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Linksys Incorporates HomePlug Networking
mattyohe writes "It seems that Linksys is one of the first to prepare release for their ethernet router that uses the HomePlug 1.0 spec. Linksys claims the Instant Powerline EtherFast Router performs well by using the OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) scheme. OFDM forms numerous signals into a single signal for transmission and then is used again to find and automatically adapt to the specific frequency combination that enables successful communication. This product currently uses 56 bit DES encryption and would be excellent for networking in the home enviroment. Never worry about not having enough rj-45 jacks at a lan party, bring some power strips!"
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing scheme? I thought they only talked about that sort of thing from prison...
I was looking for something like this the other day.
I reflect your pompous signature back upon you.
And, why would that be? Well, the range is an entire whopping half of a mile! I wonder if this could be done on the entire neighborhood's power grid...
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
What happens if you get a major power spike? What is in place to protect my HomePlug card on my computer?
I don't exactly like the idea of feeding electricity into my computer like that.
Gee.. what else can I plug into my home network now? :-) I wouldnt mind having my beer keg fridge tell me when it needs more beer in its internals.. but hell, if my refrigerator could tell me that I need some more bread over the 'net, then I'd be in geek heaven!
:-D
Wonder what else I can put on my network? my laundry machines? now theres an idea! CyberLaundry!
Moderation Points: Insightful:+1 Funny:+20 Interesting:+5
Now lamp manufactures can make lamps with a cpu inside and we can give them a schedule for on and off.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
I know from experience with X10 that it isn't that difficult to turn on all of the lights in your neighbor's house down the street at 2 am. Now, with Networking Over Power you can scan their network.
Or, if you like the people in your block, you can actually share bandwidth this way?
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
blah, been there done that...
:)
Mine is plugged directly into my brain via the OBNS (Outta Budweiser Network System -- TM)
When my stomach growls for more it automatically causes a ping to go out to my brain that causes me to get in my car and drive to the beer distributer to pick up another keg
But does it run under alternative operating systems? And does it use up power? and is there a Homeplug-Ethernet bridge? What's the catch?
Everything is mainstream now.
(2) I've always had good success with Linksys hubs, switches, and NIC's in the past; and I appreciate their low cost. I'm sure this will be a good product, too.
Now for a question: I don't fully understand how the electrical grid outside my house works, but what is to prevent my next-door neighbor from buying one of these powergrid devices and "borrowing" my bandwidth?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
At 14 Mbps it's definitely fast for most home networking. Much cheaper than rewiring your home, but when you think about you'll need one of these in each room that you're using the powerlines for ethernet. That could get a tad expensive if you do it in a majority of your rooms. If you're just connecting one room that is across the house then this would probably be a lot easier than wiring it the whole way.
It was created by an employee of Clare Micronics in his own spare time. The person who invented this technology is named Shun Ueda and is currently working for Clare Micronics on a work visa from Japan. Visit Clare Micronics' homepage at www.mxasic.com and maybe you'll be able to contact him via eMail. His technology makes every AC power connection in your house, all of which on the same grid, a viable network connection. Long distance is in mind... Mr Shun Ueda has been developing it in his free-time and is looking for someone to make the drivers. I told him to contact Mr. Brenner, but I think he may be busy at the moment and is working on something for the company in all his available hours.
Did they choose 56 bits because of export requirements?
Got friends?
What happens on the PC side of the question? Like, do I have to buy a device that takes up a slot internally or is USB? Or can I just plug that device into a pre-existing ethernet slot? Obviously, some type of PC->poweroutlet adapter is necessary, but where are they? [Oh, and less importantly... can I run this through my surge protector?]
IAAL,BIANLY
Well, this sounds all good, but what about some other practical issues? The first I can think of is now you have more noise in your power, the bane of any audiophile or DAW user. I have a tough enough time trying to keep my sound cabling away from my power lines as it is, will this product make the lines that much more noisy? The 60 cycles will still be there, but what frequency is the networking stuff on?
Also, what the hell are power cleaners going to think of this? I don't think putting more stress on your components is going to help them any. Might be a good idea to keep the network off of the circuits with your audio gear, unless your computer is your audio gear...
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
Is it just me, or is this product useless?
I mean, really. Your average non-savy user won't try to share a connection because they don't know it's possible. The Wireless product makers are cleaning up the partially-savy and geek markets. Hardcore geeks are wiring their houses with cat 5, etc.
Remember the telephone-over-powerline products to give you extra extensions? People just purchased cordless phones instead. Nobody bothers having a ton of wired extensions. And the network-over-a-phoneline? Just about nobody uses that one, either.
If people aren't wiring with the cables the designer intended (power on the power plug, telephone on the phone jack, network on the cat 5, cable on the coax, etc) they'll use wireless.
Gentoo Sucks
From Linksys's page (http://www.linksys.com/edu/part6.asp):
"Q. Will there be problems if I turn on or plug in devices like a power drill or hair dryer?
A. No. If the powerline characteristics change during a session, the Instant PowerLine products will sense the change and automatically adapt to provide the most reliable data path connection."
Will this "automatic adaption" interrupt data transmission? How would this affect latency?
Imagine people complaining about getting fragged by a hair dryer.
