INTERMEDIA - D4.1 - Hybrid (home and personal networks) system architecture and its performance issues

The Intermedia framework strongly relies on telecommunication networking for various services: multimedia content delivery, file sharing, remote control of devices, user localization and tracking, and so on. In the first phase of the project, Intermedia activities will be devoted to bring the user-centric approach in private scenarios, thus networking is targeted to the wireless home/office environment. The aim of the document is to describe an Intermedia specific proposal of "network architecture", which should provide a consistent view of how current network technologies places in respect to the usercentric vision that characterizes the Intermedia approach, and which should give a starting framework to organize a research work of integration and cooperation in respect to the networking issues. Starting from this document, limitations and drawbacks of present technologies will be investigated in respect to a short term period, and the resulting analyses will be used to drive research activities within this area in the long term.