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)"

Comments

Leakage

[Kill da wabbit]

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?

Re:Leakage

[tetra103]

How do posts like this get modded up?

Honestly, the technology could work quite well, but I think the power companies need to provide a hybrid solution. Run fiber down to the street transformers, then piggy back onto the powerline from there. Unfortunately, this solution still leaves the rual customer out in the snow, but leakage is too hard to fight and using relay devices I see as a nightmare.

Sure the solution won't benifit or swoon the rual types, but it would provide an alternative for the rest. It's bigger than just TCP/IP. Just like the cable companies can now provice a viable phone service and phone companies can provide internet service, a power company, via powerline technology could provice phone and internet (tv broadcast would be a stretch under the current technology). The speed would be slightly less and many high speed users would balk, but imagine if all computers made started incorporating powerline technology. Now imagine all corded phones having powerline technology. The ease of use and simplification of home wiring would be VERY appealing for the average home user.

I feel powerline technology SHOULD be the future for ALL residential broadband. Maybe the delivery of signal could differ (fiber, cable, dish, ...), but inside the home just having one universal outlet for power and networking. No longer the need to wire a home for (power, phone, cable, 10baseT, and maybe fiber). Just wire for power and you're all done. Consumer manufacturers would no longer need to create a product with 10 different plugs on the back for interfacing.

Is this a dream? For years....yes! But the powerline technology is NOT the technology it was 5 years ago. It's very different and if slightly interested, you owe it to yourself to read up on it. I'll admit the technology is fair now at 14Mbps, but that's plenty for residential use. If that gets upped to 100+Mbps, then cable over powerline may be an option.

The big competition could be moved outside the home. How the content is delivered would be where the competition would be, but at least internal to the home, everything could be standarized.

A slight problem....

[Lord_Slepnir]

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?

Re:A slight problem....

[Duds]

Your next segfault takes down an entire countys power that what!

Now THAT'S extreme programming :)

Are we supposed to believe this?

[random_rabbit]

Next thing you know they'll be telling us they can send TV over broadband wires!

It's the other way around!

[CrystalFalcon]

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.

IMHO, if this works, it'll be great...

[Slartibartfast]

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...

Re:IMHO, if this works, it'll be great...

[BadlandZ]

To compare $20/month online service with a $200 PC seems a bit off to me. Why would you pick the cheapest PC, and most expensive dialup?

There are dial up services for $9.95, some can be found for $5/month. And, believe it or not, there are also free ones (and you thought YOU had problems with popup ads!).

I don't believe that the $20/month is causing "the digital divide" as you call it. However, I do believe there is a digital divide. I just don't think it's the $20/month causing it.

I would challenge anyone to find a survey of only people who don't have internet access, who live in the USA, and who aren't homeless (that is, ruling out the people who have bigger problems). I'll bet you find the answers don't reflect that, and I'll bet the answers don't even jive with reality.

One can claim that $20/month keeps them off the net, but does that same person have a cell phone, or premium cable with HBO and Showtime, or dual phone lines... Or anything else that is billed monthly for a ballpark $20/month that would prove they COULD afford it?

My guess is the "digital divide" is primarily a mental one. The people on the non-tech side of the digital divide are (IMHO) people who don't know how to use computers in the first place. And, a vast majority of those people will be completely reluctant to admit it, and will claim ANY excuse to avoid admitting that they are not comfortable using a computer in the first place.

All this smoke about broadband over powerlines will not change that.

One reason it won't fly

[TVmisGuided]

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.

that internet gets everywhere

[AssFace]

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.

Crows

[millwall]

If this becomes reality I'm sure someone will invent a script to ddos crows sitting on their powerline.

"Interesting"?

[CrystalFalcon]

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. :-)

Great...

[HarveyBirdman]

DOS attacks on my toaster oven. Swell. Can't a man just have a piece of toast?

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

Other approaches

[panurge]

I believe that ABB, in Thailand, tried the idea of running a broadband fibre THROUGH the Earth lead of an overhead powerline. 600 000V on the phases does tend to discourage vandals from stealing the fibre.

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.

Here in Ireland ..

[Draoi]

... we've already got broadband over powerlines - sorta! Our national electricity supply company is bundling fibre optic cables with high-voltage lines. They say;

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

Forget it

[grungeman]

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.

Old subject, but anyway.. PLC has problems.

[tuoppi]

This issue has been already discussed under topic "Ethernet Via Electric Conduits".

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.

Done that, chucked in.

[I)_MaLaClYpSe_(I]

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

Great!

[cK-Gunslinger]

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."