I know from experience with X10
You mean you actually clicked those pop-up ads?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Between this story and the one about setting up a dedicated server room at home, I'm thinking of tossing my PC completely and buying a used Atari 800. Well, not seriously, but it crosses my mind occasionally.
The amount of system administration required to run a PC home takes much of the fun out of computing for me. I'm a programmer and a technical kind of guy, but I really don't want to to be a sysadmin as a hobby. It's bad enough chasing down video card drivers and keeping track of all the related software incompatibilities--and having to upgrade everything every 18 months or so, even when I don't need it, as a brute force method of reducing conflicts--but having to deal with running servers and such at home is crazy. Sure, sure, the people who love recompiling kernels and running video card benchmarks and so on might not mind, but that's what those people _want_ out of a computer. Not everyone is like that.
About a decade ago, there were a set of articles in Radio-Electronics magazine (now, I believe, integrated with Popular Electronics--correct me if I'm wrong) that featured a build-it-yourself power line modem, working from the serial port as a standard modem with a maximum rate of 9600 baud.
:-)
One of the more interesting things in the article, if I remember correctly, is one of the issues brought up in this one, that is, data being 'transmitted' into a neighbour's home. The article mentioned that a capacitor with a large enough working voltage, placed across the incoming power lines to the house, would allow the signal to be transmitted beyond the basement breaker box. In other words, without the capacitor, there was no signal 'leakage'.
Please don't go trying this at home, though--I'm not going to be held responsible for crispy geeks who tasted too much 120V AC.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Here is another big security hole to examine...hehehehehe... ;)
Sorry.... just couldn't resist..
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
sure they come out with this after i buy into 802.11.... *sigh*
i wonder though how will noise affect this setup? what about lightning? can the unit be plugged into an surge protector or an ups? or does it need a direct connection to the home's power line? inquireing minds want to know...
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
I wonder if there is any way to use this technology to make a WAN over the power lines. Imagine playing x video game with someone down the street at 14Mbit/s free.
It would seem to me this whole concept is a bit of a kludgy way to handle home networking. You would still need a proper NIC for each machine on this network, so what does it really buy you? 100Mbit Hubs (and even switches now) don't cost much more than powerstrips (in fact hubs are downright cheap) and are not very complex. . . not to mention some CAT5 and a small hub is easier to pack than a bunch of power cables and a fat powerstrip for those LAN parties.
This technology is NOT a step forwards, it just supposedly makes things easier - but I would argue that the hardware portion of setting up a home network (i.e. Plugging CAT5 cables into a hub or switch from each computer)is much easier for newbies than the software/OS/IP networking setup.
I hope it's more reliable than the wireless AP's that practically every feature on the advanced page is broken.
umm all you actually doing is plugging in your computer to your HAN i did that a while ago w/ a network card this is just if you dont/cant run cat5 thru out your apartment/house
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
X10 is actually a networking standard for home automation, not relating directly with the cybersquaters on X10.com. The people at X10.com used to sell that stuff (and even advertise on slashdot), but since then they've moved onto crappy cameras and mountains and mountains of SPAM (to go a long with side dish of popups, of course)
There are other places online where you can buy home-automation without feeding the evil spam-spewing beast. I'm to lazy to look them up at the moment now, try google.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Seriously. A PSU with built in networking... plugs into the USB headers on the motherboard.
Too sensible, it'll never happen.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Then why don't you go read zdnet, or perhaps MacWorld?
i dont think that you could use a surge protector with this granted i havent seen any info on it but surge protectors uasually filter out noise on the line and i belive that this uses the 'noise' to communicate
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
then choose not to. run a win2k server if you want (i cant believe i recommended that). dont deal with it, you are not required to do all this. sometimes problems arise, so they need to be addressed, but mostly that isnt a problem, i run a lot of computers and most have no problems.
if you want to deal with the sysadmin stuff, go for it, tweek everything out. otherwise dont bother, as it is NOT required.
Those video card drivers come with XFree86 for free and can be updated - just like all other software - using APT. You don't even have to know anything about them at all. Good luck:]
It's just you.
I think the big use for this is in convergence products. IE, I should be able to plug in my amp to this and be able to play songs off my computer.
Right now I have to run a cord. And it's annoying.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Yeah, good ones do filter noise. I don't know if even the best filter at the frequency I'd assume this must use, though. I guess we'll see info on it at some point...
IAAL,BIANLY
this is silly paranoia. yeah, there are inherent potential security problems when you use shared media, even when using encryption, as you point out, but only for those who absolutely need bulletproof security, i.e. computers with trade secrets or confidential government data on them. this product is intended for home use... most of us don't really need to be concerned that someone with petaflops of computing power at hand can break our encryption schemes and access our data.
and if you live near people who would ever think of trying to DoS you to get back at you for ruining their hedge clippers, you need to move.
UPS's would filter out freq noise at least the one i have does it would be compleatly lost casue my computer runs off the battery in the ups and the line in charges the battery so their is no direct connection for it to make to pass it along
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
... with your neighbors. How long before my cable company re-writes their terms and conditions to prohibit me from connecting any device to the cable modem that also that connects to an electrical outlet ;)
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
Aren't they basically low pass filters for power? Will the networking signals survive going through them?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
You're right, they shouldn't be marketing this as a secure product.
But the product is fine for most of us. For example:
- It's a good way to play Quake with your brother. And if your neighbour is savvy, he can watch.
