Picture the entertainment options in a home situated one mile down a dirt road in a rural area without electric or phone utilities. If you are thinking Scrabble by candlelight, you might be pleasantly surprised to be a guest in the Northern California home of Mike Mitchell, director of collaboration business services at Cisco. Mitchell uses solar and windmill power, a microwave Internet connection, and Linksys wired and wireless networks (PDF - 179 KB) to provide enviable video and music systems as well as a sophisticated telecommuter setup for his wife and himself.

“We use our home IP network for all aspects of our life,” says Mitchell. “It handles everything from transporting movies and music from room to room, to video surveillance, to IP telephony for personal and business calls.”

Living Off the Grid
When he built his home in 2004, Mitchell asked his contractor to install a solar energy kit, which currently produces 2.7 kilowatts. As a hedge against cloudy skies, he later installed a windmill that produces an additional 900 watts. And just in case, Mitchell has a backup generator. The power is more than adequate for the family’s energy needs, including appliances, computers, the home entertainment equipment, and a recently purchased air conditioner.

A Wireless Connection to the World For Internet connectivity, which the family uses for browsing the Web, e-mail, voice over IP, and purchasing iTunes and movies, Mitchell subscribes to a wireless service that provides 1.5 Mbps bandwidth both upstream and downstream. The connection terminates in Mitchell’s garage, at a dish that is attached to a Linksys WRT 150N Router. This router, in turn, connects wirelessly to a Linksys WAP 54G Wireless Router and Linksys 16-port switch in the house, providing Internet connectivity on all three floors.

First Floor: Everyday Home Entertainment
The family buys some movies on DVD and downloads others from the Internet, using a Macintosh computer. The Mac, equipped with an HDTV receiver card and EyeTV software, is also used to record free TV shows broadcast over the airwaves. To reduce storage space requirements, Mitchell transcodes videos to the 1-Mbps MPEG-4 format.

The Mitchell family has its choice of three large-screen displays for watching movies and TV shows. On a typical day, they are likely to gather in the playroom to watch on a 56-inch, rear-projecting Samsung DLP (Digital Light Processing) display, which, at 250 kilowatts, is the most energy-efficient display in the home. The sophistication of the network is hidden: someone simply selects the video to watch. Behind the scenes, the movie selection is sent wirelessly from the Mac, and then the Mac obliges by transmitting the movie wirelessly to the Zensonic DVD player attached to the Samsung DLP. The movies are streamed in real time.

Occasionally, the family splurges on energy and watches video in the third-floor home theater, which is equipped with an InFocus IN76 front projector that displays an 11-feet-wide image. This projector is connected to an Oppo networked DVD player, Sony PlayStation III and a Marantz SR8001 audio/video receiver. The home theater setup uses up to 750 kilowatts, or three times as much energy as the DLP display. “Sometimes it’s worth the extra energy for an immersive experience,” Mitchell says.

The third option is outdoor viewing, or what Mitchell calls an “ad hoc, drive-in experience.” On these occasions, he hangs an 8-feet-wide screen on his van and shows the movie with an InFocus ScreenPlay 4805 projector.

Everything Wireless
When he can, Mitchell purchases equipment that has built-in wireless connectivity. When this is not possible, he can add wireless connectivity to any device that has an Ethernet port by connecting it to his Linksys Wireless GameBridge. He uses it for the Linux Home Theater PC, for example, as well as for his A/V components, when he wants to install software or firmware upgrades from the Internet.

The Linksys Wireless GameBridge also comes in handy when Mitchell uses his PlayStation III as a Linux computer instead of for gaming. When gaming is shut off, so is the native wireless connectivity, and the Linksys bridge adds it back.

Music in the Air
The Mitchell family stores its extensive iTunes collection on the Mac but plays it on the stereo, which has more powerful speakers. The setup is simple: AirTunes software on the Mac sends the songs wirelessly to a small AirPort Express Base Station attached to the stereo.

Peace of Mind with Video Surveillance
The Mitchells use their home network for more than entertainment. A Linksys home-security camera is installed in the playroom, enabling Mitchell and his wife to keep an eye on the children. “No matter where we are in the house, we can use a wireless laptop to log into the camera’s IP address to see real-time video of the playroom,” he says.

