The Residential Gateway (RG) is a device of the Home Electronic System (HES) that connects home network domains to network domains outside the house. It supports communications among devices within the premises, and among systems, service providers, operators and users outside the premises.

The RG enables service and content providers to deliver services such as entertainment, video and broadband digital streams, monitoring for health care, security and occupancy, home appliance control and preventive maintenance, remote metering, and energy management. The RG specified by this standard does not imply the use of any particular protocol such as IP and it is recognised that many forms of the RG will exist using many types of data such as analogue video and broadband digital streams.=