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Broadband over Powerlines
scubacuda writes "Today's Bottom Line links to an article on Internet-over-powerline technology. St. Louis-based Ameren Corp and other utilities are testing are testing the technology, and, according to the article, "many consider it increasingly viable." Proponents claim the powergrid technology will bolster broadband competition, lower consumer prices and bridge the digital divide in rural areas. Skeptics say that few tests prove its financial and technical viability. Kludge, panacea, or hoax? (I'd think it was a total crock had I not personally known someone working in India with a PCL company)"
Didn't we have problems with this when it was trialed a few years back i nthe UK? i'm sure I heard reports of lamposts going haywire, any URL's?
Or rather they used it as one about a decade ago in a Computing Magazine.
Bet they're embarassed. This isn't the first I've heard of this, it keeps popping up, energis were planning it in the UK in the late 90s but no-one seems to have cracked a proper commercial solution.
And even if they do, there's still quite large startup costs.
The only problem I see is that every overhead power line is going to turn into a giant antenna picking up interference. My school got squeemish enough about a teacher with too long of an ethernet cable, what about miles and miles of power lines out in the open during an electrical storm?
Proponents claim the powergrid technology will bolster broadband competition, lower consumer prices and bridge the digital divide in rural areas. And it will welcome a whole new era of script kiddies and packet sniffing!
Next thing you know they'll be telling us they can send TV over broadband wires!
It's not TCP/IP over power lines that's interesting, it's electricity over TCP/IP (RFC 3251). That is a much newer and hotter idea, and much more interesting to smoke in the long run.
The "digital divide," right now, largely consists of people who aren't on-line. Let's face it: a dirt-cheap Linux PC can be had for ~$200 at Wal-Mart; it's the $20/mo that keep people from being on-line. ($40/mo for broadband.) That, and the whole problem with rural areas, too. Through the wonders of electrification, we could now also have "digification." This could be a huge boon for those who might otherwise be left behind...
Transmission-line Internet is, IMO, a great idea whose time has come.
But...
I can't see this happening for quite a while, in the US at least. The Baby Bells and the cable monopolies will tie this up in court for years, all the while jacking up their prices to feed their war chests, and Joe User will sit there and shuck out the bucks, completely oblivious to what's going on. Small dialup providers may turn out to be the big winners of such a battle, at least in the short term.
The solution: power transmission utilities need to quietly but quickly deploy, especially in the mentioned rural areas (like where I am) that can't get either cable or xDSL provisioned.
As always, YMMV. This is just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a new monitor or something.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
IIRC, this was tried in the UK. Tried, and dropped when it was found that streetlights made excellent broadband transmitters at the frequencies they were using...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
next thing you know its gonna get in the phone lines.
I can't be certain, but I'm 90% certain that I have internet all over my pants right now.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Where the pylon comes into town, put a wireless network tower. No need to be all fancy and send data into plug sockets in phase one surely?
Omnis amans amens
"While existing providers of broadband through cable TV lines or phone wires consider the technology intriguing, they stress that talk of it has been around for years, with nothing to show for it." I remember 4 or 5 years ago there was a company called MediaFusion that was doing the same thing and promised something like 5gb/s on a single power line. Last I heard (5 years ago) they were testing in Florida but I think the company eventually went under and nothing became of it. Then, the price for upgrading the entire US's power grid to provide service: ~$100 million. Cheap stuff.
It'll "bridge the digital divide" and give you "unlimited broadband"... ...For a while, until it catches and becomes popular and runs all the alternatives out of business. Then they'll impose bandwidth caps, PPPoE, and start blocking ports. Then they'll say "sorry, can't access your work VPN from our system...unless you upgrade to a hideously priced business rate."
They've been promising this for years. It seems that it would make sense to run all the utilities/services in one set of cables anyway. Hopefully this will reduce the cost of the "last mile" problems.
Then again, with just a handful of providers in each area, I'm sure they will collude to support prices. You'll be able to get pretty cheap, mostly one way connectivity bursting with ads and spam, and pay a hefty price for a simple two way connection.
Wow, CmdrTaco actually submitted a story! How's the wife doing ya, Taco?
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by being such an asshole)
No one seems to have cracked a proper commercial solution
Oh. I guess my 10 megabits a second from the local power company is just a hoax, then. Strange, it seems to work just fine...
In Sollentuna, Sweden, the local energy company is supplying broadband to apartments and even to ordinary houses. Yes, you read me right: these guys are drawing fiber to single-family houses at affordable cost, then lighting them up with 100 Mbits a second.
OTOH, there's nothing said about how they carry the TCP/IP. In my imagination, it's been fiber bundled with power lines. That's probably more economical than trying to piggyback..
Now when a network component fails I can worry about getting medium voltage power directly into my motherboard.
Didn't we learn a long time ago to separate power and signal wires?
BTW, here's another version of the story.Have you seen my stapler?
In Israel the (single) power company used this technology for years for its own data communication.
