Also, the issues surrounding standards such as IP and in-home networks have not benefited from the clarity which they exhibit now. In the context of a multi-service business model, and the technology and standards developments described above, the requirements for a home gateway become clear. For professionally installed components, the costs of installation, and therefore the install time, must be minimized to enable a feasible business model. The level of technician required for the installation can have a substantial impact on the install costs and must be considered carefully by vendors of system products, particularly the home gateway. It is also important that the system support consumer installed components in the system.
Consumers demand that installation be simple and foolproof.
As the central manager of system elements, the home gateway must ensure that these devices are installed onto the network properly and do not erode system integrity for communications with other devices such as the meter. The multi-service model is based on the idea of a flexible and growing set of services implemented by the gateway. This requires that it be possible to upgrade and add to the system functionality by downloading new software to the gateway over the wide-area network connection. The cost points and large numbers of devices in a system, require that as much maintenance of the system as possible be available remotely over the wide-area network. Assessing faults and diagnosing system problems remotely keeps maintenance costs to a minimum.