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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.
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.
Sprint was created when the Southern Pacific Railway realized that they could take advantage of their railway rights-of-way to lay fiber-optic cable.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Reminds me of another project where they installed fiber optic cable through sewer lines so they didn't have to tear up the streets. They are at City Net. I wonder what is next? Power through my cable tv line?
Sorry, I'm currently sick and reading a foreign-language news article just doesn't clear the subject for me. So, tell me this isn't a real-world application of the technique to send data over power lines, is it? They're using their control cables or stuff instead?
Gigabit class bandwidth over copper while there's Manhattan class power feed in the same lines... No way.
Back to sleep now
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
In Germany we have this "ready to go" and "coming the next couple months" for several years now. It is called Powerline. Due to recent rumours you still get little offs for starting e.g. a vacuum cleaner (not that I need Internet access for cleaning the house) and you are limited in the possibilities when connecting your whole appartment complex. Given that the very big company promoting it, namely RWE, considers cannelling it altogether.
Now combine this with what DSL in Germany is, mainly by the ex monopolist. We had impulse dialling phones here for a very long time (and some old people still have). They can disturb DSL traffic going over a phone line, even if as far away as "the same building" (according to Telekom Inc.). So they give you DSL lines with Interleaving and you end up with ping times of at least 60 ms.
Expect ping times of that network there to be higher.
So, slashdotters, many of You are gamers. You will lose on that line. Sad to say it out loud, but You will all die in RTCW et. al. and your only help will be: look outside your windows and remember what you see. Its name is "Ground Zero". This is New York and starting there is not the most patriotic way of launching this service if you expect gamers (as early adopters) to hop on.
Turku Energia (a local energy company in Finland) also announced (link in Finnish) a similar product couple of days ago.
They are offering a 1.125 Mbps Internet access and they are planning for a product including a telephone line (VoIP), electricity and broadband Internet access all from a single electricity outlet. The service would also make it possible to introduce LANs into old buildings without installing any cables.
In the testing phase they had some problems with interference but they report those problems being solved now.
Back in the mid-80s I was doing networking down on Wall St. and we needed to connect ethernet LANs in two buildings that were about 100 yards apart.
We looked into running cable, but the rights-of-way were not available. We looked into getting dark fiber, but NY Telephone said they were not tarrifed to let us have it (although there was in fact dark fiber already in the buildings).
Then we talked to a company that would run the cable using their right-of-way. That company was (if I recall correctly) called "Metropolitan City Subway" and had nothing whatsoever to do with the subways. Their sole reason for existence, so far as I could tell, was to rent people parts of their right-of-way, which they had obtained I have no idea how.
They proposed letting us run a cable between the buildings but not directly. We would have to go down to the tip of Manhattan and back again. Instead of 100 yards it was about 4 miles. They also wanted to charge us $20K per month, and had few safety provisions in place to guarantee that our cable wouldn't suddenly be cut by their or other workers.
Based on the long cable run, the costs, and the uncertainty, we passed, and I ended up installing the first microwave ethernet link in Manhattan instead (24GHz microwave between two ethernet bridges). Which worked fine and required no right-of-way...
LAN/Internet via the powerlines has alreay been tried in Germany, in the Ruhr-Gebiet to be specivic (for non Germans: Ruhr-Gebiet = area in Germany where lots of big cities are REALLY close to each other), too. :(
Unfortunately it didnt seem to work out that well, they had tons of problems with interferences in the lines (limiting bandwith and causing total network failurse every few weeks) and that the bandwith per user slowly dwindled into 56k areas since too many people signed up for the field test (and I dont even want to mention ping times here, gamers stay away!)
To cut a long story short, even though the German Telekom dominated the internet sector with their crappy and expensive service and people were looking for alternatives, the field test for powerline from the electicity companies failed and was ended last month...
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
This is simply using the conduit (the containers of electrical wires) to house network cables.
Their advantage is that they have existing right of way all over the city and they have spare room to lay in new cables (new fiber or copper).
The article talks about using the underground conduits to pass communication cables in addition to the electric wires, not about transmitting data over the power lines.
Powerline communication is nice, but it can't quite compete with fiber.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Williams Communications was a gas and petroleum pipeline company with 100,000 miles of right-of-way. In 1985, they started putting fiber in decommissioned pipelines.
They now have the "largest fully-lit, U.S. next-generation network with local-to-global connectivity, linking 125 cities and reaching five continents."
I used to be pretty excited about developments like Ethernet over powered electrical wiring in houses, etc.
But lately I have to wonder about the economic viability of any communications technology that makes use of fixed lines.
It seems to me that wireless communications is constantly getting better and cheaper, while anything over land lines has to contend with the cost of installing and maintaining those lines. In the case of lines that already exist, they're mostly copper and too limited in bandwidth.
Unless you've got something where the high speed of fiber optic links is critical, then it seems like small, low power, wireless cells linking into a few fixed access points to optical land lines is the way to do things.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Back in the '70s and early '80s, the Williams company of Tulsa Oklahoma started laying fiber in their oil and gas pipelines. It made perfect sense since they had the right of way. Thus, the Wiltel network was born (later to be absorbed into Worldcom.)
burris
Amoung other things, I work in construction and help architects and contractators design networks in new facilities. I am not an electrictian, but it's always been a cardinal no-no to run CAT-5 (or just about anything) in the same conduit as high power lines. This has been done in a few cases, and the interference from the power cables (regardless of sheilding) results in a noticable packet loss.
The article is a little vauge as to what kind of cables they want to lay, and what sort of pre-existing conduit they are using (there is multi-channel conduit which should work fine). It almost alludes to simply trenching along the same right-of-ways as existing conduit and laying new pipe.
But on the surface, the implication is that they will be pulling cable sitting alongside high power lines, which will probably give them some unhappy customers.
The Internet is generally stupid
I wonder what is next? Power through my cable tv line?
Too late.
Several models of Sterivision hospital TV sets use that already. These are the easily-removed pay-to-watch-Jerry-Springer-from-your-deathbed TV sets that hospitals charge for.
Since they're installed only on demand, they have to be simple and easy to connect... one wire. They seem to run off 12VDC driven down the coax. Isolating the RF for the tuner is a simple matter of a couple of small capacitors.
Lots of TV antenna amplifiers also use a technique like this to avoid having to run power and coax wires up a (possibly tall) TV antenna tower. Radio Shack used to sell such a system.
Of course, the practical current is limited only by the resistance of the coax. (Resistance is *not* impedance, don't confuse 75 ohm impedance with the DC resistance of the cable.) If someone built superconductive coax, there'd be no DC resistance, and you could power your house and get RoadRunner cable Interet on the same wire... :)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.