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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."
Was Slashdot any better with its breathless stories about "The Myth of Radio Spectrum Interference", "The Illusion of Spectrum Scarcity", and so on?
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.
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.
Shocking. Simply shocking.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
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...
If you read the article you would have learned that hams aren't the only ones affected by the interference generated by BPL.
So if the fire department using 20th century radios is unable to communicate and your house burns down is that OK with you?
BPL is flawed technology trying to be rammed down people's throats. Those nerdy hams were just the first to see the wolf in sheep's clothing thats all.
Man Holmes
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.
You're funny.
Amateur radio operators (note: I am not one) are the first people to use their "lovably nerdy hobby" in practically every major emergency to coordinate resources and get help to where it's needed most. Amateur radio is far, far more than some little hobby. Making things difficult or impossible for this (small and growing smaller, sadly) portion of the population is not something to be taken lightly. They're not your neighbourhood vintage car restorer.
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.
HAM operators have proven their worth in emergency situations (like natural disasters), and the local HAM club here has a diesel generator ready to go in case we ever have something nasty like an earthquake or a tsunami. If the choice is between some technology that leaks RF like no tomorrow and keeping a "nerd hobby" that actually can do us good, then I'll pick the "nerd hobby" any day of the week.
But it ain't just HAM hobbiests. Your radio and emergency channels will be knocked out of the sky as well. Now maybe you can do without Easy Listening AM Gold, but while you've got your lovely broadband-over-power-line, you better hope your house doesn't catch fire or you or one of your loved ones has a heart attack, because guess what, you are, to put it bluntly, fucked.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's circling the drain, but not dead yet. Most hams and shortwave listeners would love for it to go away, as would anyone who has to use the HF frequencies.
Maybe we should just put in our own fiber.
That's something of a PR illusion perpetuated by the ARRL. Hams do sometimes have a role in well-coordinated emergency scenarios -- in those situations it's a ham's job to make sure information gets to where it needs to go, nothing more. That's important enough in and of itself, but a lot of hams tend to have a rather inflated opinion of themselves. Emergency-trained hams who think they're first responders as opposed to support personnel tend to cause more trouble than good.
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."
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?
No, I've been too busy making artificial diamonds so that I could connect them to my new GPU to squeeze out that extra percentage of performance, so that I could calculate just how many LoC per-second I could transfer using BPL.
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
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...
What about state police? or county firefighters? They have massive networks of repeaters setup across states so that all of the different emergency services can jump on and immediately ask for help from other agencies without having to go through a third party (dispatch). Many of these are HF and VHF simply because you need the range. These are the ones going to get hit by BPL interference.
Many state police agencies, and other state-level public agencies, use low-band VHF (30-50 MHz).
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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...
Hope your a cable/satelite user. Channels 2-5 are in the range discussed in the article.
Maybe you can watch your neighbors porn on channel 2.
The people who listen to broadcast radio at these freqs might also be a tad hostile towards the interferance also.
Any navigation and ship to shore services left in this freq range?
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
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.
Look at a frequency allocation chart. The ham bands make up a teeny tiny part of HF and low VHF. The rest is used for marine, aviation, broadcasting and loads of commercial purposes.
And BPL is not a 21st century technology. It's a misguided attempt to use 19th century technology (AC wires) for something they were never designed for, totally wiping out the HF spectrum in the process so it can't be used for anything else.
If you want broadband, use telephone wires, coax, or optical fibre. Or microwave dishes. Not random pieces of copper wire designed to carry 60 Hz power.
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
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
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
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
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]
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.
As an aside that may be of interest, we tried recently to use the Homeplug standard powerline system for some extra temporary PC's on an office LAN.
The concept is great, you connect an adapter to a port on your LAN switch and to your powerline via a normal plug, and then connect each PC to either a network card adpater to powerline, or a USB adapter to powerline. Instant network expansion with no extra wires.
It worked reasonably well, although a bit slow most of the time.
This was until a large construction project started next to our office building. From then on the only time that the PC's connected to our office LAN would have any access, was during the lunch-time shutdown of the equipment on the construction site and in the evenings when the work stopped.
We didnt use the system for very long after the connection was discovered.
It was quite a disappointment overall.
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
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/ .