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Motorola to Marry BPL and Wireless
prostoalex writes "Motorola is combining Intellon broadband-over-powerline chips with its own Canopy wireless systems to create an end-to-end broadband delivery system, where last mile delivery would be covered by wireless and broadband pipe would belong to electric utility. HomePlug AV standard will offer 200 Mbps downstream speed."
Vapourware!
The indiscriminate use of vulgar language is the linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker
This is, IMHO, the precursor as to what Internet delivery methods will be like, say, 20 years into the future. I believe that there will be a media of transport - such as powerlines - which is extremely widespread, even to remote areas. Piggybacked on top of this high-speed transport system will be cheap routers using whatever the latest wireless technology (think WiMax, but bigger). Thus, everyone who needs to can use the Internet anywhere, anytime, etc., maybe even providing for TV and the like. Perhaps it will even become a free utility?
Rumor is that wireless is already pregnant.
Consumer, now that got my attention. One wonders whether this will be or is yet another hyped pipe dream only to be left swirling down the big stinky vortex of lost wossnames.
Moo
Although homeplug is known to notch all the ham bands fairly well, it's still disturbing to many other HF spectrum users, such as SW listeners. MV lines are simply not designed to carry RF. Another issue...packet sniffing anyone?
Their Canopy components would need to get a lot cheaper for this to be affordable for residential broadband. Subscribers modules retail for over $500 now. Typical broadband cable modem or DSL modem costs around $100.
One hopes they're using a wireless technology immune to the racket broadcast by their power lines.
Anything to give me more choices for broadband is a good thing. Question is, what's the ping time going to be? Gotta be able to kill those damn Hibbies.
...all the complaints from the ham operators.
Just to head it off: we know you think it may corrupt your frequency, even though there has been no proof of that in existing BPL deployments. Secondly we don't care because we think that BPL is more important than HAM radio. Yeah yeah I know 9/11, cell comms were down, etc.
They advertise 200mbps at the speed now, kind of how when cable internet was first emerging it was advertised at 45mbps (which it is capable of under good conditions assuming you don't have a cap). However, we all know there is going to be a cap of some kind. Plus, due to potential RF interference issues, I wouldn't be surprised if BPL gets shot down by the amateur radio crowd.
I'm a big fan of the idea of faster internet access available to everybody. Especially those who live in rural areas. Nonetheless, given the success of power line networking up to this point, I'd say it's best to leave communications and power seperate.
Oh crap, my power went out... better call the electric company on my VoIP line and let them know! Oh crap, my internet's down too!!
australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
This will mess up important radio broadcasts for HAM's and emergency services.
Also don't believe it will be free, water isn't free anymore, and wharever speed it is theoretically capable of it will be capped mercillessly as they milk us peons for every last penny (dime).
Yet another fucking Cowboyneal Dupe
The Motorola BPL system, the Powerline LV Solution, entirely avoids transmitting data over medium-voltage (MV) lines (the ones commonly seen along roads). It uses the Motorola Canopy wireless system for this link. The Powerline LV Solution only sends data over the neighborhood low-voltage (LV) lines, after the transformer, using HomePlug. This greatly reduces the potential for interference. Further, the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL), the organization of amateur radio operators in the U.S., was consulted during its development, had its interference issues addressed, and supports the Motorola Powerline LV Solution.
Yeah, I realize the date keeps getting pushed back, but you're more than likely going to go dark in the traditional TV spectrum when the HD "revolution" is forced down your throat... eh?
Cue loud bitching and lawsuits by the incumbent phone companies in 5... 4... 3... 2...
I've been using Current's BPL service for about a year now and it's been pretty decent. Except for fluctuating access speeds (range from 500kbps to 2.5mbps down), it's been fairly reliable and cheaper than RoadRunner.
Dvorak: The idea of a personal Internet connection over power lines is preposterous. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,896590,00.asp /
Say hello to my little sig.
ARRL says this "should reduce the probability of interference to radio amateurs down to a level where it is reasonable to address the remaining interference on a case-by-case basis" if it's done right, that in theory it's "better engineering."
Comes down to, we who are ARRL members get to try to police another technological marvel and wonder against the companies that build things a little cheaper and a little worse than they promise.
I'm pretty dubious. Engineers, they can do things better, usually, than they're allowed to. Lawyers and Board of Directors members and top management, I suspect, are already doing business as competently and honestly as they possibly can, given the limitations of their roles.
Which is Enron, WorldCom, and the like.
The corporation -- remember, it's treated as a "legal "person" in our legal system -- is a "person" who lacks the requisite intellectual honesty to deal in a trustworthy way with physics, electronics, or even simple honest math.
No conscience, no brain, just a very sophisticated jellyfish with very long tentacles.