- It's a good way to send music to a future power aware stereo.
I think there's plenty of people who should stay on their tushes and who could find good use for a technology like this.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Here are the clues:
Early post, which is good for trolls to get notice and modded up.
The Authority figure: This guy suddenly is an expert because he took a computer ethics course? What the fuck does this have to do with anything?
Really, when you read this post, what the fuck does it have to do with anything? Did he even read the article, or is just spouting off bullshit? I would bet on the latter.
Anything that filters the power can disrupt the signal, so using the same rule of thumb as an X-10 box, I wouldn't plug it into a filtering surge protector and definitely not a UPS.
I'd like to use this to network a small school I've been supporting. We've put a lot of work into running 10baseT cables, but haven't found a solution for getting to the other building. Wireless would be nice, but even that is still out of the budget for now. (We're talking really small school here!)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
great, if used in a business, you would have to have a union employee come attach your computer to the network because you sure aren't allowed to plug anything into the wall socket yourself. you might hurt yourself.
Gawd, if you can't make 802.11 work for you, and you have to resort to using the power lines in your house, you really must suck.
Is that they are always too expensive for the devices which could really be useful if connected, and too slow for real networking.
The nework fridge, lamps, other devices have a $5 ceiling on parts cost, and any reasonable Powerline network system generally costs a lot more than that. The OFDM based system mentioned is probably in the cable modem price range.
Doesn't mention the chipset in the release. Does anyone know if there (finally) is a consensus standard on this???
Don't forget that your neighbour can sniff your home network using the outlet on the outside of your garage!
Not to mention stealing your bandwidth...!
It was bad enough setting up a vpn so i can access my network rom the outside but now my internal network too? No thank you.
This does nothing to prevent DoS attacks. So if you anger your next-door neighbor, he will probably try to flood your network with crap. As a computer geek, I know this would make my life miserable.
Look, anyone who is going to DoS you who has access to your power lines will probably DoS you by shorting the electricity and taking out your power! You're already at risk! Flee!
* 40 bit WEP didn't work. 128 bit WEP was broken soon after it was introduced. Apparently more bits doesn't help
Well, obviously we should just stop trying then.
Maybe people just need to get off their asses and run Cat5e through their houses
Cat5e isn't going to save you for a second from the FBI you're so terrified of, bub. It's not STORM shielded, and the FBI has STORM equipment that can detect RF emissions (as low as a nanowatt in frequency!) from a van parked outside of your house. Your attempt at security through obscurity... has failed!
Your needless paranoia is pure rubbish. If you really want to be secure, run OpenBSD, the secure operating system that Linux hopes to be someday.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Extremely doubtful that the signal (in usable form) can make it past the pole transformer in either direction. That's quite a security dongle.
All you have to worry about is your neighbor (or the EffBeeEye) running an extension ccord to a socket on the side of your house...};^)
What were you expecting?
i've been seeing people claiming to have had data over mains working for years now. Its heartening to finally see it on the market. But with wireless becoming ubiquitous is it really worth it now?
If anyone remembers the Radio Shack device that "turned your household wiring into an antenna", that's what I imagine for this technology. A smallish box with a pass-thru 3 prong AC plug, and an RJ45 on the bottom.
Plug the coverter into the wall outlet, and plug your laptop, PC, or TiVO into the RJ45 on the media converter. Really not a bad idea, with the right security. I'd certainly get it.
Intelligent Life on Earth
My house LAN involves a 4 port router, with CAT 5 wiring layed under rugs. Its simple, and its fine for playing games over. I have to admit, I don't see the advantage of setting up a server for a house - very few files require sharing across the network, and NFS/SMB can handle those fine. Game servers run just fine on any of the machines involved in the game.
It was suggested to me that instead of a router, I could buy an old computer and run Linux off it, stick a few network cards in and use that as a more flexible alternative. That's about the closest example I can think of a server that'd be useful on a home network.
There is also a certain element of everything being over-complicated. I'm currently working on an SMTP server (as part of a different project), which should be idiot proof. In most cases, it will be possible to just compile & run. Some cases may require command line options, but nothing like the complexity of configuration involved with Sendmail. No, it won't be as powerful, but that's not the point - with less complexity, comes less to go wrong.
Maybe now is the time to stop adding features, and make things work!
Im sure no business would ever even consider this. Think of the security implications.
You don't even need to find an open rj-45 jack on the raceway. Just an electrical outlet. Aren't those every 6 feet?
You could get on the network from an obscure maintenance room hidden from view...
That is a piss-poor excuse for being lazy.
ymmv
From a November 6th press release it appears that Linksys will have a USB adaptor for the PC-end with an ESP of $149.99, and the router in the story has an ESP of $179.99. Looks like they're going to release a bridge as well for $149.99.
This would be ideal for my girlfriend's family's house. They have GHz cordless phones in their home, so they can't use wireless. They have a huge, huge house (it's been expanded from the original, smaller house), so ethernet just isn't a viable option for them. Consequently, I've got 5 of their computers networked and sharing a 56k, but the other 3 still have to dial out. (Thus using up the line and preventing any of the other 7 computers from being connected.) This PowerLine Router will be ideal for their setup, and I'm quite pleased to see it becoming available.
