Ethernet Via Electric Conduits

windows bios world writes "From a CNet article NYC businesses will be able to get internet access via ethernet routed through electrical conduits from a subsidiary of Con Edison. CEC is targeting business customers and telecommunications carriers with its PowerLan Ethernet services as part of a larger strategy to become the premier provider of high-bandwidth transport services for New York." Interesting that a non-telecommunications firm can parley a single asset (right-of-way in existing conduits in the crowded tunnels under Manhattan) into a business.

Comments

Re:Security Risk?

[Registered Coward v2]

Actually, there was an article a while back about being able to dechiper modem trnsmission via the TX/RX lights falshing patterns. The short version is that since modems send serial data, the on-off tx light is a good proxy for whether the modem is sending a 1 or a 0. You can time the lights (LEDs quickly change state so optical delays are negligable), and reconstruct the waveform of the transmitted data. How useful that would be in the real world, who knows?

Links:

http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/06/1221224.sh tm l?tid=172

http://applied-math.org/optical_tempest.pdf