Slashdot Mirror
Could Broadband Over Power Lines be Dangerous?
falconfighter writes " Broadband over Powerlines, once touted as the solution to many internet problems (developing 3rd world countries, etc.) has a new hazard. The system basically involves putting high amounts of modulated RF on a power line. The Amateur Radio Relay League has the most informative page on the topic.
The hazards include exceeding MPE (maximum permissable exposure), RF burns, and disrupting the HF bands of radio. This last one would also work in reverse, meaning hams, airplanes, or the military keying up their radios could take out large areas of internet service (with airplanes, potentially over several hundred miles)."
Oh great, now a slashdotting will take out all the power and aircraft in a hundred mile radius
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
I don't even want to -think- about what happens when the vacuum cleaner gets switched on!
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
"Let's put something that looks like high-power broadband RF noise on long, unshielded, untwisted power lines, suspended in the air, otherwise known as antennas."
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Imagine being fried by a stray IP packet
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
And quite dangerous.
I mean, really, who expects this to work
Ever see those medicine commercials where the human body is struck by lightning.
Now, a different wave of support questions.
Support Monkey: Sir, do you see lighting like things on your computer? Sir... Sir...
(To his colleague monkey) Looks like he hung up
Free XBox, PS2
...and is a threat to their broadband over oil pipeline plans.
More voltage means more bandwidth!
Let me just up the wattage a little bit more!
Ahh! Ahh!
(Slump)