Patent ID: 6904042

Claim:
A network coupling device for coupling a home network to a local area network, the network coupling device comprising: functional components operating on a physical layer of an open system interconnect (OSI) reference model, including: a first data access device, to be coupled to cabling of the home network, for extracting data packets from the cabling and for feeding data packets into the cabling, while avoiding adverse effects on an actual intended purpose of the cabling; and a second data access device, to be coupled to a transmission medium of the local area network, for extracting data packets from the local area network and for feeding data packets into the local area network; and a data transmission device operating on a data link layer of the OSI reference model and coupled to said first data access device and to said second data access device, said data transmission device providing an unchanged transmission of extracted data packets between said first data access device and said second data access device without evaluating addressing information concerning the data link layer contained in the data packets.