Abstract: A system and method for providing an easily installed, deployed, and administered home networking system includes, in one embodiment, a collaboration group. The collaboration group may be installed and configured to execute in a peer-to-peer model or a client/server model. In one embodiment, the collaboration group provides federation to external network services. In another embodiment, the collaboration group provides access to a private network to previously provisioned devices located outside of the private network. In yet another embodiment, the collaboration group provides data sharing between devices within the collaboration group, such as for shared calendaring and presence.