-Waldo Jaquith
Does anybody know why the unix v. nt report ["Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX" , by John Kirch Networking Consultant and Microsoft Certified Professional (Windows NT)], suposedly at http://www.unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/ is unreachable? You can find foreign language versions, but finding english version copies of the same anywhere on the internet, has not been possible for me. Does anybody know of a URL that works?
If the equipment makers get on this bandwagon, it could get interesting.
Plug the equipment into the AC wall jack and poof your on the network.
Plug the game console into the wall. Poof.
Plug the MP3 component player into the wall. Poof.
Eventually all of our household equipment starts scanning, detecting and "inter-operating" with each other.
Next thing we know, everytime the mp3 player coredumps the washing machine floods the house.
Hmmmmm. On second thought...
Thanks for digging that up. Seems like the bridge will be router-side only, though, at least for marketing purposes. I hope it'll work PC-side too, since I'm not holding my breath for Linux support for that USB adaptor any time soon :/
IAAL,BIANLY
If these work anything like the intercoms I used as a child, they will interoperate between multiple houses as long as they are all served by the same street/pole transformer.
Somebody already posted a concern about their neighbors DOS'ing them. What kind of neighborhood do you live in?
If my neighbors wanted to screw with me, I'm far more concerned about my tires being slashed or my dog being poisoned then I am about a denial of service attack over my power line!
This does bring up another nice possibility though, sharing your connection with your neighbor in the same way you would a roommate.
The cable company may not much care for it (like we've paid attention to the TOS to begin with), but $10/month sounds a lot better than $40.
Plus your doing your potentially doing your neighbor a favor since they probably don't/didn't have a firewall to speak of.
No better or worse than 802.11, and businesses are adopting that left and right. Hell, not substantially better or worse than good old cat 5 in a fairly modern office space. Relying on 'well, thet can't find a plug so they can't crack the network' is an extremely, extremely naive approach to security, and any business that rules this out based on that probably has a lot of other security holes they should be worrying about.
IAAL,BIANLY
This had to have been designed by somebody as a side-project, then was commercialized when "the higher-ups" heard of it. Really, why would you choose DES, unless you had the code already lying around, or something?
-Mark
I mean, power transformers are optimized for best response at 60 hz. This has been the problem with power line transmission for things like wireless intercoms, lamp dimmers, etc., etc. Also, most commercial buildings and many new homes employ three phase power systems. Power line signals do not cross these phases very well. It will be interesting to see how Linksys has dealt with these major problems.
He's not talking about coupling through the power supply. He's talking about capacitive coupling.
Yes, he has a valid concern. The power lines carry 60 HZ and a lot of harmonics of it - all low frequency stuff - plus switching noise - higher frequency stuff but more intermittent, except for commutator noise which (as you probably know from listening to AM while running an electric drill) is all over the map. Not to mention fluorescent and other arc lamps and switching power supplies - all over the ultrasonic-to-radio ranges.
The higher the frequency the easier it couples - in direct proportion. Beyond the audio range it can still cause some trouble, but not as much.
This technology is running in the tens of megabits over a noisy channel, so it will be running a goodly fraction of that in bandwidth. The question is mostly whether the LOW end is well above the audio and FM multiplex subcarrier range.
Don't bet on that. The audio range is just as useful as an equivalent bandwidth above it, so unless the designers were trying to avoid hi-fi and telephone interference they probably used it.
I have a few other concerns:
How does it behave in the presence of interference from commutator-based motors (drills, vacuum cleaners, blenders, mixers, hedge trimmers, etc.), switching power supplies (computers, peripherals, compact fluorescents), and arc lamps (standard fluorescents, high-pressure vapor)?
How does it behave in the presence of other similar devices in other houses attached to the same power transformer? (Like X10 it probably won't go THROUGH the transformer enough to notice.)?
Will you need a coupling capacitor between the two sides (or in industrial situations, the three phases) of your feed to get the other half (two-thirds) of your outlets to work?
Will the default configuration share your internet and intranet with your neighbors?
On the other hand, can you feed a neighbor deliberately, to cut a deal to share a DSL or Cable drop?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Seriously, if you want to network your house using the existing wires in your house, pnoneline networking is the way to go. It is fast - right now it has a limit of 10 mbps, but they are working on 100 mbps - the power line gets 14mbps, not too much faster (and anyway, unless you have a T1, 10mbps is plenty fast). Also, it is secure, there is no need to encrypt your data as it travels on your own private network. Also, there is no risk of power spikes damaging your hardware. And finally (and most importantly I might add), there are Linux drivers for phonline NICs (at least for the card I use, the Linksys HPN200, you can find the drivers here.)
For more more information go to www.homepna.org
The main reason I see for a home server rather than some peer-to-peer thing is that you don't have to worry about someone turning off/rebooting their machine that you are currently playing an mp3 from.
An inexpensive box that sits in a corner and just runs makes life much easier. Everyone saves their files to their home directory on the server. Just set everyones "My Documents" folder to point to the server for the wife and kids and it is seamless.
No getting annoyed when somebody shuts down their machine, and you only have to worry about backing up one machine to save everyone's data.
.
load "linux",8,1
Ok, This is just a idea im working on.
