News

Entropic to Detail 270Mbps Home Networking Over Coax (1/4/2004)

Chip startup Entropic Communications will present the first public details of a revolutionary home networking technology at this week's Communications Design Conference in San Francisco.

Entropic's vice president of marketing, Michael Librizzi, will present In-Home Coaxial Cable: The Backbone of the Digital Home on Wednesday, March 31 at 2pm, during session CDC-P726 that deals with issues surrounding broadband network access. Additional session details are available online: http://www.esconline.com/electronicaUSA/tech_conf/cdc/wednesday.htm.

We are offering conference attendees an unprecedented level of detail on Entropic's c.LINK-270 chipset, Librizzi said. This presentation convincingly makes the case for a revolutionary networking solution for today's digital home in which video, data, and multimedia can be readily and seamlessly shared over the existing coax infrastructure.

Already installed in virtually all American homes, coax cable is ideally suited for high-speed networking thanks to its reliability, resistance to interference, and high capacity. Prior to the development of Entropic's c.LINK-270 however, it lacked the ability to handle two-way communications for room-to-room traffic.

Enabling true coax networking requires traversing splitters from output to output, something they were specifically designed not to do. Entropic's c.LINK waveform, however, jumps splitters from output to output, and peacefully co-exists with all the content (cable, satellite, etc.) currently on the coax. Therefore, networking with c.LINK-equipped devices over coax means no new wiring or hardware is needed, and it can be installed by the average homeowner with plug-and-play simplicity.

c.LINK Technology

Entropic's c.LINK-270 chipset, shipping in volume Q4 2004, provides the industry's most cost-effective method for networking video and data in the home, and can be built into a variety of consumer electronics -- STBs, TVs, PCs, and DVRs. c.LINK-270 delivers a maximum data rate of 270Mbps, capable of streaming multiple simultaneous HDTV and SD videos with no loss of picture quality.

c.LINK-270 consists of two ICs: an RF front-end, and baseband controller with an embedded Media Access Controller (MAC). c.LINK technology supports three protocols over the same coax wire: Ethernet, MPEG Transport Stream, and IEEE-1394. A c.LINK-enabled home network supports up to 10 simultaneous channels, each of which has a data capacity of up to 270Mbps for multiple simultaneous HD/SD MPEG Transport Streams and Ethernet packets. For security, c.LINK packets are DES encrypted.

www.entropic-communications.com