The Battle for the Home Wi-Fi Middleware

This research paper looks at the innovation trends towards open source in the home gateway middleware including Easy Mesh and prpl Mesh.

Innovation for a more robust connected home Wi-Fi and IoT is ongoing at a furious pace. There are a number of ongoing initiatives to create a more agile CPE, one with an open-source, agnostic, middleware between the cloud and the home devices. The promise is for service providers to be able to develop, install, manipulate, and administer applications residing in the CPE stack.

In light of so much increased complexity in the CPE and fast-changing market requirements, many solution vendors have decided to pool parts of their source code. The benefits of making code available to others include faster development time, faster time to market and more cost-effective implementation.

Standardization, open-source, and virtualization are rapidly shaking the world of home Wi-Fi and beyond.