Home Network Management Policies: Putting the User in the Loop

Dimosthenis Pediaditakis, Anandha Gopalan, Naranker Dulay, Morris Sloman, and Tom Lodge



Abstract:

Home networks are becoming increasingly complex but existing management solutions are not simple to use since they are not tailored to the needs of typical home-users. In this paper we present a new approach to home network management that allows users to formulate quite sophisticated "comic-strip" policies using an attractive iPad application. The policies are based on the management wishes of home users elicited in a user study. Comic-strip policies are passed to a Policy engine running on a new Home Network Router designed to facilitate a variety of management tasks. We illustrate our approach via a number end-to-end experiments in an actual home deployment, using our prototype implementation.