As a result, a flood of new draft-802.11n equipment from all major vendors and many smaller ones was shown at CES. And to handle the bandwidth demands that many expect in the media-centric home, much of the new equipment has gigabit-class capabilities.

In the wall

While wireless networking will remain essential, home users who are interested in media will also be adding wired networking, companies at CES predicted. However, unlike the enterprise, that wired networking won't be Ethernet. Rather, it will be networking that uses in-wall electrical wiring, typically using the recently updated specification, which provides theoretical network speeds as high as 200Mbit/sec.

Introduced several years ago, HomePlug was swamped by Wi-Fi. But even the most ardent Wi-Fi advocates are coming to believe that in-wall wiring will play an important role in the home because of shortcomings of wireless networking. Every major vendor of Wi-Fi equipment for the home and small office -- such as Linksys, Netgear and D-Link Corp. -- was showing HomePlug or equivalent equipment.

"Wireless is good for certain things," says Nancy Robbins, marketing communications manager at Ocala, Fla.-based Intellon Corp., which spearheaded the HomePlug standard and provides HomePlug technology to other vendors. "But all kinds of things like jitter and latency can cause problems with wireless and media. [HomePlug] doesn't just have better quality of service, but it also has better ease of use."