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BPL: The Internet's Fool's Gold
Joe Barr writes "One of the more fascinating tidbits of information I came across while researching this story on NewsForge about BPL, the fatally flawed wannabe-broadband-provider technology, was that at the very same time the FCC was downplaying the threat of the interference BPL creates, the FCC's very own test results were showing just the opposite."
BPL? I thought this stuff was all done and over with? Anybody able to clarify? (BTW, I RTFA)
Was Slashdot any better with its breathless stories about "The Myth of Radio Spectrum Interference", "The Illusion of Spectrum Scarcity", and so on?
That's the wrong BPL. This BPL is about Broadband access through powerlines. In theory a darn clever idea, but a lot of obstacles apparently. Anybody with the know-how able to enlighten?
Has anyone calculated the interference of BPL over quantum wires?
Where is the administration looking out for the public interest that I've become so accustomed to?!?
What's that you say? Someone from the White House told them to get broadband-over-power-lines through no matter what, even if it destroys HAM radio and other public-use frequencies through interference? Why on earth would anyone do that? There isn't any corruption or corporate favoritism in Washington, is there?!?
What do you mean lawyers outnumber engineers at the FCC by a near-infinite margin!?! How could that be so?!?
what did the FCC have to gain by pushing a crap technology, one that violates their own rules and interferes with their sphere of influence?
It wasnt clear to me in the article why the FCC was so high on the tech...
Moo.
Highway trafic has a negative effect on horses, you know.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Filters for your outlets... And I thought DSL was bad. -jh
Never underestimate the power of corrupt legislatures and utility companies to force adoption of bad technologies:
r .asp?ppa=8knpp%5EZltmlupoXUnj!6%3C%22bfek%5C!
http://powermarketers.netcontentinc.net/newsreade
A few BPL trials have been dropped because the technology just cannot compete. But the threat is still real. Once fixed wireless is available everywhere, BPL
technology's only hope of success is through open graft and bribery.
My hope would be that Texans would give their much-abused highway signs a break from using them for target practice and begin utilizing the numerous BPL devices that will be
available. But old habits die hard.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
RTFA. It explicitly states that power companies cannot become backbone providers because long-haul data gets killed by interference from transformers/repeaters. They can still drop leased lines to substations and last-mile it from there, but this in turn feeds those very same backbone providers the utilities seek to compete with . . .
Speaking of which - why arent the power companies themselves pushing for more active enforcement of the telecommunications act of 1996 regarding this issue? This seems like a perfect place to call it out - lines sold to utilities at forced wholesale prices could A) make them some money, B) hurt the telcos and C) make consumers happy.
Self-correction, I didn't RTFAT (last t=thoroughly) Check this: http://www.pserc.org/ecow/get/publicatio/2005publi c/olsen_bpl_paper_feb2005.pdf
all the stuff you gotta/would wanna know about BPL
Shocking. Simply shocking.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I have no idea why two of the three "ads by Google" were for meeting/dating Eritrean. Somebody is buying some weird keywords.
I've never understood how BPL even made it to the trial stage. Any EE with two brain cells is going to recognize that putting broadband HF/VHF carriers on unshielded power lines is a recipe for interference to many licensed radio services. See that wire going down the road? It's a fscking antenna, you moron!
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
What happens if we combine BPL with power over ethernet? Or is that like crossing the streams...
And you know what? PG&E has been quietly pulling fibre through their understreet conduits for several years. I wonder why? I wonder if the ratepayers know about it?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
It's a bad idea and has been dropped left and right. Here's a paper from Canada on BPL. And here's a counter proposal for those who feel that energy companies need to be in the network business: Broadband Over gas (apparently not a joke).
Just try driving your Lexus through that field you see the horse grazing in. If you don't completely destroy the suspension in the process, you'll probably still bend an axle on a chuchkhole the horse has no problems navigating.
:P
Oh, and consider the full area of a horse field compared to the itty bitty teeny little slice of processed asphalt bisecting it - you get the tiny piece, the horse gets the remainder.
Your analogy isn't exactly waterproof.
