying transmission technologies (Wi-Fi, pLc, Ethernet …). In this document these networks are named “hybrid networks” due to the use of different networking technologies. Hybrid networks with such a convergence mechanism at layer 2.5 are now addressed by standardisation bodies, e.g. IEEE 1905.1 standard certified as nVoyTM (http://www.nvoy.org/) with available commercial products around end of 2014.
Though self-mechanisms have been introduced into hybrid home networks, user friendliness still needs to be improved.