One of the main concerns, which we paid particular attention to, was the issue of access throughput, 'always on', richer multimedia content, security, down time glitch and most importantly at affordable costs which most Internet users face now and then. This can certainly be another factor that can deter people from using the Internet. Because of this, we paid careful attention in the development of a unique network architecture to ensure people accessing information, entertainment and communicating with each other within Homecomm will always be better than those provided by existing ISPs. We hope, in this way people in Malaysia will feel the necessity to be connected.


The HomeComm network architecture is specially designed for two-way data, graphics, media and video caching and distribution. HomeComm's distributed network architecture relieves the upper layers of the network for only dynamic inter-portal data packets, graphics, media, and video movements. Hence, at any particular time the data, graphics, media, video or information will always be closer to the user, thereby improving access throughput and response time.

Each community portal or home page will be hosted on its own Internet access point or data center, called Community Multimedia Utility (CMU) where modems, routers and caching and media servers and other network equipment will be housed for greater reliability and availability.

Network smart caching will be introduced where the most recently accessed static information or web pages accessed will be stored at these CMUs. Only dynamic information, web page and data will be updated, as required, or on a regular basis so that at any point the information the user is looking at is always fresh and up to date.


As a result, all the above, we believe, will deliver two key benefits:

Increased quality of service. User response time improve, since requests for cached objects are served immediately, without long delays typically associated with retrieving objects from origin servers.

 Bandwidth efficiency. Serving duplicate requests from cache makes efficient use of WAN bandwidth, allowing the network to serve more traffic than is consumed from backbone connections.

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Yes! Only broadband Internet access will be introduced by HomeComm and will be 'always on' basis. The bandwidth offered will be flexible enough for every user to feel the necessity to be connected. Slowly it will be upgraded as and when the user's demand in terms of rich multimedia content increases.

Obviously, broadband Internet access will necessitate the users to experience richer multimedia content such as, digital audio-video services, which are unreachable to most Internet users right now.

HomeComm's distributed network architecture strategy is designed from the ground up to be highly scaleable and to provide sustained high performance. By incorporating an ATM/Frame Relay Hybrid backbone, data replication, local and network caching and integrated end-to-end network management, HomeComm's network can ensure that its users will not get stuck in Internet " traffic jams" and " downtime glitch".

It is projected all the data centers or CMUs will be installed at local government municipalities of each community. Similarly, the latest network firewalls, Secure Socket Layers (SSL) and intrusion detection systems such as Layer 7, will also be installed at these data centers if proven reliable.

At the end of the day, all the above factors will not be meaningful if the services provided by HomeComm are not affordable. We believe this will not be the case, as all the services provided would be delivered through a reliable distributed IP network architecture that will mean cheaper costs, which we intend to pass it on to the ultimate user.