I am looking to make a wireless network in my town. Now one problem i have is producing a setuyp that is cheap enough for people here ot be interested. Its a small town and these people are not interested in spending $300+ for net access in most any form. One solution was to go wireless with a PC, PCMCIA -- PCI/ISA adapter, a few feet of LMR40 and a cheap(but effective) antenna. Make payments over 12 months it becomes workable. Now, the problem is if the hardware it located indoors then its cheap but cause's problems if they decide to not pay, keep the hardwre, ect. I a repo man, That is a good way to get shot here(People get shot over less here) Now, the way i solved that was to put the hardware out side in a HEMA unit, using PoE for power. That rasied the cost another $150. the ROI is looking very bad about now. Totaly price, over $700 per customer. What im tihnking is if i could "get away" with say 1 wireless node per transformer. I quick look out side saays thats at least 2 house's, 4 in some place's. My question is, will this run on linux/bsd? What does it take to make it?? There must be some way to make this secure. Like use a different network mask for each clinet. Like give the wireless node 1 IP per customer, netmask for 4 ip's, and force a logicly different network for each. Now, you and I can figure this out, but how many every day user's can? And even then a MAC filter could be setup for jsut a little more protection. Then use a VPN. Ok, Now poke holes, but remember, fill a few too.
You would still need a proper NIC for each machine on this network, so what does it really buy you?
It buys you not having to string cat5 through the walls to every appliance you want to automate and every room where you, the wife, or the kid has a computer or appliance you want on the LAN.
I've strung a house with RS-232, another with Cheapernet, and am building one with Cat5 preinstalled. But after wiring the kitchen in my current house I've decided that stringing Cat5 where I want it is too much work and too hazardous for my creeky old body. And I'm a strongly motivated network nerd. So what's it like for Joe Accountant?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There's ways to make it a lot more low-impact.
I have a home network, I wired it with cat 5. You put on things like Windows 2000, you install software that your family will need.
You connect it to the internet via a $100 device from compusa. You don't try to do anything tricky.
Its basically no maintenance.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Now you'll have to buy a gasoline powered generator just to make sure your blender isn't spying on you.
I have had an Intelogis (now Inari) Passport networking kit for a couple of years. These devices use a home's electrical wiring to communicate. The Linux drivers are Open Source. Interestingly, they encourage you to use encryption on your network because you neighbors would be able to see you network if they also had a Passport and there was not a transformer between you.
Y'know, it's not that hard. You can just buy a moderately high end ADSL or cable modem router, and once that's set up it's more or less plug and play.
All the home powerline networking means is that the plug and play aspect is made even easier. Once the early adopters are dealt with, you can expect to find ADSL / cable routers that just plug into the power and to the cable - and that's it. Internet access to the whole house.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Gotta agree with what the other folks here have said. Then again, half our "home network" (the two MS machines) belong to my wife - she needs them for work. I've got a Linux workstation, and a P133 set up as our webserver, mail relay, etc. Overall, I'd say that in the past year, we've put in less than 2-3 hours a month into maintenance, administration, etc. (aside from number of times I've hosed my workstation playing around with RPM).
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Assuming that this will go outside of your house, it looks like something good for the do-it-yourself isps we've heard so much about (burgerlar alarm wires, wireless in a silo, etc). Also, this would be a great solution for towns out in the middle of nowhere without broadband (last mile). The town government, or an enterprising individual for that matter, could purchase a dedicated line of some sort, and bring broadband to their town.
The first time I read about this kind of networking I thought somebody was smoking something. I don't know about the rest of you but I don't want my equipment hooked into another line where a spike could get through. I don't care what they say about surge protection, a good enough lighting blast can come through even the most grounded building and blast the shit out of your equipment, even with like 500 joule surge protection. Also I would think security would be an issue. Hell, most newer houses have external outlets for convenience and I would hate to think of some cracker punk sitting outside tappinbg my lan from my yard.
--Jon
I wasn`t able to fathom from the article whether this power line equipment can be made to work in the UK. The UK voltage is 230v at 50Hz; if I use a UK to US transformer can I plug this equipment into the UK mains ?
To your last question:
Q. Are there issues with power strips and Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) systems?
A. No. Extensive testing has shown no problems associated with the use of power strips and UPS systems.
I doubt their protection from noise on the line is good enough for extreme cases. (blenders, hairdryers, etc). But in any case, if you are worried about intentional attacks and have a cable modem, you are already vulnerable.
Neighbor takes hairdryer
Neighbor wraps coax around hairdryer
Neighbor plugs in hairdryer
Cable goes out for the whole block
Neighbor keeps it on too long
Neighbor looks out the window and sees a cable companay van with a SWAT team rushing out of it.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
I have, at various times, considered getting a high-speed network connection for the grilfiend. I had two problems: first, good DSL service in her area is unavailable (distance from the CO coupled with going across the 'Hooch). So that left cable, but the single cable outlet in the apartment is diametrically across the living room (well, no, it's not a circle, but you know what I mean) from the computer.
And, of course, it being her apartment and not mine, running cat5 across the room is not an option. So I thought wireless, but I'm not willing to throw an extra $300 at the problem (yet.)
This, on the other hand, might be a solution. So my big question is: How much? When you figure that Linksys's WAP + routerator is a little less than $200 at the local Best Buy, and I can get a PCI or USB wireless card for the PC end for $100, can IP-over-110vAC really be much cheaper?
-JDF
Power line networking, of course, presents a huge security hole, but 802.11b is worse.