I think the reason it never moved to other sectors involved both the high price of the required modems and the requirement for a licence (being a communication provider requires a licence, at least here in Israel) which was always a problem to gain here.
I am sure such a net connection could be transformed into an eavesdropping device and I am even more certain that the Patriot Act I, Patriot Act II and other similar legislation would allow such draconian chilling effects imposed on us.
If this becomes reality I'm sure someone will invent a script to ddos crows sitting on their powerline.
I have enough trouble getting the video to record the right channel as it is - without having to worry about it grabbing random stuff off the net through it's electric plug. ... and how long will it be before some script kiddie hacks into all my Windows(tm) powered appliances and takes over my whole house?? :)
Now THAT is funny. I make a reference to smoking a well-written April 1st RFC, hoping for a couple of "+1 Funny", and instead I get five points of "Interesting".
:-)
I wonder what RFCs the moderators are smoking.
Cool - you got '+5' for an april fool's joke ... :-)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
This sounds like a fabulouse way to combyne the cheapest && greatest technologies, which in this case are Linux and the all-new broadband-over-powerlines idea.
What could be better then the best OS && the best ISP combined in one, easy to use, low-price packige?
|| you could simply utilize Linux and even pursue another more mature Net techanology such as 802.11.g! W/ Linux you cant go wrong!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
What is going to happen to my x-10 investment when this happens? It's possible that they wouldn't interfere with each other, but I wouldn't bet on it.
And then the real clever hacks will flicker my light bulbs to induce that alpha-beta wave hypnosis thing I read about on a UFO site, so I know it's true.
And then someone will figure out inductive electromagnetic control of wire-sitting pigeons using the evanescent propagation mode of the power cables. Yeesh! Foul smelling flying rats dive-crapping and generally inconviencing passers-by. Is all this really worth fatser access to alt.linux.leatherfetish.penguins.penpen or whatever?
The saving grace will be that they'll never figure out how to impedance match to random pairs of tied-together sneakers hanging over the cables.
http://www.artgonepostal.com/image/soles6up.gif
--- Ban humanity.
The problem with any wire-based HF transmission system is reflections, standing waves, radiation and losses, and a power system by its very nature is not designed for HF. But the existence of the infrastructure - distribution stations, ducting, overhead supports - could make it a very good solution for stringing fibre. Overhead cables are inherently less prone to backhoe incidents than buried cables. There is a benefit to the electrical utility in that they can use the fibre to run their own control systems easily.
Any such idea needs to be planned in from the start- it could be a cheap add-on to rural electrification in places like India and China, but much harder to do in the US or Europe where cables have long service lives.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I'd think it was a total crock
I don't know how this particular technology works. But think about how X10 works.
The power goes through a sine wave cycle 60 times each second. That means there are 120 times each second where there is a zero crossing. That is, no voltage on the wires. Just dry wires. Now widen this period of time from zero milliseconds to some positive number of milliseconds, and you now have a definite time period where the voltage on the lines is less than X. (Where X is some small desired voltage.) During this time, you can transmit a high frequency signal on these dry wires.
I know that is a vague description. It was many (like 14) years ago when I read the specs on how X10 works on the power line.
There are no doubt other techniques. So why would anyone be skeptical of the mere capability to send high bandwidth information over power lines?
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
A swedish company called ENKOM is building a net on the island of Gotland. Sadly the page is only in swedish. But they are now connecting customers. 2 Mbit/s, 10 Mbit/s under development.
The same arguments made in the article for DoP ("data over power lines") can be made for DSL. And the same drawbacks that DSL has (you need to spend a lot on infrastructure, ie extra equipment in telephone exchanges) will apply to DoP. So it won't be cheaper to implement, and the 'broadband gap' (too few customers in rural areas to justify upgrading the exchange) will still apply.
Ameren admits it's not aiming for cheaper-than-DSL links, they just want a piece of the ISP/POP pie.
The network consists of 48 fibres (24 pairs, each pair capable of delivering 2.5GB.) wrapped around the ESB's high voltage network.
Just as well, seeing as we're still waiting for ADSL
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
In Germany, the electricity provider RWE just recently stopped its Powerline programme. If I get the numbers correct, they only managed to get about 2000 subscribers in almost three years. Talking about cash burn...
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Ha ha. Laugh, it's funny.
I understand that Scottish Hydro Electric are successfully using this technology in two rural towns in western scotland (Cambeltown). I understand it's partly subsidised but even so it seems very fast access (2mb) and cheap (£30) http://www.ssetelecom.co.uk/latestnews/criefandcam pbeltown.asp
It strikes again
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
The plug-modems with terabits of bandwidth.
I'm not holding my breath.
It'll probably happen about the same time 99% of desktop PCs run linux.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I don't know... that sounds dangerous!
I've used x-10 technologies for over ten years. Given that those simple ascii commands still get 'lost' on the powerline just within my house, there's not a chance they'll be able to maintain a stable enough signal for a broadband medium across the entire powerline infrastructure.