I evaluated the Canopy system about a year ago for a project at work. Motorola is a great RF company but they don't know IP networking very well. Some of the things I noticed were:
-administration via telnet & http, no ssh or https
-no way to filter administrative connections based on source IP address
-administrative access is based on a locally defined username & password on each access point and subscriber module. they can't authenticate admin sessions from a radius or tacacs server
-the encryption suite is proprietary. while they do use AES as the encryption algorithm, the overall protocol is not based on IPSec, WPA, WEP, or any other standard
-subscriber modules use a manufacturers default encryption key to authenticate to the access point. a key management server must be implemented use a different key.
I don't know if any of that has been fixed in the past year or not. I have no clue how they got this device FIPS 140-2 certified. Unsurprisingly the security through obscurity worshipping government agencies I deal with are completely ga-ga over the Canopy. They are in love with the idea that the Canopy runs on a non 802.11 a/b/g frequency (because obviously no bad hackers will ever find it).
Everyone always blames the HAMs for trying to block BPL from coming, but even if the infastructure is built, the interference from HAMs, CB, and HF Police could make parts of the system dead anyway.
They haven't solved the horrible interference problems caused by BPL yet, have they?
powerlines area great idea fulfilling the holy grail of reuse of resources, but when a tornado or thunderstorm blows through an area, it can wipe out a good portion of internet service for days vs. underground cable or satellite. Also, reuse has a downside usually, a single point of failure usually presents itself, which doesn't fall within the original philosophy of the internet.
The wireless future will belong to the first company to have a large coverage radius that does not have to be line of sight.
I work at a company that does Canopy wireless broadband and it works great, IF you can see the tower.
The problem with putting a canopy unit on an electric pole and feeding it in through the power lines, is that you would have to put an access point every two blocks to have the needed line of sight to feed the SM, which in turn pumps it into the house (unless your town happens to be in a desert or West Texas).
Those Canopy Access points are very expensive. Those canopy SMs are very expensive. Even using 900 MHz, which does better through trees, the sheer volume of Canopy access points needed to cover any fair amount of territory is going to be too cost prohibitive.
While it isn't perfect either, the closest thing to a cost effective wireless internet plan would be MESHing 802.11 using custom built equipment.
See: http://www.locustworld.com/
I went and checked out a guy who had a small town MESHed with 802.11 using Locustworld.com software and access points he built himself for around 500.00 or less. He had almost 100 customers working nice, some even through moderate tree coverage. I will say that what he was doing worked better than our Canopy setup...which has tens of thousands of dollars tied up in equipment. And the advantage to this is, if the customers are close enough, you don't have to have a subscriber module at the customer's house that cost 400.00 a piece.
I say the only people making money with Motorola Canopy are the few WISPs in fantastic locations...and Motorola!
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
I agree totally, I was up in Schaumburg a year ago to evaluate Canopy (I work for a VAR of theirs). I found the product to be balky, overly sensnsitive to multipath interference, using an antiquated modulation scheme and requiring rather large reflector antennas to get the signal more than a few miles. The technology is there. I also work with similar products from other manufacturers who can give a good 10-20 mile radio shot up to 155 Mbps. Motorola has been doing it's best to come up with more marketing and applications uses for Canopy. In the building, talking to their folks you can feel their desperation.
Tisha Hayes
"Wireless" is exactly the biggest problem with BPL: its RF radiation noise interferes with other equipment nearby. It might even have health effects, with high electric field fluxes, as have been reported in trials. I guess Motorola is enterprising in making a virtue of necessity, but they should also advertise the "free tanning spas" they'd install throughout our towns, if only appreciable by bees and Martians.
--
make install -not war
Congrats to the happy trio!
And baby makes four!
As I mentioned in an above post, unless the houses are in a great location, you would have to have a large number of access points to reach these SMs mounted on posts.
Even with 900 Mhz, you still have line of sight issues unless you are very close to the access point. Putting the SM on a telephone post helps the problem, but it does not solve the problem because in many cases the trees are still higher than the pole. The only real-world solution is more access points, that would have to mounted very high, and in ***great locations***.
These access points are what 1000.00? 1500.00? And you still have to feed these with either some type of backhaul equipment or backend Internet connection. Motorola backhaul equipment is more expensive than the access points. And how many customers would you have to sign up to pay for business DSL, ISDN or T1 at feed a large number Access points geographically spread out?
I think the Motorola over power lines thing looks good, but it is actually a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
If ham radio is such a vital field of endeavor, how come EVERY ham I know is an 80-something crusty old putz who "built my first crystal set from a Quaker Oats box and wire I unwound from the motor out of an old washing machine . Back then, Nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. You'd say "Give me five...zzzzzzz" Huh? What? What was I saying? Damnit, stop stepping on my oxygen tube!! You damned kids..."