I can help you out. I bill $85/hr to do just this sort of thing. You have all the fun, I do all the work. Seems fair to me (as long as you are paying)! I think there are tons of others that will do the same thing. "Consulting: If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem." --Despair, Inc.
Hey Junks!
Thank you for giving us that insightful comment. I represent the other side of the fence.. I.E. Sure, sure, the people who love recompiling kernels and running video card benchmarks and so on might not mind
Yup I'm one of "those ppl"
From where i'm standing, this product along with the phone line networking products are for lack of a better word "GAY" The wireless stuff is cool if you don't mind the latency, but my main issue with any type of non ethernet network like this is that it's not ethernet.
Consumers like choices sure, but I don't think this is the right one. It's really not that hard to string together a ethernet network. Nor is it expensive. A box of 1000' of non plenum cat5 costs 50 bucks now, 1 box can wire up most homes.
We already have a good cheap way to network PC's why not stick with what everyone knows? I'd rather see the money thats spent on developing these goofball technologies put into reducing manufacturing costs so we can get gigabit ethernet for the price of 10/100 today. I know it's on the roadmap to eventually get that cheap, but when?
So, will this technology have any problems with devices communicating between each other if the two devices are on opposing "legs" of the split 220V line?
I.e. the line comes into your house as 220V, and is split into two 110V legs before being distributed throughout the home. Device #1 is in a circuit powered off the first 110V leg, and device #2 is on a circuit powered off the second 110V leg. Can the two devices communicate?
This is often a problem with simple X10 devices, and can require the installation of a "bridge" device to allow X10 signals to pass between the two 110V legs. Seems like powerline networking would suffer from the same problem...
"Not to mention stealing your bandwidth...!"
Hell, I don't much care if they steal bandwidth, since I pay a flat rate. I care if they steal electricity from there, since I pay by the KW/h!
Take a look at your UPS monitoring software and you'll know that a surge protector or UPS couldn't harm something like this. The power in your house is going up and down with spikes all over the place. The key is little spikes. Like 1-2%. The kind that dont hurt your equipment and dont trigger a UPS. This stuff would work fine riding those waves.
I think you've got the concept of a "normal" home network wrong. I'm constantly working on my home LAN, tweaking it, breaking it, fixing it. Most of the work I do is required because *I* broke it. That's my idea of fun. Sue me.
I've set up more than a couple of home LANs for sw developers, grandparents (!), and other "clueless" households with more than one PC. Mostly you set them up the first time (& their auto-update AV sw) & they're good to go. On the rare occasion I get a call, a reboot usually fixes it. After the 2nd "rebootable" problem, I remind them to reboot *before* calling me. Now my calls usually get 5 min. in & tell them they need to call their ISP. And that's rare. (Note: these are my personal service calls, not those of my employers. They get paid in $$$, I get paid in home-cooked meals)
Understand, I loathe pulling cable. If these doohickeys will perform at least half as good as 10baseT they'll be a viable solution for those who just want a simple home LAN & aren't trying to host CS servers or mirror slashdot.org . And I won't have to pull the d@*& cable. Anyone who is serious about their network won't use them, but I doubt that's their intended customer.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
They're including encryption, so there must be some worry that the neighbors could tap into your network. What's the range? Would this be alternative to the 802.11 wireless WANs?
Peer2Peer networking with each house acting as a peer?
Although I can sympathize with your stated opinions of bitch, bitch, and bitch, when you get to bitch and bitch you start to lose me. And well, when you get to bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, that's just going too far.
This is one of the primary reasons I love Mac OS. I don't have to fight with it. There's no registry to become corrupt. No swiss-cheese web server turned on by default. No video drivers that aren't compatible with OS upgrades. Applications aren't deeply tied to each other and integrated into the operating system - in fact, parts of the operating system aren't even integrated into the operating system - so installing an app doesn't automatically overwrite a DLL file with an old version that isn't compatible with an existing app. My iMac is on its 16th month, and while I'm sure the January 7th announcements will have me drooling again, I won't feel a pressing need to upgrade for a long time to come.
Unfortunately, most people can't see past the transparent plastic, and refuse to accept anything bearing the Apple logo as a legitimate tool.
By the way, yes, I know Macs can have problems. In general the most complex issues can be resolved by a trained monkey in under two hours, and faster with an experienced human. Note that using untrained monkeys is not recommended.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
We have a little blue box to get our data into the electrical outlets, but how do we get the data back out again? Buy another $$$ blue box? I doubt just plugging my laptop's power cord into the wall is going to let me check up on the latest News For Nerds here at SlashDot.
I've been using X-10 for lighting and temperature control in my home since long before X-10 started making "Security & Fun - Wireless Video Cameras!" and popping up ads under Yahoo search results. And I'm glad that this new technology doesn't choke the old one bit per AC cycle bus... But cost is the big issue here, at least for me, and perhaps for you as well.
My current (low-cost) home networking solution is a 100 foot ethernet cable that can reach any point in the house. With that, I can sit on the can and type up this response on my laptop. It's not flashy, it's not all that safe (at least where it runs up the stairs), but it works well enough that I haven't bought $300 of Airport equipment (or even Linksys' 802.11 equivalent).
Will Linksys put it's money where it's extension cord is? Or is this home networking for the masses only for people with massive moneybelts?
