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Electric Plug 14Mbps Spec Agreed On

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the maybe-it-might-be-real dept.

Tei'ehm Teuw writes: "From this article on EDTN the effort to establish a standard for power-line-based home networking will take a step forward this week when the HomePlug Alliance announces it will adapt technology from Intellon Corporation for its specification. The 36-member alliance will release a complete specification based on Intellon's technology, with its 14-Mbit/second raw data rate. In Europe, meanwhile, the HomePlug Alliance has established formal liaisons with two groups working on power line home networking: the European Telecommunication Standards Institute and the International Powerline Communications Forum. Neither has defined a technology to date, but it would be possible for them to adopt the same technology as the HomePlug Alliance, even though the European power line access technology is different there than in the United States. (The European power line delivers 220 volts at 50 Hertz; in the United States, it's 110 V at 60 Hz.) The overall forecast for power-line-based home networks is now beyond the 32 million nodes initally projected."

2 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. HOME networking by Signal+11 · · Score: 4
    'tis important that people note this is for home networking, not for general distribution between an ISP and your home.

    The reason that an ISP->user connection will never be feasible across powerlines is due to transformers - the moment you put a signal through a transformer you get garbage out the other end.. that's the downside of transformers - and why you can't use load coils with xDSL. The second problem I see with this is that because of the high voltages involved, it is quite possible to kill yourself.. well, the voltages don't kill, but use alittle ohms law and you'll figure out why high voltages are a problem (for reference, your body is about a 1.5k resistor and your max safe current is 5mA with lethal at 30mA).. anyway.

    I also think the technology will be limited SOLELY to the home market - if I was IT manager I wouldn't let my company even *think* about deploying it.. you have all kinds of nasty things in commercial/industrial settings on those wires that just make it totally unreliable - a blown circuit breaker takes out your network, phase shift from flipping on the refridgerator, all those flourescent lights severely throw the phase out of whack - you're left with anything *but* clean energy in a commercial setting.. this is why power strips are so VERY VERY VERY VERY important.. and UPS' on anything worth a damn.

    So, uhh, don't expect this to be any kind of "long term" tech - it'll be around for about 10 years tops.. most new buildings these days have cat5 and coax drops just per default.

  2. Random Thoughts by HomerQPeabody · · Score: 4

    1. Inari (formerly Intelogis) has been shipping a 350 Kbps powerline networking kit for 2 years. You can purchase it at Fry's, Office Max, CompUSA etc. It works in about 80% of the outlets in an average home. There are GPL'd Linux drivers for it on SourceForge. It's good for no more than about 10 nodes. It uses encryption to keep your neighbors from sniffing your data. Sure it is slow, but it's faster than your dial up connection.
    2. 14 Mbps is really impressive on a power line. (Lots of reflections, lots of noise, dynamic line conditions). I wonder if it really runs that fast? Has anyone seen a demo?
    3. Intel's home networking product is a phone line product based on the HomePNA (Home phone network association) spec.
    4. Wireless is still more expensive than powerline and it has its own set of problems.