Law Suit (n): A PHB who thinks they're a lawyer.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The major obstacle is that it would blow HAM operators and emergency frequencies out of the water. Emergency services would have to start using smoke signals. It's as bad an idea as I can possibly imagine.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Maybe we should just put in our own fiber.
i'd be surprised if a power company DIDN'T have fiber. they already have the right-of-ways and the personnel to lay it. that's the two most expensive parts of the bill.
here in quebec (north, you know, canada) Hydro Quebec have a full fledged fiber network. There's also Hydro One (aka, Hydro Ontario) that actually resells full transit to the public in at least one data center that i know of. and let me tell you, for anything over 5mbit/s they're about half the price of everyone else (80$/mbit/s with a 10mbits commit)
According to the section chief of the Ohio ARRL, problems are minimal.
(at the bottom of the article:) "Joe Phillips of Fairfield, the Ohio section chief for the American Radio Relay League, says that so far the Cinergy roll-out hasn't created the radio interference many ham radio operators had feared."
Actually I know that my power company already has a fiber network that links all the substations for monitoring.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
the FCC was downplaying the threat of the interference BPL creates, the FCC's very own test results were showing just the opposite."
Wonderful... There you have it, folks! Your government in action.
Seems like yet another reason to get the government out of technology. I've been seeing a LOT of reasons like this in the news lately. How many more reasons do we need until people get really fed up?
I'm going to go with geosynch satts, and those funky troposphere blimps.
The satts need dialup, right now. Someone fucking work on that. If your option is no-fucking-intarweb-at-all, 800ms pings don't look all that bad. Especially when you can pull 100k/s downloads, and even 10k/s uploads. Beggars can't be choosers.
The blimps look pretty decent. I'd like to couple that with a small (18" diameter) enclosed antenna. Probably not optical, because it's more prone to atmospheric disturbance (rain). I'm thinking 20ghz, or something really funky like 100ghz. Something that really cuts through the chop.
I'm no electrical engineer, but if it was my call to make, that's the shit I'd have them working on...
A clarification -
Yes, BPL interferes with Ham frequencies. But the FCC allocated emergency ranges are in fact higher on the RF spectrum, and are *not*, repeat *not* in any danger from BPL interference. Sure, it's not a great thing that Ham could be wiped out, but could the advocates please be honest stop trying to pretend that it'll hindre all emergency service communication in the process?
All I have in my area is one monopolistic cable provider, anything for some competition. ... we can't be trusted to communicate, and should place our trust in the corporations to "help" (read: censor) with our e-mail.
Like many other cable providers, they block off vital TCP/IP ports. No incoming port 80 for my web server - no way do the corporations want us to turn into producers on the internet, the corporations only want us to be consumers of their own content. Blocked outgoing port 25, crippling my mail server - naturally, only corporations should be allowed to send e-mail
Let us start with the basics. 1. A signal is passed across a copper wire by first adding a voltage on it. 2. You then oscilate that electricity which produces a signal when you choose where 0 is on the sine wave. 3. You then decode the 0(s) and 1(s) on the far side. Now, if you were to place different signals on the same wire where the alternating current is already running you can increase the "up-swing" and "down-swing" of those oscillating waves by having any signal were the wave peak and wave trough meet. Can you imagine what would happen if you played with alternating current phases? What is worse for this plan? Even if you can dampen the harmonics on that wire. How many times does the electrical signal split? How many end-points are necessary to repeat signals out to all the people connected to the grid? What happens when someone wants to feed electricity or even a signal back? Telephone networks have enough problems with the number of devices it takes to make sure you get an IP signal .. and that telephone network was originally designed for communication.
Except that if there was a global emergency, I doubt your broadband would be on anyway, in which case, why are you HAM? It would be easy to kill BPL during an emergency. Emergency freqs are another story tho.
In other words, we are going to sacrifice our country's emergency communications system so that people can get internet access more easily? I don't think so!
Would you still say that if you weren't able to get the medical help you needed in a disaster because your area's backup emergency communications system (which most probably uses ham radio) was wiped out by BPL?
microcomputing? More work on hobby microcomputing was being done by hams than anyone else back in the 1970's. Anyone remember Wayne Green and '73? Which later spun off, directly or indirectly, Byte, Kilobaud and other fine publications. An amazing amount of technology has been pioneeered by the ham community. They are an asset that should not be thrown away carelessly. Given the chance, I am sure there will be many more innovations to come. Real ones, not the Microsoft kind.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
A mission to Mars
14 privately owned satellites in orbit
Experiments and payload aboard the International Space Station (and Space Shuttles when they fly again)
A worldwide GPS based tracking system
An independent worldwide wireless data network
No? Are you even still reading this? If so then ask yourself this, does your "hobby" provide emergency communications during disasters? Does it? DOES IT? Was it THERE during the TSUNAMIS like amateur radio was?
