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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)"
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?
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...
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.
If this becomes reality I'm sure someone will invent a script to ddos crows sitting on their powerline.
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 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 do posts like this get modded up?
...), 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.
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,
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.