Face it, guys. no one cares about those new-fangled wireless doohickeys any more. At least not for voice.
Will someone from Intellon PLEASE call Central Florida Electric Coop (like we're only 60 miles away up here) and get them to run field trials of this. There are many places out here in the woods where Helllsouth is thumbing their collective nose at customers screaming for DSL. If the coop sees a good reason to server their members (not just customers, we are all members of the coop) I think this could be a great thing. Just as long as the hardware can survive a typical season of Florida lightning storms lol.
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
A rule of thumb: carrier frequency should be an order of magnitude larger than the bandwidth. If your data rate is 9600 bps, you could get away with using high-frequency radio waves that do the "curve over the horizon" thing very well. Broadband it isn't. If your data rate is closer to 1 mega-bit per second, you're talking 10 mhz carier and you're going to piss off a lot of necessary services. (would still make it over the horizon) But you'd only have one subscriber per footprint at a data rate exceeded by most cable services by factors of 2 or 3.
Ok so for a small town under a single footprint (say 1000 customers ) with cable-comparable access, minimum carrier frequency is 3*10^(3+6)~ 3 ghz. (and remember that the sidebands are going to interfere with quite a few services.)
Big footprints aren't good for wireless. small "cells" are the best option, using the wireless link for the *last* mile allows say.. mobile phones.. to be useful and also plentiful.
Frequencies that are only effective "line-of-sight" are very useful for avoiding interfering with other services. In addition wavelengths are very short so footprint shaping via directional antennas becomes an option. An array of directional cells on a single tower has more capacity for instance than a single omnidirectional cell tower.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If this pans out, and a major company is saying it will, then this is a BIG deal.
Funny, though, on what is supposedly the primary technophile site in the world, how few comments there are here.
And funny how many of the comments are negative.
And the naysaying comments are not well thought out or persuasive.
WTF?
Is everyone here a ham radio person or a lobbyist for the telcos, or what?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
True, but if you are limited to line of sight, and, due to the geographical location, you can only get three customers off of an access point, it isn't financially viable to offer service. You have a lot of expenses involved with this. The backend, tower rent, back hauls, routing equipment, it all adds up quick. The only way it is going to be profitable is to sign up more people off of that expensive access point. And you can't do that with line of sight technology, unless, as noted, you just happen to end up in a fantastic location (e.g. you live on a mountain slope with few trees, put the access points at the top of the mountain, and sign up 100 customers who all just happen to be line of sight down below).
I have a friend who used to work with me. He left and formed his own wireless Net company using 900 Mhz, which is the best option for commercial near-line-of-sight equipment there is on the market right now in the unlicensed spectrum. Last week he had an access point, two backhauls, and some routing equipment hit by lightening. He lost approx. 4000.00 worth of equipment. Luckily, he said, he only had three customers going off of that access point. 4000.00 to get 3 customers? True he hasn't been going that long, and maybe could get more, but what he is experiencing is what I have seen as well...with the limited coverage area of line of sight technology, you can't build a customer base big enough to pay for the equipment (with a few exceptions, of course). It looks like 900 Mhz is working about two miles through light tree coverage (and by light, I mean two or three rows of trees between the access point and the SM. Throw a hill or a building in the way, and you can forget about it).
I'm not going to sit here and say that nobody is making money on wireless Internet. What I am going to say is that the people that are making the REAL money out of it is the companies selling all the equipment that half-ass works in the real world. And buddy, Motorola has made a mint off of its expensive Canopy equipment.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
And it will take the next two weeks for you to realize it was a waste of both your and our time.
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
Sending signals over unshielded cables is always a bad idea. But sending them over something as unsuitable as power lines, with their horrendous impedance mismatches, is a crime against nature. The level of man-made radio noise on this planet will rise to unprecedented levels.
when it's available in my neighborhood and at a price point equal to or less than the $29.95 I'm paying now for 3Mbps DSL (and not getting 3Mbps, but that's another story.)
I like the idea, but last I heard Internet over public powerline was less than a proven concept, let alone a product (not counting the home powerline systems). Particularly at 200Mbps.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Ok I see your point, Mine was that it is a tradeoff between line-of-sight and bandwidth. The same solution that works for Aspen, CO is not appropriate for downtown Manhattan
Implicit was my assumption that any system capable of servicing a profitable number of users at a data rate comparable to existing landline systems will require a carrier frequency that is line of sight anyway but that there are some benefits to that tradeoff that aren't readily apparant. One is antenna size, especially for directional antennas.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Seems like this an attempt to overcome "the last mile" problem by some player not the telco or cable company. Like the power company. Maybe the wireless could overcome the last mile as that's what it barely able to do anyway. But most major trafic after that must go fiber anyway. That even they would have to rent.