What about after the hurricanes? After Charlie tore trough Port Charlotte and knocked down all local sheriff and fire radio towers ham radio operators were there cranking up new towers, equipping the sheriff and first responders with new radios so they could save lives. They even used that tracking system I mentioned on all of the vehicles involved in rescue operations so that way the first responders could coordinate their vehicles more efficiently...
But you've probably stopped reading. Like I could care. All I want to do is enlighten those who read your comment, give them a different point of view. Show them that Amateur Radio DOES matter, is an important part of our lives and will be around a long, long time. BPL or no.
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
why arent the power companies themselves pushing...
In this part of the world they are. Many have installed their own fiber on the power poles, for control & metering, and are selling the spare bandwidth. One thought they could do "fiber to transformer" then BPL. They soon found the error of their choice and now are struggling to fit demand into their backup wireless spectrum.
As for BoG, one mainly electricity utility here inherited some abandoned gas pipes thru the city. They've pulled a lot of fiber thru those...
No, just the FCC this time, really. Bush is just too easy of a target, that gets dull, why do it here? Though fingers do point at the administration backing BPL, now that you mention it.
Besides, it's not just HAM radio. There are other frequencies used for public safety and science which would likely see problems, too. It's just about what the article is about- the FCC ignoring science to push some business agenda.
Yes, the public is interested in broadband. But BPL? Please, there are better ways.
it takes a lot of time and skill and hardware to become a good HAM. If the only outlet someone has is during bona fide emergencies when the grid power is down, well..that just ain't gonna cut it. That's like telling someone who's level of expewrtise is they brought home a computer from the store and plugged it in, then they can become an instant systems administrator the first time they get a virus, *poof* they magically know everything and all the HOWTOs and whatnot. Uh huh, sure....
It's not possible or probable.
BPL is technically possible, just a bad idea in general. I live rural and would love broadband, but I don't want BPL. The best solution is to just run fiber everyplace, like back in our history we ran electrical wires, then telco wires to almost everyone. sure initially it might seem expensive, but we have the historical proof how it benefited all the "we the people" and improved the economy. It *paid off* doing that generally speaking. So, the quicker we do it, the quicker it will be done. It's just tech evolution. Fiber works, and economies of scale would drop the price, and certainly we could stand to create a few tens of thousands new tech jobs in this nation, jobs that *can't* be outsourced.
Later he agrees that competition would be good for the consumer, but that BPL is not being faster, more reliable, or cheaper than conventional broadband access. But, he leave out the part about it being faster and more reliable than no access at all. Although I'll admit that BPL probably costs more than having no access at all. Finally he begins to selectively quote and reference FCC documents. He talks of notching and quotes a member of the ARRL (association for amateur radio) of which the author is also a member. The FCC data that he claims show that the likelihood of interference is not very low, actually shows the opposite for a properly notched systems. The report showed low to no interference with a an above ground properly notched system simply recommend that the notch be increase by 100kHz in the 10 meter band.
And for underground powerline systems, there were no caveats at all - the underground systems were always below the limit.
Why claim that the data proves something that it doesn't?
http://www.arrl.org/~ehare/bpl/FCC_reports.pdf
I see a lot of people badmouthing BPL or Amateur Radio over one-another. I'm an amateur radio operator, and I'd oppose BPL even if it didn't interfere with the amateur service (as some implementations don't: they notch out the amateur bands since the ARRL has been so vocal).
It really is a silly idea. Let's run MF/HF/VHF signals over this really long, unshielded wire to deliver internet to people's houses. Of course we can't actually get it to the house because of those pesky transformers, so we still need to retrofit our grid and use something else (like wifi) for the last 100 yards. Then there's that pesky issue of power lines being really bad transmission lines at those high frequencies (they're definately not constant impedence), so we'll have to throw a lot of power into those lines (at RF) to get the signal where we want it. What? It radiates? Hum, oh well.
The obvious solution is to string real transmission lines (like coax, twisted pair, or, obviously, fiber) along those poles (protected in some kind of harder casing) and underground. But that's expensive? Duh, retrofitting something meant to deliver huge amounts of energy at one frequency (50 or 60Hz, depending on your side of the pond) to deliver data at high rates of speed isn't going to be cheap. At least don't be half-assed about it.
