Characterizing home networks with HomeNet Profiler

This paper presents the first large-scale study of home networks. We design HomeNet Profiler, a tool that runs on an end-host in the home to collect data from home networks. HomeNet Profiler collects a wide range of measurements including: the set of devices, the set of services (with UPnP and Zeroconf), the home gateway configuration, and the characteristics of the WiFi environment. Since the release of HomeNet Profiler in April 2011, we have collected data on 1191 distinct homes. Our analysis leads to a number of insights on current home networks. Home networks are diverse; some home networks connect just one end device, whereas others have more than a dozen. In most home networks, however, only a small fraction of devices are powered on during our measurements. The support for UPnP and Zeroconf is still limited. We observe significant differences among the WiFi neighborhoods (i.e., the WiFi networks around a home) in different countries. The signal strength of in-home WiFi, however, is surprisingly good independently of geography.