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Motorola to Marry BPL and Wireless

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the you-may-kiss-the-network dept.

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."

12 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Future Internet delivery by treff89 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Future Internet delivery by JrbM689 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, because when gas and electric became "utilities" prices plummeted and we've been enjoying extremely inexpensive fuel ever since! Thank goodness for capitalism

    2. Re:Future Internet delivery by mwilliamson · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ok, by bitching about BPL interference aside, it's still going to be a big collision domain. (think ethernet hub) If you have users of any density, you'd still have to segment up the powerlines and feed each segement with fiber separately. This just isn't economically viable in dense areas. Powerlines are _not_ the future of information transport.

    3. Re:Future Internet delivery by Mattygfunk1 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Perhaps it will even become a free utility?

      Someone always pays, and that would still be you every week. You just wouldn't need your credit card.

      __
      Funny video clips and flash games
    4. Re:Future Internet delivery by fireboy1919 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, you'd have to do that somewhere around the step down transformers that deliver the last mile...isn't there something there that you could tie into?

      Oh, right.

      There's a large, weather-proof step-down transformer that you could put a fiber-to-AC based router into.

      Except when you don't because you're sending the signal out to reach two people out on the ranch. Fortunately, there's a whole hierarchy of the things, and you could put your switch at whatever level of the hierarchy is feasible for sustainable service.

      Remember, we're talking about what to do about the last mile. If you've got so many people that they're starting to have collisions, you can afford to put in more routers. This really addresses the problem of what to do when you don't.

      --
      Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
  2. Marry? by ikkonoishi · · Score: 5, Funny

    Rumor is that wireless is already pregnant.

  3. Too Expensive by pcjunky · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Too Expensive by sidney · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can get them for $280 each in lots of 25 which could put the price in the range for an ISP to offer at cost with a one year contract lock in (making their profit on the ISP service). And as with all electronics, the price will only get cheaper as the technology advances and as the production volume goes up if and when this becomes a popular consumer technology.

  4. not really 200mbps by jleq · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. ARRL supports it! by dtmos · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:Here come... by finkployd · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  7. Re:Reviewed Canopy for work a year ago by ar32h · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First off, some of your canopy info pages have proven helpful to me in the past, thank you.

    I've run CNUT on Windows and Ubuntu (they only "support" Windows and RHEL.)
    I just finished updating a few thousand units using CNUT on Ubuntu. 0 units bricked or requiring end user intervention to recover. Motorola has been very good about replacing the few units that have died on us.

    You can still upgrade the units without CNUT, the CNUT .pkg files are just ZIP files with all the firmware images and a manifest. Following the old instructions worked well the one time I tried it for the sake of curiosity.

    CNUT is just a Java front-end to a bunch of perl scripts that script the original update process. They even packaged up their perl bits in a tidy little module. You should be able to make CNUT run wherever Java and perl run.

    I would not run any Canopy Firmware older than 6.1, and you should have a really good reason to not be running 7.0.7 or 7.2.9.

    You should not have the management interface on a routed subnet. If you are that paranoid, turn on VLAN support and change the management VLAN. The management interface and daemons have a number of little quirks. None of them have caused any problems for us since we a) use private IP space for management and b) keep the management interface on a management VLAN.

    The AES unit uses a more powerful FPGA which costs a bit more. Granted that is probably not enough to account for the price difference.

    You can control some (SNMP) administrative access by subnet. It is

    They provide a access control server that is a bit crude, but it has good API docs and does what we want it to, which is control access and limit bandwidth.

    I'd like to see a RADIUS client as much as the next guy, but BAM works fine and has a well documented database schema and SOAP interface.

    If you are truly paranoid, get the AES unit and use the reset plug to disable the management interface and turn it into a dumb bridge.

    It is trivial to access a Canopy network if the network was thrown up in 15 minutes.
    It can also be virtually impossible to access if the designer has implemented a VLAN and subnet segregated network, is using BAM, turns off AP Eval, etc.

    In the end, I agree that their RF side is good and the code side could use some work. In practice, their code quirks are avoided anyway by using good practices elsewhere.

    The Canopy radios are neat little software radios (the only difference between them is the size of the onboard antenna and software load.) I can't wait for someone to figure out how to reprogram them for some other purpose (802.11 or TV tuner or something.)