We Shall See.
~ Chris
Why wouldn't they be able to use wireless? 802.11b equipment generally gets along OK with 2.4 Gb cordless phones, as long as both devices are well-made and play nicely (letting you select between channels, etc).
I'm glad that you've had good luck thus far, but I've heard far too many cautionary tales about coexisting GHz phones and 802.11b networks to warrant spending $500 on equipment only to find that the stories are right.
-Waldo Jaquith
Woo-dawgie. Imagine the router/switch boxes they'll come up with for this thing.
Ethernet, Copper, Power line, Phone line, Wireless, and fiber optics!
My 356 Gigabit back bone based 3 port mondo-hybrid-switch OWNS You!
Computational Madness in a round package.
It's possible they might write a driver. They did release a modified tulip driver with their ethernet cards, because the kernel included driver at the time didn't support them (from what I hear anyway - by the time I bought one the kernel driver had no problems with them).
Granted that many hardware manufacturers don't do much more than pay lip service to linux (and many do less), but companies that do networking have a lot more to gain with the linux market, since linux's strength is in its server capabilities.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Now, I know this is a whole lot more sophisticated than X10, but power strips have caps in them for basic power filtering. They tend to filter out high-frequency noise in your power signal.
How well is this signal actually going to propagate through filtering? It seems to me that you'd get better results on unfiltered lines. And the more power strips you go through, the worse results you should get.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe use the power cord.....? ...duh...
OFDM and COFDM encoding is very widely used now, for example it's used and deployed for DigitalTV and Digital Radio (DAB) in many parts of the world chiefly Europe, it allows for very clever things like Single Frequency Networks.
:/
OFDM is also used in 802.11a, and will be used in 4G phones, however the US refuses to use it for it's DTV spec because OTA broadcasters are paranoid of loosing their excuse for their 'must carry' cable rights, i.e. if they had a terrestrial standard that worked perfectly they could get kicked of cable. It's a bad thing when politics and money are allowed to dictate the course of a technology, 8VSB encoding for DTV and IBOC encoding for Digital Radio are fine examples of that (and the military sitting on great allotments of bandwidth in the latter case).
If you're in the US, the irony is your plugs will be using a more advanced encoding scheme than your DTV transmissions
Geez, Archie, reduced to pathetic spamming. I'd come to expect much better from you than this.
in june 2001, in my friend's neighborhood in brookeville, md, pepco gave him a little device that had one wire go into his wall outlet, and the other go into his usb port. through the outlet, he was reaching speeds of about 280 kbytes/sec on average for downloads/uploads. keep in mind that his neighborhood was pretty far from any main switch. the thing was pretty warm, but whatever.
The government should just arrest him then he won't have to worry about his privacy anymore and we won't have to read his sophomoric posts anymore either.
We all win!
homePNA was intended to accomplish the same goal as HomePlug - provide a residential high speed network without having to run new wires. Why doesn't everyone have homePNA NIC's in their homes?
Personally, I believe homePNA is a wretched technology. While version 2 claims to be 10Mbit, that throughput is really only attainable in a pristine lab setup. Practically, consumers will see much lower rates than that. I would venture to guess that the lack of available homePNA products on the market is due to potential manufacturers realizing that the chipsets don't work as expected.
Despite the technology, I think the biggest problem with homePNA is the basic premise - using _phone_ outlets for networking. Running wires to the nearest phone outlet almost defeats the purpose of having homePNA in the first place.
I think HomePlug will be much better off. If the chipsets are reliable and really work as advertised, consumers will be much more inclined to use it. Probably the biggest question is price - will the chipsets and tranceivers come down to a price that will allow many manufacturers to embed this technology in all of their products?
Disney, Inc. borrowed from Hugo and Andersen; why can't you borrow from Disney?
Hugo and Andersen are dead, Disney Inc. is immortal.
If you don't like to "chase down video drivers", don't. Get a preconfigured machine with Windows and don't upgrade the hardware. Laptops are particularly easy in that regard (no temptation to upgrade, and the restore CD always works). If you want something even easier, get a Macintosh--they only come in one-size-fits-all (well, four sizes). And Linux has its own long-term stability--yes, you have to tinker, but what you need to know doesn't change very much over time.
I don't like the idea of having all my appliances networked, mainly because I don't trust the manufacturers' engineering skills. Like the washing machine example previously posted. But I do like the idea of specialist appliances. For example, an alarm-clock sized device giving you temperature, cpu activity etc.. readout would be very useful. The potential for distributing mp3s / divxs round the house is interesting too.
A couple of queries though:
How will this affect my eletricity bill?
How will this connect to my PC? I sometimes need to disconnect my box and if that means unplugging the power, then it's of no use to me.
My life is one big siesta in which I'm dreaming I wished my life was one big siesta.
Now you can steal electricity and internet access from your neighbor at the same time when you sneak that extension cord into their outdoor outlet!
Or alternatively, the FBI can install a data tap by plugging in.
