A lot is going in audio over ip (aoip); things that traditionally belong in the analog domain are now moving to IP networks in all kinds of venues and studios alike, greatly reducing costs and increasing flexibility. What this also means is that the traditional sound card, the interface between computer and other analog or digital audio gear, is dying out and is going to be replaced by networked interfaces. The computer is already IP ready!
Even though there are two open standards for layer 3 aoip (aes67 and ravenna) no os supports them out of the box. There are proprietary drivers available for linux, os X and windows but no open implementations or support in the os. Apple, claiming os X to be THE os for audio, really should have implemented aes67 and ravenna the day they went public... But they didn't.
There is a free wdm driver for Ravenna support from Alcnetworx but I don't think the driver itself is open. Also, wdm is not, to my knowledge, usable for low-latency audio.
Implementing aoip standards in Haiku could attract a lot of attention from experimental and professional audio and would also solve the problem of bringing support for professional interfaces to the platform; something that has plagued linux audio since always. RME has long been the only serious choice available for linux.
This is definitely the future for audio and It could be cool for Haiku to be on the train from the start.
Aes67:
http://www.aes.org/publications/standards/search.cfm?docID=96
Ravenna (superset of, but compatible with, aes67):
http://ravenna.alcnetworx.com
cheers!