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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?
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...
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).
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?
Yeah, the article sure was unclear on that. I think it is safe to assume this is NOT running over power lines, but something like fiber. It just takes advantage of the conduit/right of way they own.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
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."