Also, just so people know. The amateur service doesn't really have all the bandspace people make it out to have. Some bands are surprisingly small: the voice section of 17m, for example, is from 18.110MHz to 18.168MHz - only 58kHz of bandwidth, or enough for 20 single-sideband voice conversations if everyone plays *really* nice and lines up perfectly. There are giant posters like this one that show the major service to which each frequency band is allocated to in the US (many of which are also assigned internationally by ITU, at least down in HF). The first 3 rows (3kHz-30MHz) are the bands likely to be given problems by BPL. The amateur service is teal-green colored on that poster. Look for yourself how little is actually given to the service on many bands. 80m (3.5MHz) is about the only one that you're likely to even spot quickly below 30MHz!
Sure, fuck ham. However they are a small population of spectrum users who would be affected (they just happen to be the group who complained publically). Police, coast guard, other emergency services, etc. all regiatered complaints to the FCC regarding BPL.
Appearently they do not care that you were easily mislead by debunked "cheap broadband" claims that anyone with a freshman level EE knowledge could see through. I'm sorry you were so gullible, fortunatly it seems the rest of the world isn't.
Finkployd
BPL is being tested in a remote area in Arizona, where there are few HAMs and little of the spectrum is actually in use- when/if BPL is ever put into place in a city or heavily populated area, many more "non-existent" problems will result. BPL will cause destructive interference to many commodities using radio that we use today.
As someone who has been involved in the BPL to some degree, I can assure you that the BPL is a political scam that was never meant to be deployed on any significant scale.
In the past, FCC required local owners of cable and phone infrastructure (baby-Bells, Verizons of the world, etc) to share access to their wires in a non-discriminatory fashion to avoid "monopolistic" behaviour. Both local DSL and cable operators lobbied heavily and successfully to strike this "mandatory non-discriminatory sharing" provision from FCC rules. BPL was proclaimed a "third alternative broadband technology" that in theory should prevent monopoly or duopoly in residential broadband. The trick is that BPL is not competitive with cable or DSL and, thus, will unlikely be deployed at all. BPL push in FCC was a smoke-screen to enable baby-Bells to monopolize DSL and existing cable owners to monopolize cable broadband accordingly.
More such papers are available from David Reed's Open Spectrum page.
But hey, it isn't my field.
maybe on slashdot someone might thing the few ham radio guys are the majority, but i bet DSL to everyone with power will serve the public interest much more than upsetting a few hobbyists who like to see how far they can talk.
:)
Someone should get them trillian
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Yes, you are quite the intelligent one. So you believe in the event of an emergency all the Hams will spring to life and use their radio gear now that BPL is down. You honestly believe people are going to spend money on gear, set it up, and wait for a day when it might be usable. Do you want the first "test" of this gear to be during an emergency?
Finkployd
I would think that this can work in Europe, where most electricity is carried in underground cables.
When I first visited North America, the third world standard ungodly cable mess strung next to all the roads was quite unexpected to me.
I find it hard to fathom how the power companies could even have considered using BPL in overhead lines - plain schtoopidttt...
Oh well, what the hell...
Ok he won he got me. A troll is a troll.
But your wrong about that second paragraph. I never said or suggested anything of the sort nor have I personally been involved in any emergency amateur radio activities. I just know some people who do volunteer and have worked emergency communications before and I guess I'm a little too proud of them, a little too defensive of them.
As a side note I wasn't trying to belittle other hobbies-- I just think it's not a "hobby" is all, that was part of my point really, was that he wasn't looking at it as a hobby.
But you have to admit the mission to mars is pretty cool.
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Mmm, broadband so good you can taste it! Seems to me this would work for downloads, but uploads would have to go through the sewers.
Write Only Memory: Another pointless blog.
... other than a 56k modem?
I challenge those who've been ranting about the technology to stop for a minute, put yourself in my shoes, and see how you like it. Or how you don't.
I live in a somewhat rural area in central Virginia near Charlottesville. I'm way, way beyond the 15,000 cable foot requirement for DSL so that's out. There is no cable TV within 5 miles or more. And the only company offering wide area Wifi is a no go; I tried but couldn't get any signal because there are hills all around (10 million tons of granite equates to many hundreds of db in attenuation). (I'm also technically within the National Radio Quiet Zone [google it if you never heard of it] which makes additional wide-area wifi towers problematic).
