ISUs can take advantage of existing residential wiring, and with minimal additional investment, can network multiple devices within the residence to provide greater gateway functionality. Complete redundancy in the ISU product can significantly decrease the mean time to identify and repair problems. Modular construction makes the fast swapping of components a time-saving advantage. Residential powering and battery back-up are also available to give the MSO greater powering options. ISUs are physically mounted either on the outside or inside of the residence.
Access is limited and requires special tools.
The unit is enclosed in an environmentally-hardened case. Once requirements for the residential gateway device have been determined, the next mountain to climb is residential networking. Households increasingly have multiple PCs that would benefit from sharing networked resources such as printers and high-speed Internet access. Random and unspecified wiring topologies, noise, and varying transmission line characteristics are a few of the obstacles. A nother point to take into account is that the typical residence is wired for two lines.