Cable companies are not regulated like Telecom companies, so I doubt Power Suppliers would be either.
This has bee the ONLY viable competition for cable TV and broadband EVER. Sattelite is "too tech" for a lot of people. Some people don't want others playing with the corner of your house to plop a trash can lid with RCA SONY or Dish embossed on it.
This would be boom for rural area residents. I don't see ANY hesitation from anyone in areas around me if this were to pop up here. I know my father has despised the cable company for years. (Poor reception, high prices, delayed work, obtrusive yellow lines all over the corner of his property)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
About a year ago German company RWE (big energy corporation) was cheered as the new leader in broadband connections via powerlines. It even was available to customers, but eventually they quit the powerline business in September 2002. Appearantly they had only 200 paying customers instead of the expected 120000.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
But let's not get too much into that: Powerlines are designed to be transport lines for 50-60Hz AC voltage, and these PLC solutions utilize the bandwidth under 30MHz.
Because the transport line isn't suitable for as high frequencies PLC solutions are using, losses for the transmitted signal are incredibly high. All this "lost" power that wasn't transmitted to the receiver, has been radiated into environment.
Thus, power lines act as a huge antenna, which leads into few things:
your data is not safe, eavesdropping is easy
HF radio bands get polluted, which not only annoys the radio amateurs, but also the army, ship traffic..
In Japan, power line communications were rejected, mostly because of the huge amount of interference.
Companies manufacturing the PLC equipment have tried to push down the amount of interference using spread spectrum techniques, which indeed drops the amount of interference in one spot frequency - but total amount of interference doesn't drop. And as you have huge number of PLC hubs in one area, interference sums up into high static noise level.
And what really sucks is, that basically PLC is a cable modem solution - user shares his bandwidth with the other users in area.
This PLC is simply put "a bad idea". Nice goal, but there are also sane ways in achieving it - like different DSL-technologies (or LRE) we already have available.
Here in Austria (not Australia!) tests were made with "the Internet via the outlet" over a year ago, but the tests were stopped, because there was too much interference (with household appliances) and the voltage swings turned out to be a problem, too.
:-(
Sounded promising back than and I was surely disappointed, when it was announced that it was not experimented with it any further.
--Mal
Now they will have to redifine the "peeing on electric fence" expression to "pee on electric fence or broadband fence".
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Or if you'd seen this in 1999.
I also vaigly remember NorWeb (in the UK) trialling this and finding that every street lamp acted as an emitter.
Granted this was a couple of years ago (also reported by Slashdot) so technology will have improved by then.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
if they were to route the signals on high-voltage lines, you'd be correct, but didn't it say they wanted to feed a fiber right into the local municipal grid? That would at least eliminate the threat of kite-flying bozos beneath the steel towers on McPete's Farm from ruining your connection. Since they have to bypass the high-inductance transformers anyway (which impede sinusoidally-varying voltage signals) the fiber again looks like the best option. And to top it off, can these devices on the line that re-construct and re-send the signal really be cost-effective, or more economically practical than just going all-fiber? Fibers need signal re-generators (optical amplifiers) as well; which costs more? Granted, when the power's out, your computer won't get on the internet regardless (except you laptop folks) so it seems the fiber would be even furthermore advantageous.
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
I deserved that one...
obvious link to it EEF Powernet (french/german only).
btw, it leaves me with only 4 choices for broadband (ADSL, Cable, powerline, satellite). I can't even have wireless access ... pffff ...
#include "coucou.h"
This could make the whole process of wiring a new network, well, electrifying. Totally *shocking* new technology. Really though, don't we have enough of a disaster with all the companies [admittedly many now defunct] providing DSL and cable? Do we really need the power companies getting into the fray as well? Personally I'd rather just continue to pay the power company for my electricity and that's it..
On another note I work for a helpdesk outsourcing company and I really cannot imagine how the process of troubleshooting this kind of connection would go!
ther utilities are testing are testing the technology ... in the stories!
Oh great! Now the editors are starting to dup stories
Read carefully. Different stories.
Are they kidding? I heard that the powergrid in India was so unstable it will kill US made surge protectors/power conditioners. You have to use Indian ones which are designed to handle that kind of abuse. And you want to hook that up to what?
This scheme once again goes to show that corporations only look out for the wants and needs of the rich. Broadband for everyone they cry. Bull.
Noone out there even thinks about those without electricity running to thier house. What about them? If broadband over power becomes a reality, it will utterly leave behind those without electricity! Who will stand up for them? When will the digital revolution come to these poor souls?
We should focus attention on ways to solve the last mile problem that doesn't require exotic, heavily shielded copper cable to every house. Only then will we achieve social parity.
-Charlie
(to save you the clicks on the moderator page, it was meant as sarcasm)
Now when Uncle BillyBob overloads his outlet with one too many bug-zappers and blows a transformer, he'll probably get 10-to-20 years as a "cyberterrorist."