Phone Service—with No Phone Lines
For personal phone calls, the family subscribes to a consumer VoIP service. Incoming and outgoing calls travel over the same microwave T1 connection used for Web browsing and e-mail. For business calls, Mitchell and his wife use Cisco IP Communicator software on their laptop computers. Mitchell’s laptop also includes Cisco VPN Client software, which creates a secure voice and data connection to the Cisco intranet. The telecommuter setup has significantly reduced phone bills for Mitchell’s wife, who previously used a cell phone for business calls. Now her calls are free because they travel over the IP network.

Advice for Going Green
With three years’ experience living off the grid, Mitchell is comfortable with the tradeoffs. An advantage is that he has fewer blackouts than his neighbors who live on the grid, with total downtime of only around 10 minutes a year. A minor inconvenience is that he now carefully considers power consumption when he purchases electronic equipment.

Mitchell offers the following advice for people who want to reduce their power consumption:

• Consider the power requirements of PCs and display devices such as projection TVs when you make purchase decisions. DLPs, for example, can use half the power of some plasma displays—250 watts compared to 500 watts.
• Wired and wireless home networks use very little power, so no special purchase considerations or techniques are needed to conserve energy.
• Shut down all equipment when not in use.
• “Replace your light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs,” he says. “This single step has more impact on energy conservation than installing a kilowatt of solar panels.”

Cisco Service and Support Manager Mike Ziegler takes his work seriously–and he takes his work home. “I always felt that there was a heightened visibility on how a Cisco employee would handle networking problems,” he says. So when Ziegler set out to design his home network (PDF - 207 KB), not surprisingly it became a showcase for network design and Cisco technologies. When Cisco customers visit the Ziegler residence, they see firsthand not only how committed Ziegler is to the technology he supports, but how that technology can be used at home to help families live, work, learn, and play.

When Ziegler’s family began to remodel their new home in Southern California, he spied an opportunity. Work crews were opening the walls of the house, and Ziegler knew this would be an ideal time to run cable for his home systems. He began to lay the plans for a comprehensive network that would address all his family’s needs: home office connections, schoolwork, distributed entertainment systems, general communications, and more. From the beginning, Ziegler knew he wanted to build a showcase network that would model advanced functionality with inherent ease of use for anyone who connected, whether it was visiting Cisco customers, friends, or his three school-age children.

The network, which is primarily wireless, provides universal high-speed Internet access for all desktop and laptop computers throughout the house and grounds, with a VPN connection to the Cisco office using the Cisco Enterprise Class Teleworker solution and voice over IP.

High-Powered Home Office
Ziegler and his wife both telecommute and work from home frequently. At Cisco, Mike supports three of the world’s largest wireless service providers. “I’m in a customer-facing support position, and the home network lets me stay in real-time contact with these customers, as well as with Cisco,” says Ziegler, adding, “I leave my laptop on into the evening to stay connected to these customers, should support from Cisco become necessary.”

The robustness of the home network was critical for Ziegler. Prior to his current role, he worked in Cisco’s Services Marketing organization. Ziegler recalls days when he would deliver presentations to customers and partners around the world from his home office. Network availability became so important to his work that he was forced to retain two ISP connections—his main connection via cable, and a secondary DSL connection. “It was necessary, given the criticality of the work I was doing around the clock. I couldn’t have a service provider thinking it was OK to knock out the network for unscheduled maintenance at midnight.”

Ziegler’s wife Natalie is another power user in the household. An active volunteer for several nonprofit organizations, she relies heavily on the network for her success in those communities. She works as an executive for an importing company, to which she telecommutes three days a week. The home network’s wireless capabilities allow her to connect seamlessly to her office.

Extending the Campus
Providing a foundation for learning is another important function of the home network. “My kids go to a school where they encourage the use of technology,” says Ziegler. The school created what Ziegler describes as a “networked learning school-work environment” on its servers, and made it available to students. “The package they use is called First Class,” he says. “It is a lot like an AOL— container environment. They can closely monitor what the kids are doing, while still allowing online collaboration with schoolmates.”

