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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."
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.
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.
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.
Um, do you have any idea what you're saying? BPL has been licensed to use frequencies from just above AM radio all the way up into the middle of TV Channel 5. (that's about 2MHz-80MHz) I don't know about you, but I watch TV with an antenna, and I already get tons of impulse/electrical noise on channels 2-6 as it is, not to mention an FM radio station on 88.3 trashes channel 6. It's already been proven that electrical devices that DON'T have BPL in them can cause massive amounts of interference to signals (try turning on a hair dryer or an electric paper shredder while watching the lower channels), and the introduction of BPL will only make this interference worse and constant. In addition, shortwave radio, which the rest of the world still uses, covers from 3MHz-30MHz.
And don't think that just because you have cable it's not going to affect you--cable leaks are well-known and proven to be problematic (see AVSForum.Com and the fiasco involving WBBM-DT on channel 3 in Chicago). Cable leaks allow for not only interference from OTA TV and FM station in the cable line (I've seen it before) but also allow for additional outside electrical noise. Regular electrical noise is one thing, but I've seen that and I've seen two-way interference, and let me tell you that two-way interference isn't fun (walkie-talkies). Instead of having just lines or dots in the picture, the whole picture goes away and the sound becomes that of the two-way.
You would think that since I live in a rural area that I'd be for this, and when I first heard about it, I was. But I think people I know would much rather be able to watch TV than have high-speed internet. (And yes there are a good number of people who still rely on OTA TV here)
Note how I didn't mention ham radio anywhere in there.
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.
Even though I don't like the idea of BPL, ARRL already said that Motorola's technology for BPL was 10 times better then the competitors. They say you can't even tell of any interference.
www.kb3juv.com
Ignorant and arrogant, just what I have come to expect from people who irrationally hate amateur radio for no real reason and are uninformed enough to understand the first thing about BPL other than what marketing drones have told them.
(1) The Amercian Radio Relay League (primary amateur radio group) supports this. http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2005/08/01/1/
(2) There has been SIGNIFICANT proof in almost every BPL trial that it corrupts the HF space. Thus the complaints registered to the FCC by the military, air traffic people, civil air patrol, coast guard, and amateur radio operators. The ham guys just happen to be the loudest on the net, the others carry much more weight and they don't like it either. Many BPL trials have failed for this reason.
we think that BPL is more important than HAM radio.
Yes, ignorant people who are mislead into thinking that BPL will somehow provide inexpensive broadband (it will not, it has proven to be more expensive than cable and dsl) to rural areas (again, harder to do than cable and dsl). Suprisingly, these people are not interested in technical arguments about frequencies and RF radiation becasue they don't understand the concepts.
So to recap, (1) Motorola's BPL technology mostly solves the technical problems that just about ALL HF spectrum operators have complained about, and has the support of amateur radio, and (2) it is still broadband "fools gold", but there are plenty of fools out there.
Finkployd
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).
On top of that, it has been shown that BPL is messed up by radio transmitters (to the point where its unusable), and because radio operators have rights to that part of the spectrum, and BPL bleeds over, that interference is not going anywhere.
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