This may be somewhat out of topic, but I wonder why Linksys doesn't sell that nice little boxes they use for routers (take a look at this one, which sells for $65 in several stores) to be used with your OS of choice (which is NetBSD of course). With some minor modifications, these boxes could boot through a serial line and maybe nothing more in order to be hacked up. BTW, has anyone out there hacked one of these devices to accomodate a custom OS?
very few files? how about my 1500 mp3 files? I've been ripping my cd's for a month now. I have an audiotron in the front room, a home-made mp3 player in the bedroom(made from a websurfer pro) plus my daughters pc, my pc , the main Super-power pc in the office plus my webpad (toshiba t200cs pen tablet with a 802.11 card for websurfing everywhere on my property).
I want to access my mp3's from all those devices, also my documents in my personal directory... It's nice to be able to access file X no matter where in your home you are.
Plus, I need to run that Q3 server on something so I dont get accused of cheating.
Oh, and It's not a 6Gig Athalon VXVVI with 22 terabytes of ram. It's a super slow 233 PII with 64 meg of ram. and 2 40gig hard drives.
you dont need anything past a 233 P-II for a file server.. Oh and I dont touch it, I use a hardware firewall for both the wireless and cablemodem side. so fighting with iptables is not needed.
sorry, a home server is no work at all and costs less than $300.00 ($400.00 if you have to have it rackmounted like me)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
remember this is for old houses. anyone building a new home can have it pre-wired with cat 5 for peanuts and will get a better product overall.
Basically, anyone building a new house is pretty much clueless if they dont run 1-2 cat5e or cat6 cables to every room. It costs nothing in comparison to the price of the house and eliminates future problems.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
University Of Maryland has networked laundry machines. They have a card reader on cat5 and a couple of hubs spliting out to the machines. You use your card, and it authorizes the machine you select at the card reader. I wonder if anyone has bothered to sniff the traffic (at like 3 am) since I doubt they use strong encryption. All it would take would be a laptop and BPF.
This would have been cool 3 years ago, but it's pointless now. For $300 you can get a wireless router and one wireless lan card, and you're golden anywhere in the house. This'll pay off in the future when your office or your local coffee shop sets up a wireless lan.
If you're worried about security, set the router so it only accepts signals from defined MAC addresses.
You have a 2 story house. Now, you can go through the fun of running cat-5 throughout (which can be very entertaining given that the builders can do all kinds of FUN things in the floor joists, etc.) or you can use a wireless or powerline solution to bridge the two floors of your house. Wireless leaves you open to drive-by hackings. Powerline might be a good idea in this context. Another one that's a good idea would be my inlaw's property where they have a central phoneline and several buildings that have computers needing to get to the Internet. Wireless won't work because there's metal buildings all in the way- no clean line of sight pathways.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
No video drivers that aren't compatible with OS upgrades.
This used to be true, back in the day before Macs had 3D accelerators in them, but no more. Macs have the same video card and drivers problems as the PC, just to a lesser extent.
Ethernet doesn't work everywhere.
3 Acre plot of land; 3-4 machines needing to be networked but with 500 foot separations and metal buildings in the way; power comes in via a central pole with no pole pigs between the house wireups.
Yes, Ethernet would be faster, but for this one, you'd have to resort to shielded cable or step down to 10-base-2 (which is getting really hard to find). Even then, you'd end up with this really iffy setup at best.
Expand your horizons at least a little bit- not everything is best served by wireline Ethernet networking.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Does anybody know where I can get a FireWall for my Electric Meter??
It would be nice if the laundry machines could IM me to tell me its done. It would also be nice if the dryer was smart enough to sense when clothes actually got dry so I wouldn't have to keep checking them.
something nobody has brought up is that some appliances only work with nice dirty analog sine waves that we get out of the wall. Some sophisticated junk that people have in their homes(UPSs, monitoring equipment, transformers, etc) may not take kindly to digital signals on their power. My spectrometer certainly dosent, but not a whole lot of people have one in their basement.
So, this weekend I'm moving into his garage and pluggin' in!
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
This used to be true, back in the day before Macs had 3D accelerators in them, but no more. Macs have the same video card and drivers problems as the PC, just to a lesser extent.
If you use the video card that came with your system, it'll be fully supported by Apple, and any OS upgrade will generally include good, working drivers. I've had no problems whatsoever with the ATi Rage 128 Pro in my iMac; I can't really speak from experience about other cards and configurations. If your experience differs from mine, perhaps you could share?
(Yes I know mine's not actually a card, it's on-board.)
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Do you even read the articles you link to? That article is not about DES, it's about CSC. The last time DNet did 56-bit DES, it didn't take two months, it took one day.
DNet has done DES three times, and it's gotten significantly faster each time. Here's the times that the three DES challenges were completed:
Feb 1998: 39 days.
Jul 1998: <3 days.
Jan 1999: 22 hours.
In the July 1998 challenge, DNet was just barely beaten by EFF's "Deep Crack" machine -- DNet and Deep Crack were both running at about the same speed, but they both started at different points and Deep Crack happened to find the key first. In the January 1999 competition, Deep Crack was part of DNet, and did about half the work, so without Deep Crack it would have taken DNet up to two days to finish the job -- significantly less than the two months you cite.
DNet hasn't done DES since January of 1999. Again, the article you like to is for CSC, not DES. 56-bit CSC took about two months, 56-bit DES took about 22 hours.
Yawn.
"But this one is ridiculously easy. Almost as bad as dealing with
an 802.11 cloud. I fingered everyone on my system, and then, I fingered
myself."
Pardon?
What does finger have to do with 802.11?
You're not making sense here.