Using the wireless network, Ziegler has extended that school experience into the home for his kids, also making educational websites available to them. “The school is very keen on networked learning, and they’ve directed us towards sites that include prefab encyclopedias for given grade levels and projects.” Not surprisingly, the Ziegler children have developed a high comfort level with the Internet, which has become a vital research tool for them in their schoolwork.

Connected Lifestyle
But learning is not all that the Ziegler children use the home network for. They have also incorporated it into their daily arsenal of communications tools. The network’s simplicity makes it easy for them to e-mail, chat, and videoconference as they choose. One of the children uses the network to stay in touch with a relocated friend through regular videoconferences.

When guests visit, they can be assured of simple, reliable access to the Internet or to their corporate networks. Ziegler has set up secure guest access on a separate virtual LAN (VLAN) to ensure privacy and separation from his private home network. He also uses MAC address-level security. “Once I get their MAC address, I give them a password, and they can jump right onto the Internet,” he explains. His security solution needed to jibe with his overall vision of network simplicity. “It had to be something that was undefeatable, yet easy. MAC-level address security, at the physical level, is probably one of the best strategies—and it is fast, so it met my design criteria.”

Mainstay for Entertainment
Every home needs to balance work with leisure, as does a home network. The Ziegler home is wired for video as well as data throughout. “I can do things like put the Super Bowl football game up on every TV in the house, with just one pay-per-view purchase,” Ziegler notes. His photography hobby also is supported on the wired part of the network, which allows him to send very large picture image files to a print server at high speeds that wireless technologies can’t match.

Putting It on Display
In the customer service business, Ziegler says he is often asked by customers how he himself would handle a particular network problem. These days, Ziegler can answer that question by inviting them over—and many in fact have paid him a visit. The only downside: “Now they ask me to design similar networks for their homes.”

To anyone considering building a home network from scratch, Mike Ziegler offers the following advice.

Plan Imaginatively
“The mistake I see most people make is that they buy a single Linksys router and they come home and plug it in. It works great that day and for the next year, but they never realize its full potential,” Ziegler says. “My recommendation is for them to sketch out a floor plan, and think about everything they can and want to do within their home.” Do not think about the network, but about where you want to watch TV, talk on the phone, or study. “Have fun with it,” he says. Think about what you could be doing on the network, where you would like to do those things, and then sketch that out on the diagram.

This approach will help people figure out where they need access points, what kind of speeds they need, and to what extend they need to invest in cabling. “Running cable is very expensive,” says Ziegler, who should know—his home contains about 7½ miles of cable. But if you plan it out ahead of time, you can make it economical and highly functional.

Plan for a Little Extra
Ziegler says he misjudged some areas of his home, overlooking a few rooms when he planned his cable runs. “What I would have done differently would be to install additional cable runs. Who would ever have thought you would need a cable run into the laundry room? But it turns out that’s a good place to put a phone.”

Use Best-in-Class Products
For reliable wireless connections, Ziegler recommends the Linksys Wireless-G router. “When it comes out of the box, it works,” he says. “The most anyone needs to do is log on to it at least once to change the password, just so that the neighbors can’t manage it for them.”

 

IMPORTANT NOTICE: THE SAMPLE HOME NETWORKS AND RELATED INFORMATION SHOWN ABOVE (THE "NETWORKS") ARE PROVIDED "AS IS," WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NONINFRINGEMENT, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR ARISING FROM A COURSE OF DEALING, USAGE, OR TRADE PRACTICE. The Networks are presented for novelty and informational purposes only. The Networks do not constitute and should not be considered Cisco professional advice, nor should they be considered recommendations or endorsements by Cisco. The Networks have not been tested, validated, or otherwise confirmed by or on behalf of Cisco. The Networks may not address the unique circumstances of any user environment, and therefore, should not be relied upon alone to build a home network. Users should seek technical guidance from qualified third parties to address their unique environments. Reliance on or other use of the Networks is at your own risk.