How long are they going to be testing going to be testing this before it would be ready for actual use actual use?
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Elvis and Roy are preparing their next release of the Amiga platform on 4-way 3GHz fanless Power G6 with a Hurd-based AmgiaOS. Flying cars will be available in mass-production to the general public a week next Tuesday with a list price of $19,999. Itanium will be cancelled by September.
So its not like the technology is all that complicated.
From experience, though, the signals don't propogate very well. I have a lot of dead spots in my house, and nothing works on any circuit with an electric motor on it.
Just a few questions...
Sending communications signals over the electrical line must involve modulating the frequency of the current. That does not cause any problems for the existing electrical equipment that is using the lines? Do you need to install filters on your appliances to ensure that they get 'clean' power? If not, what is the long-term affect of running 'dirty' electricity through your electronic devices. I understand that existing current is not frequency perfect and that there are fluctuations but does this communications related modulation fall within the existing fluctuation parameters? If not, what is the affect? If it does, how is it distinguished from existing line noise?
I have to use this cause I can't afford a real sig...
My local Isp offer both adsl and vdsl and over power lines. :)
lets just embed the wired... I mean... the internet into the earth's magnetic resonance and just be done with it
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
How unGNU of you...
The trouble with broadband over power lines is that power systems were not intended for data transmission. While the cables may work ok everything else is quite likely to cause problems: the splices from repairs, the shunts, the transformers. I doubt that adequate records were kept just in case the power system was going to be used for broadband in the future, so repeated trips by techs might be necessary, just to get it to work.
It would probably be cheaper to just run fiber along the distribution lines, which is what some power companies have done.
Look at what happened when the telephone companies went to DSL, in some places they had to redo 20 years of repairs that were adequate for phone lines, but not for high speed data. It cost a them a fortune and it is almost a certainty that the power companies would be faced with the same situation if not worse.
Your post is not quite right, since it is missing the obligatory "GET SOME PRIORITIES PEOPLE!!" line.
Yes we realise that you can bundle a fiber line with a power line, that's not what this is discussing, although I am glad you are getting cheap broadband. But I think you know, because you said piggy back, this is operating a network right over your current power lines, utilizing the unused channels. I personally thought it was a great idea when I read about it 2YEARS AGO, (not exactly new /.) The issue is that, our power operates on 60 cycles per second, and this really isn't appropriate for the technology they want, now I admit they can change this at the power company with relative ease, but if you change it from 60 then you'll suddenly find that some of your house hold appliances no longer work.
I hope they work this out, I think it is a neat idea, just have two power cords for your computer, one for power, one for internet. it could eliminate the need for powered switches, for IP phones.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Happening now. And its so good.
in some towns in Switzerland.
http://www.allo.ch/fr/internet/powernet.php
Heck, you could put this together in 5 minutes. http://www.knology.net/~bburdette/ethernet-over-ac .jpg
Try it on your work network!
it's our ability to perform efficient info-transfer that lets the U.S. win those desert wars.
The current issue with Fiber to the house that I can see is the cost of putting 2eqw cards in your system. Man our fiber card at work was expensive. lol. Actually I have heard, union controlled cities avoid fiber at all costs, because if a fiber line goes down, it is much easier to replace than a bundled cable with like 52 lines inside. And this might affect current phone company people who get paid 40$ an hour to ruin traffic for me on my way to work.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
In the energy services field it is common to send data up the drilling fluid on a drilling rig. They use a valve downhole to modulate pressure waves up the pressurized fluid in the pipe. This gives them details of the environment at the drilling bit. They data rate is quite low.
That's not news to me. I recall having read about similar experiments here in Italy about 7 years ago.
Why does it take so long for this technology to become widespread? Perhaps the big telcos don't like it.
This is not a kluge. (For spelling, see link below.) A kluge is a "rickety," unstable bubblegum MacGuyver-with-a-ballpoint-pen type fix, temporary until real time can be devoted to obtaining the intended result properly. Data over powerlines can hardly be considered a fix or repair to an existing system, let alone a temporary one, so it cannot be a kluge.
Besides, who in their right mind would link to any dictionary but the Jargon File for a computer term?? See kluge there. (Not kludge.)
P.S. WTF happened to www.tuxedo.org 's jargon file?? WTF?!
when will it be capped?
its only as broad as the AUP allows.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
They had this when I lived in Germany. The deal isn't that they sent a signal over the HV wires. The HV wires come into the local tranformer and get stepped down to the right voltage and smoothed out. At that point you can have a bypass to filter out the higher frequency signal that carries your packets. So from the house to the transformer you can have one set of signals riding on a normal 220 V 50 Hz (+/-) power. At the bypass, you can change the frequency so it can travel over the high voltage lines or can send it over to fiber from the tranformer to a central location. The difference between Germany and the States is that in Germany, they have a transformer that services an entire neighborhood. So you can put in the equimpent at the transformer and have potentially thousands of customers to regain the costs. In the States, there may be a neighborhood transformer, but there are also generally transformers every few houses for the final conditioning. That means expensive equipment that needs to be recouped over a small number of people.