My electric provider (a rural co-op) has a trial of BPL going right now and they're promising to roll it out to more customers soon. Initial testing on the trial has apparently been good, though I don't know how much attention has been paid to local hams and the impact on them.
If you're gonna diss my only broadband option, at least gimme some home for an alternative (other than moving)!!!
-- This
All new construction in N Texas is underground cables. It nice not having power-lines and telephones lines all over the place. I don't know if BPL will ever be financially viable, but RF interface won't be a problem in new additions.
Joe Barr just got his ham radio license!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
BPL is a total killer for any radio in it's path. A trip on Rt. 9 in Briarcliff Manor NY shows that you get "digital hash" on most ham bands and on CB. While CB is uncool on this board, it is in common use. Any shortwave listening is gone. Imagine these noise generators all over..... The internet is tissue paper in tough times. Ham radio requires a radio, a wire, and a power supply. On 9-11, the third thing to fall was the cellular network and you can bet next time it will have a "priority access" limit for public safety persons. YOU won't get to use it. BPL is like allowing me to use your fresh water lines to drain my sewage-it's only a little dirty water, and you probably won't taste it, and if you do, well, we have to share your pipes. K2FIX
Also affected would be short wave broadcasting, military frequencies, airline long distant communications, commercial broadcast frequencies for international traffic, etc. In short just about every service that uses frequencies between 3 and 30 MHZ could have been interfered with in some part of the BPL service areas. Hams were just the most vocal and have a great number of highly trained electronic engineers of professional and hobbyist persuasions to provide technical input.
Too lazy to create a sig...
Haha! I hate to be the one to tell you this, but even if BPL is rolled out to 99% of the world, you will be in the 1% that won't ever get it.
ISDN, T-1, Satellite, dual-line dial-up. You have a lot of options for broadband, they just don't happen to be terribly cheap. If I was in your place, I would probably start up a broadband company, based on microwave transmitters/recievers.
But the real issue here is that having broadband is nice, but far from necessary. And HAMs aren't just kids playing around with several thousands of dollars worth of radio equipment, they serve an important role. It's BPL that is stomping all over other radio signals, not the other way around, and it should not be rolled out until/unless they can solve that problem.
"Dear Slashdot, I live on a coral island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and the only way for me to get broadband is to drain all the water out of the ocean, but those damn environmentalists keep trying to stop me."
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
ISDN and Satellite are the two technologies of choice for those who are ADSL/Cable/Wifi challenged.
I use ISDN as I'm a gamer, and the pings are king for me. A few neighbours here have sat, and they get some bitching download speeds. Have a hunt around and see what you can get. Admittedly, often these techs cost more than an ADSL or cable service does (at least in Australia), but for me no neighbours within 150 meters of me, the rural lifestyle and $buttloads of cash saved living out of the city more than cover the additional costs.
It's a single-wire waveguide- and power lines purportedly make nifty G-line runs at 802.11 frequencies...
While Corridor makes it sound like they came up with it, calling it E-Lines, the whole concept has been around for decades- and I'm surprised that someone didn't try this earlier because it DOES work as advertised.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It can transmit as well as receive.
There have been many attempts and sales of devices in the past which purports to use the entire power grid as an antenna, whose signals is routed through our special little box to your TV set, yours for only $19.95 postpaid, etc.
Yeh, you get the signal you wanted, as well as more crap you didn't than you can shake your stick at. Its like getting a free restaurant meal, thoroughly mixed with a bucket of garbage.
So, you put wide spectral content signal back into the power grid, you are gonna radiate our all over. This has been known since the days of Tesla and Marconi. Nothing new here.
We already have enough problem with accidental corona discharges filling the RF spectrum with unwanted broadband hash. Just one dirty insulator will screw up the RF environment for miles around.
Technically, yes, power lines could transmit data, but they were not optimized for this. Its old-style 300-ohm TV twin-lead at its best. It was notorious for picking up stray signals.
I do not think BPL was ever designed to send signals... it's designed like a cat trap, whose purpose is to trap investor dollars. Dollars from people quick to part with their money but slow to pick up the technical acumen to verify their claims.
