© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 1 Challenges and Limitations in a Back-End Controlled SmartHome Thesis Work Presentation Niklas Salmela Supervisor: Prof. Jorma Virtamo Instructor: M.Sc. Heikki Loukojärvi

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 2 Contents  Introduction  What is a Smart House?  Back-end controlled SmartHome  Challenges  Conclusions

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 3 Introduction  New Internet based services are appearing (VoD, IPTV, VoIP, etc.)  Peoples need for security is rising  Researches show that the interest for “Smart Houses” is increasing  A ”normal” Smart House contain mostly functionalities which address home security and home automation  In a back-end controlled SmartHome there can further be included Internet based services

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 4 What is a Smart House?  There is not a single definition of a Smart House  A “smart device” does not make a Smart House  Interaction between smart devices is common in most of the definitions of a Smart House  Common services in Smart Houses:  Home Automation  Home Control  Home Security  Home Surveillance  Usually controlled by external keypads or touch screens, in some cases by a PC in the house

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 5 What is a Smart House? (cont.)  The local commands may be transmitted with any appropriate protocol, either wirelessly or by wires  For home automation KNX is the most used standard, another (simple) one is X10 power line communication  For home security RF communication is popular

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 6 Back-end controlled SmartHome  A back-end controlled SmartHome is a Smart House that is connected to the Internet  To get full functionality the connection should be an always on, broadband connection  All the functionalities of an ordinary Smart House stay the same  In the basic case no further services are introduced, the added value comes from the remote access

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 7 Back-end controlled SmartHome (cont.)  Back-end servers allow remote control and monitoring of the SmartHome  Possible with any Internet capable device (mobile phone, PDA, PC, STB, etc.)

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 8 Back-end controlled SmartHome (cont.)  The use of the SmartHome via the back-end is through a portal page, which contains the different services available at the moment  The look & feel should be the same regardless of the device used to access  Restricted version for mobile phones without browsers

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 9 Challenges  Some devices in the home might generate high amounts of network traffic, e.g. a network camera  The current situation with broadband speeds do not allow for this  Until the connection speeds change, we have to change the behavior of the cameras  By changing the compression level  By limiting the frames per second

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 10 Challenges (cont.)  Making the SmartHome back-end controlled => SmartHome must be accessible from the Internet  The gateway performs a port mapping, e.g.  The requests to the gateways WAN IP on port 1234 will be forwarded to the security  The requests to the gateways WAN IP on port 4321 will be forwarded to the surveillance Security Camera Gateway (NAT) Private IP Addresses Public IP Addresses Home Internet

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 11 Challenges (cont.)  Port mapping creates security issues as we cannot know who accesses the equipment. Especially critical in security and surveillance services  The equipment has password protection in itself, but is this enough?  Weak/default passwords a real hazard  The access must be restricted  Requires not yet common features from the gateway  Source IP filtering in the port mapping => devices behind the NAT only accessible from a single (or a set of) IP address(es)  The use of VPN in the connection between the back-end and the home. Secure, but requires much from the Back- end and from the home gateway (e.g. VPN and VLAN)

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 12 Conclusions  The services can already be implemented  The bandwidth will not be a problem much longer, speeds are constantly increasing  Biggest problems are in making the connections secure  Between the home and back-end  Between the user and back-end  No single solution is yet decided  Much depends on the future of home gateways

© Siemens 2006 All Rights Reserved 13 Questions? Thank you!