My girlfriend is spending a semester abroad in Geneva Switzerland. She gets her interent connectivity through the power lines.
I seem to recall that Energis had a look into doing this in the UK, in that particular case, using the National Grid to carry data as well as power.
AFAIK they also looked at providing data link to the home via the mains power but decided that it would be too expensive to fit repeaters at every electrical substation.
Although they did have a few public 'beta' testers...
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
The digital divide may have been about people who have computers versus those who don't a decade ago, or even five years ago.
With the drop in PC prices and the drop in ISP prices that's not an issue as much anymore. You don't need a 2.6 ghz rig with a gig of RAM to surf the Web, send e-mail or exchange files (NOTE: ANY ATTEMPT TO EXCHANGE MUSIC OR MOVIES WILL END WITH RABID CYBERNETIC SQUIRRELS SENT BY THE MP/RI/AA DEVOURING YOU)
The divide now is one of high-speed access. I work with computers for a living so the technological midget theory is out the window. Money is not a big issue. What is I have ZERO real options for high-speed access. With ISDN not only do they want a boatload of cash, they also want my name signed in blood on a long-term contract. DSL, too far. Satellite, hahahaaha. Cable, too far.
Let's face it. A modem connection, particularly a 26.4 kbps connection like the one that runs across my barbed-wire phone lines, just doesn't cut it anymore.
As more applications go online and Web sites continue to bloat I find myself sitting here drumming my fingers waiting. If they can pipe in some bandwidth over those big fat wires that already come into my house great. At this point I'll take just about anything..
...If it sounds shocking, consider this...
They also believe digital transmission over power lines will electrify rural broadband. It will supply the power small communities need to get on the Internet
No I'm not trolling.
You've nailed the problem on the head. Although many users who need "clean" power already spend extra dollars to fix the problem (power is pretty bad to begin with) adding more "hash" to the AC line won't help, and users will be forced to pay more to fix it.
i o_ uo_15a_highcurrent.htm
Cleaning up power is expensive; the simple systems that remain effective can easily cost around $400 for a single 15A 120V circuit; and you can find you need to spend many times that.
Serious "home theatre" video systems will be almost certainly be degraded in picture and audio quality, for example. "Lunatic fringe" hi-fi nuts will absolutely hate it, as will anyone working with hi-grade test or lab equipment. These users already know how much difference cleaning up the power can make, because most of them have seen it demonstrated (and find disbelief turns to amazement).
The companies promoting this are basically saying that the average user won't be affected, so who cares about the rest? But the problem is getting worse, not better.
There may well be a point where it will affect performance of even common industrial equipment and home AC powered devices to the point where failure and under- or out-of-spec performance becomes more common.
For a more-or-less random page (the first one I found on Google with a review of a relatively inexpensive AC filter product) describing some of the issues, check out this link:
http://www.hometheatersound.com/equipment/psaud
Trials still going on in Scotland apparently [£15/mo. for 2Mib/s, sweet]. I also seem to remember seeing something recently about the technology being refined and ready for use in the UK. Apparently in the US it wouldn't be economical as each station would only serve a few people due to way their power infrastructure is set up.
No Joke. Many, many, many years ago when "sockets" and TCP/IP were first being explained to me (rather poorly), I asked myself, "How does data pass through the electrical outlets in my home?" Now I know...
U.S. Patent no. 5,554,968, e.g., FWIW.
hi!
I'm out in a rural area. I just got done emailing Comcast, asking when cable would be coming by my house. Their reply: when more houses are built near you. I'm actually just a half-mile from a cable, but only 800 feet from a 120 kV electrical distribution line. If I could get a hookup from there, I'd be signed up in a heartbeat.
- Bill
in the movie "the recruit", the cia supposedly develops a virus that travels along the power grid, which can infect and destroy every computing device in the world.
... now i am forced to rethink all my assumptions ... hmmm ... perhaps "nonlinear crytography" is a real undergraduate degree at MIT, and having such a degree would make one an attractive job candidate to the head of research at Dell computer ...
i thought, this movie is retarded. well what do you know? i guess i'm not so smart after all
-- p
It's a goofy idea. Until the electrical code and industry standards define the signal-transmission characteristics for AC power lines, this will be one of these "it works except when it doesn't" deals. X-10 barely works inside one house. Carrier-current AM radio used to be popular on campuses during the fifties: it didn't really work.
Some of the circuits in my house are still the kind in which the current is carried by two separate insulated wires about a foot a part, mounted on insulated standoffs. I think this kind of wiring was common in the twenties. More wiring has been added, but nobody every removes old wiring that's working perfectly well.
Even DSL is iffy and THAT'S on wires that are DESIGNED to carry signals.