One more thing, don't knock amateur radio HAMS. They are the last breed of guys we have who have a personal interest in RF. Most people seem as ignorant of their stuff as they are about their computers, and have no earthly idea how it works - as they just complain and pay someone else to make it work. Most amateur radio operators know exactly how their stuff works - especially if you ever meet one who builds from scratch. Its really unusual these days to talk to anyone who knows this field from its most fundamental levels, and their advice should be taken very seriously. Personally, I fear the passing of these guys who build things from the ground up, as many of the incoming people build things with dollars, and have no idea how it works - and physics, not finance, makes the ultimate decision of whether something will work or not.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
been there, done that.
Shrub is too easy of a target.
It is still used in some legacy industrial applications, such as Jacquard Looms and waterwheel-powered flour mills.
Developed at Bell Labs, it has the distinction of being the language used to program the first TOIP (Telegraph Over IP) app, which, as everyone knows, is when Samuel F.B. Morse sent the message "WTF has God wrought? OMFG ROFL!".
Note that BPL itself was preceded by APL (Ancient Programming Language), which was used during the heyday of the Roman Empire, about 2000 years ago.
That language is easily recognizable because it doesn't resemble any known "living" computer language (including the heiroglyphics of its character set).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I was in this situation when I lived in rural New Hampshire.
I got a T1 -- you can get these most anyplace a phone line can be ran nowadays.
Sure, it might not be as cheap as you'd like, but you do have options. And two-way satellite works reasonably well for general surfing and email, too.
If you mention "Power Company" in a sentence without the words "in my stock portfolio", some people are just going to assume you're Bush bashing. You're getting too close for comfort.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I didn't bring up Reed. Someone else did-- without realizing that the kinds of radio networks that Reed likes have no relation to HAM radios, emergency radio services, or any of the other spectrum uses that would be affected by BPL.
Claiming that the number of listeners makes a difference is very Zen.
MIMO is Zen?
Maybe I'm missing something here. Since when is it universally acknowledged that BPL is a joke technology? I actually happen to be a BPL subscriber (Manassas, Va), switched from Comcast cable service recently. I know that the local ham radio club definitely has been having problems, but as far as I know, these problems are being addressed and now the system is online throughout the city, working. So, what's the problem?
Shh! Don't tell the broadcast industry. The next time they cancel a <sci-fi> series, they'll claim it's very zen.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
David Reed doesn't know what he is talking about. Interference is very real and well defined, independent of the particular receiver, once you have decided on frequency and bandwidth allocations for different users.
Historically, because of technological limitations, receivers have gotten more bandwidth than they needed for their tasks, which allowed them to be more robust to interference, but the interference was still there.
I was responsing to the AC and taking the position against BPL, so I'm not sure I understand who your post is directed at...
One more thing, don't knock amateur radio HAMS.
I don't, I'm KB3LYB
Most amateur radio operators know exactly how their stuff works - especially if you ever meet one who builds from scratch.
I do, which is pretty much what got me into the hobby in the first place. Talking on the radio is ok, I personally enjoy having the excuse to build stuff more though. I haven't designed anything myself yet, but I have built a lot of Ten Tec kits.
Finkployd
Oh God forbid you drag your asses out of your parents' basements and go somewhere to practice your hobby.
:)
:)
I'm sorry it's such a huge fucking inconvenience to engage those torpid flippers and move yourselves to and fro. I thought hams were so fucking important in an emergency. If just leaving the house is so traumatic what will you do "in a disaster"? Curl up into a little ball, blubber and cry and blame your failings on big, bad BPL? Whatever gets you through the day, I guess.
I had a great laugh over this post. Thanks, it really made my day
Oh and btw: I'm the commander of my local sheriff's office search and rescue team, and currently the only one on the team certified in high angle ropes rescue. I'll be sure to "get out of my mom's basement more"
Finkployd
Apparently nobody's explained to you the difference between a rural and an urban existance. You're obviously going to give up the conveniences of living in a city, but the trade off is that you don't live in a sardine-can apartment with noise/air pollution and excessive crime. Also, it's probably physically possible for you to exceed the speed limit due to a lack of bumper-to-bumper traffic.
But more to the point, BROADBAND OVER POWER LINES DOESN'T WORK. There. Read it once again if you didn't get it the first time. Let's pretend we don't care that it interferes with all forms of RF communication, because surfing pr0n at broadband speeds is obviously more important to you than, say, emergency response services. The more pressing issues are:
a) It's blocked by transformers. That means it won't go through substations or, more importantly, from the street to your house. See that cylinder on the phone pole out there? That's a transformer. Theoritically, you could put a WIFI from the pole to your house, but you just said you're in the NRQZ. (Which would seem to indicate that RF leakage from BPL would be a federal violation in the first place).
b) It receives interference. That's right. Antennas work both ways. What does that mean for you? Well, unfortunately it means that the broadband transmissions are highly prone to errors, and, in fact, an RF broadcast could disrupt your broadband completely if it's within 5 miles of the power line that carries your broadband.
