Solving the Home Network Problem - Really!

Michael Gartenberg | February 28, 2006, 04:57 PM

Well, you know my rant about this one by now. What's interesting is that I had the chance to meet with a company called Gaia headed by a fellow named David Furstenberg in Tel Aviv today that seems to really have the technology to solve many of the issues of the home network. The presentation started off on the right foot when I saw that company tagline was "taking responsibility for the home network". In short, they've developed an approach that quantifies the problems related to network issues and then just fixes them. Have an intruder on your network? No problem, block them at the MAC level. Mess up your router configuration? No problem, re-configure on the fly. Can't figure out if the connection issue is on the modem, the router or the network adapter. No problem, can test, diagnose, repair and if needed re-boot and notify what needs to be done in the event that the software can't resolve the problem. The implications for this are huge and it will be interesting to see how they go after the market as there's a number of different ways a startup like this might bring themselves to market. Two thoughts crossed my mind, one if I were still doing venture capital, I'd be looking very closely to see if I could invest in their next round. Two, if I worked at Microsoft on the Vista team or in the home network group, I'd be seeing if I could license or buy their stuff to make it part of a future version of Windows.