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First Canadian High Speed Internet over Power Grid
oO0(MjB)0Oo writes "Sault Ste. Marie, a northern Ontario town, is going to be the first installation of BPL (Broadband Power Line technology) in Canada. As reported in the Toronto Star, wireless access points will be set up along medium-voltage power lines, providing roaming capability throughout the city to all users."
There's sure to be at least one moron that'll fry himself.
Machine9dotNet
...next time the lights go out in NYC. Some evil Canadian hacker will uncap their powerline modem and lights will dim all along the US east coast.
Also, will this cause any other sort of interference? My TV reception (over antenna) is already crap because of Ontario Hydro -- I live within 0.5km of the high-voltage pylons and my TV reception is terrible on VHF because of it.. (during the huge power outage last summer, I was able to very clearly receive stations all through New York state)
Not just Dilbert - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/35334.html
IP over sewage.
"These wireless "boxes" convert data so they can be sent through the grid and on to PUC's fibre-optic backbone, which connects to the Internet. Home computers equipped with 802.11b or "Wi-Fi" wireless access cards and within 150 metres of these access points will be able to use the service."
In what way is the headline inaccurate? This is the first semi-large test of using the power grid as a network distribution medium.
Actually the article does say the data is put on the medium-voltage distribution grid, which is the transmission medium between their fibre backbone (presumably at the substations) and the WAPs mounted on hydro poles in neighbourhoods. They're just not running it on the 240v drop to the customer as in some implementations.
These wireless "boxes" convert data so they can be sent THROUGH THE GRID...... and onto the company's backbone.
GRID == power grid.
The backbone is not everywhere.. the "backbone" is just somefiber link they have at a NOC to some other isps.
They are indeed using power line data transmission for this... that's what the entire project is about, and the only reason it is significant.
The fiber network is not everywhere.... do you think they have fiber on every pole? (fiber is usually buried, btw)
Backbone == NOC. They are using medium voltage power lines as a large network between their backbone and the access points... the article headline, despite being on slashdot, is acccurate.
For those not following the broadband-over-power-lines debate, the basic problem is lack of shielding. Cable modems use coax cable, where the outside of the coax acts as a shield, and so very little RF gets out. The wires carry broadband internet, but don't interfere with anything. In the case of DSL/telephone, you have twisted pair (or at the very least, two wires running very close to each other). They effectively shield each other (meaning that each generates a field in the opposite direction, and the fields cancel out if you're not too close to the wire). More RF gets out than coax, but it's still negligable compared to desirable transmissions. In the case of power lines, they are, depending on power line configuration and frequency, either a significant fraction of a wavelength apart, or several wavelengths apart. In some directions, you get destructive interference, but in others, you get constructive interfence. In the directions of constructive interference, you have a lot of signal being broadcast. As a result, they act as a directional antenna, which interferes with anything on the same wavelengths as power-over-power-lines.
:)
Signal strength goes a square of distance. That means that if I have an antenna running 10 meters from my house, and I'm trying to tune into a station 10 kilometers aways, that station needs to be putting out a million times more power than the segment of powerline running next to me. Ouch.
This probably won't interfere with typical consumer applications (television, FM radio), because if it did, there would be significant political reprecussions, and it would be banned (in other words, it's probably engineered to operate outside of those frequencies). On the other hand, according to the ARRL, it very likely will interfere with amateur radio and therefore emergency communications services.
My view is that it may be a good idea in some third world countries, with no telephone service, where there are no alternatives for Internet. However, in modernized countries, we're better off spending the few extra dollars to put in DSL on top of all phone lines or sticking with modems for a while longer, than in the short term, sacrificing emergency communications infrastructure, and in the long term, entrenching a system of broadband that takes away a significant chunk of the spectrum, and prevents all sorts of innovative uses of that spectrum we haven't thought of yet. Spectrum is a scarce resource, and it's gonna get scarcer. The population growing, but amount of spectrum stays constant, sans a few one-time improvements from better utilization (there are fundamental limits on signal strength vs. noise vs. bandwidth vs. bitrate -- with antenna arrays/directional transmissions, there are limits on directionality vs. frequency vs. transmitter size -- we cannot improve utilization forever). In contrast, all the benefits of power-over-power-lines are short-term -- we only gain the one-time cost of not having to modernize our infrastructure (maintanance costs of the two possible infrastructures aren't significantly different).
I don't know how this initiative works, but my impression is that it sends broadband over powerlines, and then the last gap is sent via wireless. If this is the case, it has all of the standard problems associated above. If not, I need more information than is in the article to evalute it
Here in Ireland, the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) - our State electricity company, is setting up something similar. They have a fibre ring following the trunk electricity routes - it's just fibre piggy-backed on their existing infrastructure.
I'm just amazed they haven't done this ages ago - it puts them at a huge advantage to those who have to dig up stuff and lay fibre from scratch.
Not sure what ESBs plan is to connect this main telecomms artery to anything useful...
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Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Wyant is quick to point out PUC won't be using power lines to deliver Internet access directly into the home. Instead, the company is installing wireless access points along its medium-voltage lines in densely populated residential areas.
These wireless "boxes" convert data so they can be sent through the grid and on to PUC's fibre-optic backbone, which connects to the Internet. Home computers equipped with 802.11b or "Wi-Fi" wireless access cards and within 150 metres of these access points will be able to use the service.
The advantage of this approach, said Wyant, is that instead of being tied to home with cable or DSL service, a power-line subscriber with a wireless card can use the service anywhere in Sault Ste. Marie that's within range of an access point.
INTERNET BACKBONE
- connects to -
medium-voltage power lines
- connects to -
wireless boxes
- wirelessly transmits to/from -
subscribers wifi devices.
comment directly in my journal
Canadian broadband: also known as eh-thernet.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
"When they install power lines the sometimes include an optical fibre cable inside the cores sheathing, so your have say 3 huge copper conducting cores and a skinny little optical cable as well, all wrapped up by a protective PVC sheath etc.. It doesn't cost a lot extra as its installed and manufactured at the same time as the power cable. Its this otical ring theyre tapping into with their wireless network."
The above is incorrect. We specialize in fiber cable systems for power utilities. (See the Fiber Planners web site for more info on what we do)
Power utilities build fiber into their conductors in 3 situations:
1. They use optical groundwire (OPGW) on high voltage transmission lines between cities. This is an aluminum conductor with fibers in it that is placed above the power conductors and used as combination lightning guard and communications cable. This is widely deployed.
2. On the latest high voltage underground cables, they may use one fiber as a temperature sensor. These cables are not widely deployed. There are real issues associated with adding anymore fibers to that kind of cable for communications -- it's cheaper to just bury a separate fiber-only cable nearby, unless you're deploying an undesea cable, which leads to #3.
3. A few undersea power cables (such as might feed an offshore island) may include fibers for communications.
Most fiber cable deployed by power utilities is all-dielectric (contains nothing conductive) and hung or buried near the conductors on medium voltage power distribution systems.
The Amperion system in Sault Ste. Marie uses HF radio signals propagated down PUC's standard metallic power conductors to Wi-Fi units outside subscribers' homes. The Wi-Fi unit then takes that HF signal and retransmits a Wi-Fi signal through the air the last 100 feet or so to the subscriber.
Al Bonnyman
Community Broadband Networks