So, what's a viable alternative? Write your representative and ask him to introduce legislation to subsidise fiber to rural locations, just like they did with electricity back in the day. Until then, maybe try satellite, or TCP via avian carrier. Alternatively, you could make a friend at UVA and use their broadband.
Good day, sir.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This is no troll. I have more knowledge about BPL than you Mr. Moderator. I spent 6 months in close contact with one of the main BPL equipment manufacturers and their complete lack of ethics and outright lying about interference to other HF radio services got me off the band wagon pretty quick. This technology needs to die, fast.
Power lines aren't efficient carriers of RF, they were never designed to be.
For the same reason that Verizon is installing their FIOS fiber system, and Comcast is pushing digital cable and installing fiber, the power companies will find that the analog technology upon which BPL is based is limited in its capability for growth.
Yes, BPL's an interferer, but I suspect that if the maintenance and noise problems don't kill it, its lack of growth potential will. You're competing against two carriers who are installing all the fiber they can. Sooner or later you're going to be uncompetitive. BPL's been tried in the UK and Europe and has been shown not to be competitive there.
On the other hand, PLC/BPL does indeed create interference. No one questions that. The question is--is it sufficient to interfere with essential services? So far the answer appears to be no
Maybe when your in the meat wagon, and they call in to the doctor, and cant understand the medication quanity they will shoot into your heart, you could be the FIRST to say BPL is crap, and it does interfere.
Alas, I've lately been overly slack in my meta-mods and moderation and thus have no mod points to award.
Nevertheless, well done!
Trusted by cats.
Of course they are. Every power company does. OPGW (optical ground wire - a 00 cable with fiber in the middle used for the static wire on transmission circuits) is about the same price as solid static wires, so it's essentially free to install fiber on all transmission circuits. Since the life of a transmission circuit is generally less than 10 years before it needs to be reconductored, ubiquitous fiber on the power grid can be accomplished in under a decade. Distribution fiber is a whole different ball of wax...
BPL FAQ for those wanting a primer on the technology, the issues, and the locations where it's operating.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Well, actually, that is what they do. A quick google search brings a story about their response during the Nisqually Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. Living here in the San Fernando Valley, I remember their actions after the Northridge Quake as well. Many HAM operators have annual events at which they practice setting up & operating emergency field stations. Yes, that is exactly what they do.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
NO! Well, technically it might work, but the cost-per-house would be HUGE. The only place this technology might make money is the same populated areas where DSL and Cable make money.
FUD= Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt There is NO doubt or uncertainty that BPL trashes HF comms of all kinds. This has been proven over and over and over. To make this comprehensible by the /. crowd, telling people that an enterprise wide rollout of Windows 3.11 would cause support issues is not FUD.
How is holding regular tests of emergency communications the same as never testing or using equipment until an actual emergency situation?
Finkployd
Now someone help get the fist out!
..never underestimate the bandwidth of an LP gas truck loaded with DVD-ROMs....
Ping times wouldn't be very satisfactory, though...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Digital cable just refers to the modulation scheme, the modulated carriers traveling through a fiber optic or coax cable are still analog signals, just the carrier frequencies are vastly different. What is the limiting factor is the bandwidth available at the low frequencies that can propagate down a power line without tremendous loss.
Oh, yeah, you're not "responsible", though you just did something to cause it, then hid behind an Anonymous Coward apron to brag about it. No wonder you're sympathetic to the Bush EPA denial that poisoned New Yorkers, or the Bush FCC denial that's working to poison everyone near BPL.
You've got a demented delusion that your opinion matters. Calling my documented exposures of lethal Bush crimes "paranoia" merely shows your committment to denial. Then you brag about all the effort you go to to suppress me, without daring to actually argue with the facts. I flame anyone who doesn't earn some respect, either by showing some, or showing some chance of accepting a documented, reasonable argument, after they get rude with me. You, Anonymous Coward, have so little manners that you can't even recognize them. You're swallowed by your driving denial. Have a life as a fascist denier, corporate Bush apologist liar. That must really suck.