What we need is more standardization and better engineering, not less.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I remember there being an articl in "Popular Science" over this subject in an October of 1999 or 2000 issue. I can't find it now when I search the archives at Popular Science. It described a company in Dallas Texas that was patenting the technology to get the signal through a transformer station. They explained that the issue with the IP over powergrid worked by piggy-backing the packets over the EMF radiation that is generated around high voltage lines. The problem was not in how to piggy back the signal, rather how to extract it from a transformer station where the EMF fields of multiple cables merge. The solution this company came up with was to convert the data into a microwave signal at one end of the transformer station and beam it to the other end of the transformer station. I presume they would do something similar around the transformers at the neighborhoods as well. They were creating a prototype device that made use of maser technologies (basically a laser that operates in the microwave band of EM radiation). They were also patenting their devices that extract the signal from a wall plug (~110 US) and convert it to either 10BaseT or other options. The last time I checked up on the company they were beta-testing the technology in North Texas and Oklahoma. I'm not sure where they are now, as I don't remember the name of the company.
Aside from the technical hurdles of placing data on the powergrid, I think there would exist a technical hurdle in regards to data security. The EM fields given off by powerlines can affect your AM radio (and FM sometimes), so we know the signal is strong enough to affect electronics components. Since it is that strong, we can assume that the signal could be "read" by electronics components as well. Particularly, those who wish to construct "scanners". Anyone within close proximity of the powergrid could "tap" the line for data extraction. A significant security effort would need to be undertaken by ISP's to provide encrypted transmission of data. Currently, packets are simply sent down the wire with no encryption (unless you encrypt the data yourself). The wire itself provides a physical barrier to a data thief in that you must physically connect to the wire. With the powergrid you merely need to be in the proximity of the wire. I think this would only apply to overhead powerlines and transformer stations.
Additionally, data could be corrupted by natural causes such as solar flares and thunderstorms. Both of which would zap your data by scrambling the magnetic fields that you are depending on. Again, this might only affect the overhead lines and the transformer stations. Of course, if the transformer station went out, the whole issue becomes moot.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Hmm. What are those drawbacks?
I just read a Bell CEO talking about how the reason they don't want to introduce tiered pricing is because the bandwidth isn't their real cost, their costs are more related to service and billing infrastructure and golf games and executive stock options and important shit like that. Although the raw bandwidth is technically the product, it's not where the real costs come in.
The bottom line in that interview was why support low priced customers when you could just skim the cream of the top. I mean why not when you're in a monopoly position. I don't see how a new competitor would face this same "drawback" as you put it.
The drawbacks for the Bells are that they don't like to waste their time with the mass priced market while there is still plenty of low hanging fruit. A new competitor would have to reach out to new customers and the new customers are the ones who aren't going to pay the unreasonable fees the telcos are asking.
I could have a DISCO!
In a small town in Germany 'powerline' works for me for longer than a year now. Download rates are not miraculous but it is possible to download 700MB iso-images with a stable rate of 70k-bytes /second. :-)
A problem I had was that not all power sockets can be used. Most sockets seem to pickup too much noise or there is no signal at all.
Nevertheless I like it
From what I understood (and I may be totally off here), it wasn't actually the powerlines the data travelled, but the lines used for readings/metering usage/etc, which is probably copper, and basically makes it a DSL-like tech?
Bradford L.
http://www.modemhelp.net
The only link I could find on PPL's pilot program was here
Quoted below:
PPL, PA
Al Richenbacher, Manager of PPL's Market Development Group, reported on
PPL's test of PLC in Emmaus, PA, working with Main.net. They chose
Main.net due to their extensive track record of trials in Europe, and the
ability of Main.net to pass their PLC signal through the transformer. I
confirmed this during Q and A--Main.net can pass their signal through a
transformer rather than couple around it.
If the trial goes well, PPL would look to go to commercial deployment in
2003.
PPL is also considering partnering with Amperion, to provide MV backhaul.
This would primarily be to service business customers with bandwidths of
T1 and below.
PPL is currently in the middle of developing their own back office
(billing, provisioning, etc), to service their PLC offerings.
Al would not reveal their total cost per customer on the trials, but
stated that it appeared to be favorable when compared to DSL and cable.
Initial penetration is expected to be less than 10%. But, with a smart
build strategy Al stated that this would be enough to pass break even.
PPL has an internal group that works with the state regulatory commission.
Conversations so far have only been preliminary but the reaction from the
commission has been positive and encouraging.
I imagine the signals are split as soon as the line comes into the house; it would be rather foolish to bring the data all the way to the computer via the power line - something goes wrong, you now have 120V going straight through your ethernet chip. Another advantage this could have would be the ability to clean up the power in your house - the splitter would probably transmit a pretty clean 60Hz sine out.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Don't do April Fool's jokes during Chinese New Year. That's racist, dude.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
No fear of high voltages etc., Wastewater lines should be fairly good in conducting RF. The Dutch company in the article uses waterlines.
I just thought it was an easy way to say redundant testing.
Speaking as someone whos still on 28.8 due to location, this got my attention, just like satellite, wireless, etc. And just like them it appears to be out of reach, again.
from the article -
"Because signals can only make it so far before breaking apart, special electronic devices on the line catch packets of data, then reamplify and repackage them before shooting them out again."
So, they need repeaters? Im sure they wont be in ANY hurry to put them in rural areas. Canada is supposed to have every resident able to recieve broadband soon. Wheres my broadband?
A short list of PLC companies DS2
EBA PLC
Amperion
Ascom
The Baby Bells and the cable monopolies will tie this up in court for years, all the while jacking up their prices to feed their war chests, and Joe User will sit there and shuck out the bucks, completely oblivious to what's going on.
The electric companies say, "Ma Bell was my bitch! These little ones are nothing." You think they are going to let a silly cable company stand between them and $20 to $40 a month from everyone? Fat chance, they will be happy to lease out their lines to the dumbest bidder.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah, but Israel is kinda small isn't it? How many substations do you have? I was under the impression that you could just about use helioscopes there without too many repeater stations.
Oh well, crank it up if you can.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Perhaps brodband can be delivered via the wires, but who really cares? I'm more interested in getting the broadband wirelessly by FM.
beCAWS.
I know that many power companies are working on this, some tries to use the powergrid directly, others puts down fiber when they dig down cables. In ye olde days, the fibers were only along the big lines and for internal use, but later on they have shown to be a great resource to sell and some have created new transmission companies.
The same goes for railroad companies. There are many different type of engines, one of them is the diesel-electric model where a diesel motor drives a electric generator, which then powers the electic motor that drives the train. This solution makes a lot of "noise" that could knock out a transmission line that is placed along the railroad track. So even though fiber might have been a bit overkill in terms of transmission needs, it fits the bill as a method to avoid signalling problems along the track. These lines a, of course also, a great resource for the railroad company to sell transmissions from and it should be fairly easy to put down new lines.
my sig
Google it. I think they are using robots to pull fiber already. Better than tearing up streats and causing gas fires.
What about underground power lines? Are they still subject to the same problems, or does the ground provide sufficient shielding?
I live in Charlotte, NC, and just a couple of months ago we were hit with a really bad ice storm that downed a lot of powerlines. There has been some discussion since then of burying lines, although Duke Power put the cost at around $300/ft., I believe.
I wonder if offering broadband services might be a way for power companies to subsidize burying and/or upgrading power lines.
And this might affect current phone company people who get paid 40$ an hour to ruin traffic for me on my way to work.
Funny how people's views change based on where they are sitting. Sitting in a car behind a windshield - and Telco / Cable repair folks are the devil. But sitting at a desk or at home in front of the TV, and they better damn well get that stuff fixed NOW before I miss Joe Millionare or whitehouse.com stops working...
St. Louis-based Ameren Corp and other utilities are testing are testing the technology
Neo: Whoa, deja vu.
Taco: What happened? What did you see?
Neo: I just read the words "are testing", and then read two more just like them.
Taco: How much like them? Were they the same words?
Neo: They might have been. I'm not sure. What is it?
Taco: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Slashdot. It happens when they change something.
The frequency is driven by the actual rotation of the generator shaft. This has nothing to do with how much load is on the system, unless that causes the generator to actually slow down. Do you mean to imply the generator actually cranks slower as the load goes up?
Check out smarthome products. Sounds like you need to add an attnuator to your TV and computer.
Might also be a good idea to add a bridge accross your wiring legs. I think none of these things require a scredriver -- just plug stuff in.
This is all about the local loop so you have to ask some questions. 1) how much is it going to cost 2) how much does it cost competitors like RBOCs--not how much they charge in the present semi-monopoly but how much they could charge in a competitive enviromnent 3) what are the chances a new technology--wireless for instance--is going to leapfrog your solution after you've already sunk a few hundred million dollars into it? The final big picture question to ask is what does the future residence need w/r/t bandwidth and can current infrastructure be leveraged to provide it? I don't think 1.5Mbit/sec is going to cut it in ten years.
Before you introduce something like this, you must first say goodbye to weak-signal radio applications.
In some cases even to quite-strong-signal radio.
So, if you like to listen to long- medium or shortwave radio, and not to the local station, or if you are a radio amateur or otherwise interested in receiving radio, be strongly opposed to any powerline Internet initiative.
The interference is incredible and it cannot be controlled.
I've no doubt in my mind that problems to with interferance, differing votages systems and all the other stuff that makes power grid broadband seem so unattainable now, will eventually be worked out after enough time and technology has been thrown in. Sure there are problems, and they are solvable... Except for one.
;)
It's a "Biggie"...
Try getting your Intercontinental broadband happening through this scheme
Ok, seeing as we know that water and electricity don't mix, we could add several gazillion dollars to ensure that the network was waterproof... but no-one is going to pay for that, which brings us back to the biggest problem in the whole scheme.
It's those nasty, penny-pinching, overcharging b******d telecommunication companies that will en up charging the electricity companies just enough to ensure that we end up paying the same (if not more) for our transcontinental internet fix!!
The organization representing Amateur Radio Operators has been nervous about this for quite some time; PLC systems have the potential to be vast antenna arrays generating white noise in the frequency ranges below 30 mHz - right where the ham community does their long range communications. Japan has already slowed deployment for this reason.
Here's an excerpt from the ARRL January 24th newsletter (http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/03/0124/):
* FCC says power line communications technology shows promise: According
to an Associated Press report, the FCC's Office of Engineering and
Technology has found that power line communications (PLC), which can
enable high-speed Internet access over electric power lines, shows
promise. The OET has said that PLC is "beginning to look like a viable
alternative to cable and DSL connections to the Internet," AP reported. At
present, no regulations prevent the use of electric power lines to provide
Internet connections. The FCC wants to ensure that the technology does not
cause interference problems with other services, however. Some PLC devices
use digital signals that occupy spectrum into the upper HF range. These
signals can be radiated efficiently by some electrical wiring, so there
can be a significant potential impact on Amateur Radio. ARRL Lab
Supervisor Ed Hare, W1RFI, chairs an IEEE C63 "RFI" ad hoc working group
on the topic. "The problem with PLC is that if a company wants to supply
Internet service via PLC, it's going to happen at HF, and it will
radiate," Hare said. Last fall, the International Amateur Radio Union
(IARU) Administrative Council noted the growing use of PLC for high-speed
data and expressed concerns that PLC radiation could interfere with
Amateur Radio reception. As a result of strong opposition from the Japan
Amateur Radio League (JARL), Japan's government said last summer that it
was too soon to allow PLC devices in that country between 2 MHz and 30
MHz, due to its interference potential to other HF users. AP says two
utilities, PPL of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Ameren of St Louis,
Missouri, are working with consumers to test Internet access over power
lines. PLC devices use overhead power lines and/or residential electrical
wiring to communicate digital signals--for networking within a home or to
provide Internet services to entire neighborhoods.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
The technology which was similar to this in the fact that it integrated utilities. If failed and so will this unless big brand name corporations are willing to finance the integration.
Hi,
o meplug.org/faq/2 000/12/0012feat5. htm
Here's a couple links with some "Accurate" info...
http://www.plca.net/whatisplc.asp
http://www.h
http://www.commsdesign.com/main/
http://www.echelon.com
Go read up a bit, then come back and discuss.
The real question is "How can we make money off of this?". It may be wise to buy stock in power companies while it is low. By the time any of the power companies make a public announcement that they are researching this for U.S. residents, the stock prices will probably soar. I don't know a lot about stocks and such, but I am always looking for an opportunity to make money. What do you all think?
Initially 0,5-1Mbit/s, but the equipment used is good for 4,5. And, yes -- it's cheaper than DSL. It'll take some time before they cover the whole city, though -- installing the new hardware takes time.
More information is available at www.turkuenergia.fi, unfortunately in Finnish, though...
A $200 Walmart pc runs Linux.
A $9 a month isp needs Windows.
In short if you have a $200 pc your using $20 isp service.
If your paying $9/mo your using a $1000 pc.
I must add that people look at $40 a month and think 'to much'.
But for the poor that's the price of dial up.
It's not that they pay anything more we just igore a good chunk of the cost. The phone line.
Many poor don't have a phone eather using a pay phone when they want to make a phone call.
So they add the phone line into the total price.. Even the $9 service becomes $29 in that light.
The power line service will not do it for them. More than likely the powerline service will be $40 a month.
It's easy to see a mental devide when one dose not exsist becouse we can find solutions to other peoples problems that are hard to find and may not work.
I pay $20 a month for cable service. They give it to me at 64k baud. No phone line just cable hardware and my work station.
I don't actually exist.
I reside in Scotland and recently there have bee tv (invented by a scotsman) adverts advertising the scottish hydro electric broadband over powerlines technology.
the other day i decided to call them up and ask about it they can run at upto 2mb/s and are around £30_STERLING/$45_USD a month.
On phoning i was informed that the trial period was over and that they are now selling the service to people in and around an area in scotland (cant remember whic) but they were not going to expand a lot further at the moment due to BT (british telecom) and BT based ISP's land line domination of the broadband market.
hopefully this technology will be deployed worldwide into more rural areas such as africa, outback australia and into countries which are being rebuilt such as yugoslavia and afghanistan
(1) Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
(2) If your stomach antagonizes you, pacify it with cool thoughts.
(3) Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
(4) Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society, as
the social ramble ain't restful.
(5) Avoid running at all times.
(6) Don't look back, something might be gaining on you.
-- S. Paige, c. 1951
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