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make install -not war
out of interest how much did you pay for the T1 and what were the details of the setup? (ie full or fractional pure data or voice and data etc)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference
:)
Total cancellation would happen but so would constructive interference. Also, you're not talking about rigid wires but about catenaries. Noise may vary more given the distance between the catenaries than might be acceptable for differential signalling. However, what little I recall of wave theory is coasting to a halt at this point
Your style is the system-gaming creep. No wonder you get worked up enough to labor at complex schemes to suppress me and attempt insult, despite Slashdot's structures to prevent that.
I'm posting now merely to gloat over your revelations of your own irrelevance. The only person to whom my opinions matter to me is myself, though I certainly get a lot of compliments on them. And a lot of unsupportable opposition, like yours - showing they matter to others, especially people whose cozy delusions they threaten. I'm glad that posts like mine irritate you - you don't deserve comfort. Especially when you're going to post so much claptrap, sparked by my post documenting Bush agency "Lying for Dollars", without your even attempting to dispute those facts. You might not like "fascist denier, Bush apologist liar", because it's not as glossy as its equivalent "expressive Republican booster". But your style can't cover the stink of your substance. Stick with your telegenic liars and fascists, who make you more comfortable than the truth. If the outrageous truth scares you, stay out of its way - don't play in traffic you can't understand, shouting at us to "slow down". Dangle the possibility of being "on my side" before someone who cares. You go which way the wind blows - you're valueless, except as a demonstration of the emptiness that lurks beneath your anonymous suppression and posting.
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make install -not war
"Dear Slashdot, I live on a coral island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and the only way for me to get broadband is to drain all the water out of the ocean, but those damn environmentalists keep trying to stop me."
Actually, I do live on a coral island in the middle of the Pacific, and it's the first time I've ever lived somewhere with broadband. I pay $90/mo, and obviously ping times aren't great, so playing games is somewhat out of the question, but it's just fine for most other things.
As it turns out, you don't really need to drain the ocean, just lay a transpacific fiber, as you're wont to do in order to connect, say, continents. Islands, as it turns out, are good spots to split the trunks to various locations, with the added benefit of providing broadband access for the residents.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I should have responded to your parent, the AC, not you.
Although I am not a HAM, I have many friends who are. I tinker with mostly the sciency stuff, they tinker with RF, and they have thoroughly impressed me with their intimate knowledge of how RF propagation really works. They have studied antenna theory and design relentlessly and have lots of freely shared empirical data backing up what they say. These guys have outdone every corporate lab I have ever been in, as the HAMS are internally driven to pursue this, whereas a lot of the corporate suit-guys are just pushing paper for a paycheck. Every corporate group I have been in seemed to have a couple of HAMS who knew how the thing is supposed to work, with a couple dozen more supervisory personnel hanging off his back.
When amateur radio operators report back that something is causing broadband interference, its not just a hobby thats getting trashed - its the entire RF environment that everyone uses thats getting trashed. An ambulance driver having trouble communicating on his radio is not in a position to pinpoint why his radio has degraded performance - he just knows he's having trouble contacting the hospital to let them know what's coming. We depend on people like the Amateur Radio operators to watch over the airwaves and bring anomalies out.
Sorry if I overreacted... if anyone even gets close to knocking a radio amateur, I start getting hot under the collar. In my mind, a radio amateur in a kindred tinkerer - one who knows how his stuff works.
People who speak from power get my obedience, but only people who speak from wisdom and knowledge get my respect.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
And, when I was a volunteer with Civil Air Patrol and sheriff's SAR groups in Oregon, yes, we did indeed spend our very own hard earned cash (probably around $1500 over 10 years), to purchase radio equipment that would be used for The Common Good.
Did we have organized procedures and methods, based on years of experience, science and analysis? Yes. Did we practice? Yes. Were we used when the local tri-county Motorola trunked radio system went down several years ago in Portland? Yes.
Believe it or not, there are quite a few people who do spend a not insignificant portion of their time to DEVELOP, PRACTICE and VOLUNTEER when disasters come up. I've been doing it for about 10 years now.
It's easy enough to check on...
/.?
So why do you say that? What have I said that has led you to believe I "got too much talk" and that I'm "stone fucking stupid"? Are you interested in actually interacting with people in this discusison or do you just get your rocks off acting like an anonymous dick on
Finkployd
Accidentally posted that as an AC.
Anyway, thanks.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana