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Texas to Get Broadband Over Power Lines
mrops writes "CNet is reporting that Texas will soon be getting broadband over power lines. From the article, "Broadband service over power lines (BPL) is not a new technology. People have been experimenting with building communication networks over power lines since the 1950s. But it hasn't caught on due to its low speed, low functionality and high development cost." Unfortunately this technology matured a bit too late and has been subdued by recent rush of wi-fi products. The technology has a lot of potential and wi-fi black zones are not an issue in simple home setups."
This isn't just a new ISP. More importantly, this technology will allow the Texas' power corporations to monitor their power grid and be alerted immediately in the case of failures. Additionally, this technology could be used to take meter readings and remotely disable power to non-paying customers. A nice side benefit is that the company can offer internet access. What this all translates into is a company that can offer power at a reduced price to its consumer, because of the associated cost savings and secondary revenue stream.
How can they use IP to monitor health, when a circuit is completely out? If the electricity isn't getting through, how is the network traffic? Or, are they using negative logic?
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
Do you guys think that the standard Broadband companies, (DSL and cable providers for example) will lobby the US government for any regualtions/restrictions against this new way of providing broadband?
This is a serious question, I am unfamiliar with how the broadband system works in america.
Dose this mean that there will be brownouts whenever there is a high volume of trafic on the system?
Power over Wireless, call it 802.11P or something similar. Imagine a time where we no longer need power cords, plugs or even power poles. I know this is probably a dream that won't come to pass anytime soon, yet still it facinates me as a possibility. Too bad the inventors keep vaporizing themselves...
I am a lineman for the county.
And I've heard about SCO
I'm lookin' at a Sun, I see another overload.
I hear you trolling in the wire.
I can see RMS whine.
And a slashdotting in Houston,
Will saturate the line.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's already quite common in countries like China.
Theyve been trying to do this since there were, what two computers on earth? the only other communication back then was phones, which has been on telephone poles since........ I know its not the same, but still...not much new here.
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
While Wifi and WiMAX are what most expect to be the future, how long will it be before small rural towns are 100% accounted for? If the goal is to give EVERYONE the option of having internet access in their town, BPL is probably the most intelligent option.
With the power infrastructer already in place, it should be much less costly to implement this type of service to people outside of the large cities. I applaud Texas for this decision and hope to see more states follow in their footsteps. The "WI-'s" will take care of the big cities first, but what about everyone else?
If the problem is getting everyone connected, then this is the solution.
The broadband-over-oil-pipeline lobby will kill this dead.
How does this work in an apartment complex where the electricity costs are rolled into rent? My flat is an old house that's been broken up into four units. The two lowers are on the same service for steam, water, and electricity. The cost of heat, water, and electricity are part of my rent. Can the bill for service be seperated from the electric bill (which goes to my landlord)?
Wireless power has already come and gone... over a century ago!
I don't respond to AC's.
I thought the problem with IP on power lines is that power lines are really just large unshielded antennas. The IP traffic on them runs a frequencies that will jam Ham and other important radio traffic like air traffic control radio. Has Texas solved this problem or is it Damn The Ham!
Fiber-to-the-hut is a little more simple to implement!
The usage of BPL is inherently going to cause signal noise around the 30 MHz range, where quite a bit of ameteur radio is found. The BPL technology is routing signals over an UNSHIELDED wire, which unlike telephone cable, radiates the signal outwards. This means that the signal will be leaked into the airwaves and, if there is enough concentration of the signals, will disrupt or all togeather drown out any ameteur radio broadcasts.
How many years have they been "testing" this, really?
Internet over power lines in Texas is just like "Duke Nukem Forever".
We keep hearing great things about it, but it never materializes.
Just get it done and *then* lets hear some news about it.
BPL is bad for HAM. Shame on Texas!
(Tons of reference Links)
http://www.w4ovh.net/bplinfo.htm
(Other Links)
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BPLandHamRadio/
Required reading for internet skeptics
I was happy to see this article paid some attention to the technical hurdles - namely interference - that BPL poses. Though I'm a little upset to see in the article that, "experts say these issues have been worked out and that interference is no longer a problem." This is simply not true. I'd love to know who their experts are.
As a radio hobbyist and student in electrical engineering, I feel this potential is really more of a certainty - its fundamental to the technology. It's not just a little kink to be worked out. That said, I certainly see nothing wrong with broadband over power lines (BPL) being given a chance to succeed or fail on its own merits, under sensible and objective oversight by the Federal Communications Commission. Unfortunately, the Commission is falling down on the job. The FCC has allowed BPL to operate under Part 15 of the FCC rules. These are the rules you often see printed on the back of remote controls, calculators or digital alarm clocks. They say simply that the device can't be used if it causes interference, and that it is afforded no protection from interference from other devices.
The big difference between an alarm clock and BPL should be pretty obvious. Small electronics are very low power, localized, and operate intermittently. Most of them shouldn't be emitting radio waves at all. BPL, on the other hand, works by injecting a strong radio signal into power lines (read: antennas). It operates over a wide area, with high power, 24 hours a day. Part 15 was never designed to deal with a system like this. Cable TV, for example, is governed by a very strict and specific set of regulations to ensure non-interference.
For Part 15 to work, there really needs to be a pretty reasonable expectation that devices don't pose any real risk before they're released into the wild. Such an expectation might be established through field tests or studies. Several such studies have been conducted, but since the outcomes weren't too favorable, the Commission has largely ignored them, and has contented itself by simply amending Part 15 to require that BPL operators have the capability to apply "mitigation techniques" to reduce, but not eliminate, interference after the fact.
But if those don't provide an adequate solution, then what? I don't think for a second that a BPL provider, with millions of dollars riding on its service, will just shut down its operations as the rules would seem to require. More likely, responses would range somewhere from outright denial of the problem, to definitional arguments over what constitutes "harmful interference." Such arguments could drag on for years. In fact, this is already happening in Manassas, VA and has been for some time.
This sort of deploy first, clean up the mess later strategy is a ridiculous way to allow an industry to operate. The rationalization seems to be that BPL is just too "exciting" a technology to be hindered with the gravity of sound technical analysis, and that it must be deployed even if it means compromising the Commission's obligation to protect licensed spectrum users from interference. But an effective Commission can't let catchy marketing monopolize its judgment.
Just seeing packets with a high hop-count would be a clue that something was wrong with the network - and that's just the absolute simplest example I can think of. A power network monitored by snmp? Sounds pretty robust to me.
Just an example; when Iraq was invaded, an attempt was made to disable all command and communication structures. This effort was not completely successful, as it proved impossible to disable all TCP/IP network connectivity - the network kept re-routing around damaged nodes, continuing to provide communication between those nodes which were still up. Our own military, partially foiled by technology they themselves helped to create! Would that qualify as 'ironic'?
Basically an outgrowth of those same "use your house's wiring to control appliances/install an intercom/etc." articles we used to see in "Popular Electronics."
This technology is already available in several european countries. A company in France offers plugs which allow customers to plug in an electrical appliance, or a tv set (for interactive TV), or a modem (for broadband). In most places, the hurdles are legal more than they are technical. In Denmark, for instance, the national monopoly telecom has so far succeeded in keeping the electricity companies out of the broadband business.
just what we need, more people on AOL. Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaawwwwwww w!!!!!!!!!!! hey maw! lookie over here! /toothless grin/ you gots mail!
...you could have your knobs and antennas and all that fun gear, but packetize the output and route it over your cheap broadband.
At some point, old tech has to make way for new.
How dependent on line quality is this deployment going to be? I've heard about broadband over powerline before, but my impression was that it was very dependent on the quality of the physical infrastructure (i.e. old cables = spotty transfer). Does anyone know how true this is?
NeverEndingBillboard.com
NeverEndingBillboard.com
What about security issues? What if I ping of death a local power company because I am directly connected to them? Couldn't this open the door to 'hackers' being able to screw with power transfer? Cable and DSL are more refined technologies which have security built in, but just standard power could be scary.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Can they do PoE on that;)
Except it's most likely fiber to a local wifi hotspot and your house is served via 802.11 modes. Using fiber vs a modulated ac signal is preferable since it requires less power and reduces the interference potential to licensed services.
OTOH, BPL is another way for a utility co to get more taxpayer money for this infrastructure. Monitoring their equipment is a red-herring, I think.
Will you be serviced? Are you sure? Texans are paying for it. If it fails for economic reasons the Texas taxpayers still pay for it.
The frequencies thay 802.11 stuff uses is secondary to the amateur allocation, IIRC. With enough power a licensed ham operator can get on, hold a QSO and the wifi users must vacate the frequency until the hams are done.
Fiber (almost) to the curb is nice, and the wifi is a nice way to finish it out.
- KD5ZEF
So, um, excuse my ignorance - but does this mean that the "infrastructure" is now on the net? Shutting down meters? Checking failures?
It sure sounds like it.
If true, I give it exactly 30 days before someone has figured out some "fun" things to do with their connection.
Anything that transmits in the same general band as the bitstream on the powerlines is in serious trouble.
Breaking News!!! Texas is planning to get Power over the sweat of its countless rednecks, which in turn will be used for data transmission.
Tesla sold Hearst on backing his power transmition system by telling him it was a way for mass communications. The communications were secondary to Tesla who was more interested it providing free power. Hearst pulled backing and had the tower demolished when he found out what Tesla was really up to. It was much like radio. Tesla designed the equipment for remote control and considered communications a secondary issue.
Is this technology just going to provide redundant coverage for cities, where consumers already have 20 choices, or will it reach into the rural boonies? One of my offices here in Texas is 10 miles from the nearest town, and it might as well be 1982 as far as connectivity is concerned. This article doesn't provide any clue.
It's much better than ham radio for chatting to people around the world. And if voice is important to you, try the phone.
"How many professions and "hobbies" have become obsolete because of advances in technology?"
Don't try to start flames.
I think Telsa had something that could transmit power wirelessly at least in a demonstration. According to the wiki article it was over to lite up a vacuum tube.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telsa
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
No indication on whether the solution is to say that "Ham" is a problem in pork-producing states, and as long as BPL doesn't interfere with "Beef" or "Oil", Texas is ok with it... or whether there are actual technical solutions of some sort.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
While interference is an issue, it is not the issue that has prevented us from doing this. I do not see anything that shows they have solved the fundamental issue. In the US, the power lines in your neighborhood are typically carrying 220 volts, which is more efficient than carrying 110, which is what your house eats. Those great big ugly transformers you see on every other pole are used to step the voltage down to 110 so your Xbox doesn't light on fire (note: the Xbox 360 has other means for accomplishing this) Unfortunately, the big transformer has a nasty side-effect: It acts as a low-pass filter on the power. This is a good thing if you want clean power. It is a bad thing if you are trying to carry a high-frequency wave of data on top of the 60-cycle hummer. The data is stripped off by the transformer. Since we developed the 'every other house' transformer model for the most part in the US, this means you might be able to talk to one of your neighbors. In Europe, they use a different model, a transformer for every block, so they have a less severe problem, but a problem none the less. This is why you can use your internal AC wiring for phones and stuff, but not get very far outside, I am not aware of how they have eliminated this problem.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
Unfortunately, every now and then, the microwave satellite fried part of your city.
Assuming this implemented properly (50-50 chance) this could kick ass. Hopefully this will mean lower prices, more availability (small wifi access point into any into any electrical outlet, for laptop use anywhere) and higher speeds. I wonder what a DOS attack would do?
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Somebody else posted the idea that TCP/IP fixes stuff. Sure, if you have alternate routes available, IP can find them, and TCP can adjust traffic rates to match available capacity, but if your physical topology doesn't provide alternate routes, you're still isolated by equipment failures. Probably the higher-powered portions of a power distribution network have redundant routes, but the smaller feeder networks are more likely to be tree-structured, so there'll be limits on what parts can actually reroute around failures. The US telephone networks make extensive use of satellites for equipment monitoring - the overall data rates don't need to be very high, but the connectivity needs to be available when the underlying network is down. If the powerline folks want to get fancy, they could add some out-of-band monitoring in critical sections as well - but BPL already gives them a lot more information than they had before.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
In Soviet Russia,
if you can't get broadband over power lines to customers,
you get customers over power lines to broadband.
Verizon's FIOS is what I'm waiting for. Can't wait till they deploy it in Michigan.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
I'm out here in rural USA, and the best we can get is 10Mbps DSL. Our old fashioned telco is just now starting to roll out Fiber to the Premise.
It's exciting to see that the power company can jump in and give them some competition. I can't figure out why the local power company hasn't jumped all over this...
Because you are kidding yourself if you think it stops at 240 volts (internal US voltage is actually 120 nominal). The further back you trace it, the higher the voltage goes. There's just larger and larger transformers until it finally hits the mains lines. Those are voltages in the 5 digits. Europe works the same way. In fact, in either country you will find buildings with higher voltage feeds and their own transformers. We have two massive ones out back, not sure what voltage feeds in, but it's over 1000 volts.
So my guess is they've figured out a way to get data through the transformers. I don't know how, not my field, but the US's 240-120 conversion is no big deal compared to the larger step downs further up the chain.
I expect it'll be about as easy to play with the meters from the Internet as breaking into a telco's ATM network from the Internet.
During WWII, hams were not allowed to transmit "on the air", but limited power "carrier current" transmittion was allowed and appears to have been popular given the construction projects I recall from reading the 1944 ARRL handbook in our small town library. This operation was, as I recall, around 150 KHz and sometimes, depending on the location of transformers, could cover a few miles.
I don't see why this miserable technology hasn't died a natural death. It's like the monster in the movies that just won't quite die. Power lines are designed to carry power and become antennas at higher frequencies. It's as simple as that.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I got my 800 watt amp ready just in case I'm communicating with someone who's deafened by their nearby BPL. I sure hope this "new BPL" is notched and stays out of the ham bands, but I'll crank it up till I'm heard if need be. I hate running lots of power and normally keep it to 100 watts, but I'll keep the amp ready to go.
- kc5cqm -
Okay, this may sound stupid coming from someone that runs an electronics website, but is there a security risk of having your communications read through the radio waves that may be generated from the high voltage power lines?
This is already being done by many HAMs. It's called IRLP.
Shocking news!
(Sorry... couldn't help myself...)
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Texas' "Broadband Over Pistols" (BOP) idea hopelessly backfired, and was shot full of holes.
Hate mail goes here folks.
hi mom!
Can someone please explain to me what the Brooklyn Public Library has to do with this?
Laughter is the best medicine, but in certain situations the Heimlich maneuver may be more appropriate.
Just to show how inept our government officials are, do a google on "Willian Luke Stewart"
This guy spun a a big sack of BS of how his company (Mediafusion) could provide billion plus giga bits over ordinary power wires. Now our administration has modified part 15 (to the point of uselessness), ignored ITU agreements and is ignoring valid interference complaints from BPL deployments. BPL is the king of a cardboard, duct tape and bailing wire Internet delivery method that should of NEVER gotten off the ground. A person with ANY reasonable engineering skills would not even consider this abortion. When the commission was presented with evidence from the NTIA about the interference problems BPL would create they were met with, "So what, don't confuse us with all this technical mumbo jumbo, find a way to accommodate it, our minds are already made up".
To say the least I have no confidence in our FCC commissioners let alone other government officials to do their jobs properly.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
The BPL announcemen reminds me of something I once read about Houston and public works projects. I remember reading about some other very large technologically infeasible boondoggle that someone put together in Houston during the 1950's for two way television. It was too expensive and not profitable, but they built it anyways with the idea that is you build they will come. As I recall they even got funding from the state to wire the schools for remote teaching and the roads for traffic monitoring. Problem is that the two way schools were worthless, it was cheaper at the time to hire more teachers and highway monitoring was useless without the means for getting feedback to the commuters. I think they even gave this company all the first rights for utility right of way which can to bite them in the ass when cable came into being. As I recall, the company became a poorly operated cable company that through it's connections to the Houston community and govenment, put enough fiber in the ground to light up each corporation 100 times over. Yeah, this BPL stuff will get built at the taxpayers expense. Will it work, well I am not sure that is really a fair question at this time :-)
Our city has BPL and I can tell you what the solution looks like. It's a box/clip thing that looks like it is screwed/fastened onto the primary wire. From there it has a little cable that goes down "around" the transformer to another box. The city is literaly festooned with these fucking things. I mean, the power poles look bad enough and we have to add more shit to them.
What's going to be really awesome is when you're posting something unflattering on /. about one of the telco's getting involved in BPL, and then as soon as you hit submit, your lights go out, and 5 minutes later the feds barge in and take you away to gitmo.
but seriously, i guess on one hand it would be nice to have fewer lines and cables running around everywhere. on the other hand, if someone's digging without a license and accidentally slices through one of these puppies, a neighborhood goes dark, and the phones are out, and and... hopefully redundancy could take care of this kind of problem.
apparently you're not familiar with TXU.
this is the same company that bills you on "estimated" usage for gas/electric which can be hundreds of dollars higher than actual usage every month. they've been hiking rates non stop the past 20 years and just asked for a 47% rate hike.
they're offloading the cost of this development by leasing the broadband connection out to a 3rd party. they wont spend much and the rates WILL go up.
Why not? These dinosaurs have been sponging up giant swathes of the spectrum for far too long. If the want to talk to someone on the other side of the world they can use Skype like normal people. As for the talk of "cranking up the amp", go ahead, it's not like the power company will complain...
Main reason broadband over power lines failed in Europe was that there is a limitation that comes from topology of out power lines, expecially problems with many local "u/i transform" stations, in some "bad" cases (and very common here) such powerline topological mis-configuration virtually prohibits from usage of these networks. Power companies started to offer that connection about a year ago, but it turned out that only 10% of ppl can actually be connected, because of long distance or bad "last mile" power lines alignment.
At the moment cable-tv-modem ISPs are winners overhere, I personally switched from 0.5MBit ADSL to 4MBit cable modem (40 euro month!!!) and I am very happy now. With the latest Motorola Cable Modem and ASUS G550 switch/wifi runs my home internet really nice and fast (my company network feels like on a modem connection now). I also discovered the thing i hated most on ADSL, the bad multi connection handling (jamming the connection out with bittorrent, increased pings etc.) that disappeared on cable modem.
Remember all the shit you hams gave us CBers back in the day?
What goes around, comes around! Now it's your turn to get your hobby destroyed by an oppressive big brother!
Right here in River City!
Does this mean The Chair now has broadband ?
Can it be used as a wireless access point?
Being that Coax cable runs along the same polls that power and telco lines do, I'm curious if crosstalk will now be an issue and thus cause massive ingress on the cable. Generally, they should be quad shielded, but running the lengths togeather from poll to poll as got to add up....
Life is not for the lazy.
Austin, TX - The Department of Highways has just announced that it will be using public highways to ferment fertilizer.
"This opens up a whole new market to us." M. Fitzal Smellhell, Deputy Director of the Department of Highways said. "We figure that by the end of 2006, we'll be producing nearly one third of all the fertilizer used in Texas."
Opponents claim that this will making driving hazardous, and could have a serious effect on neighboring communities.
Smellhell rejected these complaints. "There's always somebody who wants to stand in the way of progress. But we've studied this very carefully. The Ministry of Disturbed Maniacal Plans in Khazakstan has been doing this for years, and there have been no complaints that we're aware of."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well, at my previous place of employment we had radio frequency welding machines (shielded), which were capable of lighting a flourescent light from a few feet away. Without the shielding, I'm positive they'd light a bulb from 20+ feet away.
...but could they at least broadcast the current time and date somehow so that VCRs, microwaves, alarm clocks, etc. can set/sync their own clocks automatically?
If this idea really takes off appliance manufacturers could build servers into their products, and be online whenever the device is plugged in. Your TV could be monitored, radio, DVD player, almost anything plugged in could be sending information of unspecified content out to the wild internet. Would the government require certain devices to be accessible to them? How about not needing a court order to turn your TV into a secret microphone because they think you are a possible terrorist? -AK
I live in eastern PA (Lehigh Valley Area) and was on the local trial of BPL.
;-).
Our power company, PPL, built up a network about a year ago that promised BPL at 1.5mbps symmetric for everyone. I actually got in on the first trials of the service... and it simply sucked. Firstly and foremostly, the speeds NEVER got ANYWHERE near 1.5mbps... in either direction... at any time of day. About half of the system was based on 802.11x wireless, which is what got the signal from the medium voltage lines (the ones that feed the transformers that get the power down to 110v) to the homes. This was done because otherwise, they would need a device to jump over every transformer, since the signal for BPL doesn't survive otherwise. So, as I was wardriving, I noticed a VERY big bunch of PPLBroadbandxxxxxx APs in the area, which I suspect caused part of the problem: too much signal, not enough bandwidth.
Other things I noticed (but were logical design decisions made by the system builders, not inherent limitations in the technology) include:
- Throttling of ICMP, which totally screwed with any traceroute or ping measurement when troubleshooting
- Use of unroutable IP space for end customers
- Authentication of end users not by the BPL modem's MAC (like cable modems work), but by the MAC of the first device behind it... a real headache for those of use switching out devices on a regular basis
All in all, BPL is one of those things that sounds good on paper, but is absolutely abysmal in practice. If I were to put my money on a future last-mile broadband technology, it would have to be DSL (newer DSL variations allow much greater distances from CO to demarc) or long-range wireless (WiMAX, low orbit satellite, 4G cellular, etc).
Just for the record, about a month ago, PPL gave up, took down all of their equipment and went home. I suspect it's being used down in Texas about now
-------------------------
It is the monkied monkey that monkies with another monkey's monkey. Monkey.
Anyone remember him? He supposedly invented some way to turn the magnetic field around powerlines into a MASER. No RFI issues at all. I even recall some news about him testing this stuff with TXU back in 2000.
http://www.hyperwires.com/Pages/hw-pr01.htm
Data on fibre, power on powerlines. If you don't have fibre for data, lay more fibre. Don't be lazy.
-Xen
So what you're saying is, that in addition to the telco monopoly and the cableco monopoly, I now get a choice of a powerco monopoly for my internet? When are people going to learn that these monopolies are harmful to competition?!?!
</sarcasm>
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
- just wait until some of those Texas boyz (and Interstate truckers) crank up 1,500W on 10M or another ham band: BYE BYE BPL CONNECTIONS!
- and you thought script kiddies were bad? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! just wait until BPL users hook up with the QRO 11-meter crowd!
73!
I am way to young to car what HAM radio is. But the fact that Satellite is not in front of the word radio, I don't care about it. Screw HAM Radio if another compeditor to broadband internet can enter the market.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I was involved with a project back in early 2002 that was trying to pitch "smart" power meters to the city of Garland, TX. These meters would take a reading every six seconds and report the measurements back to a central station for analysis. The network used to report the readings wasn't quite worked out, so the project never made it off the ground, but BPL was seen as the logical implementation eventually.
The advertised purpose of the meters was to create a power use profile for each household so a homeowner could better use offpeak power rates. The meter could interface with smart appliances to control their activation, run them when the power was cheap.
But that's not all the meters could do. Here's where the federal government comes in. One of our consultants had contacts in the law enforcement community. Through these contacts he pitched some uses of the meters to a few agencies. The data could be used to spot unusual power usage patterns. The DEA was interested in spotting the signature of plant incubator lights. The FBI was just generally interested. I even heard that NSA expressed interest, but that was only a rumor. Considering the current news and the fact the NSA was given more license to spy domestically around that time, maybe it was more than rumor.
That particular project never made it out of the planning stage, but I'm sure those agencies maintained their interest...
Cue Ballmer: "I'm going to FUCKING KILL SLASHDOT!"
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
BPL has a big side-effect. It will pollute the SW bands. Experiments in germany and austria did show that short-wave reception in the vicinity of BPL power lines is impossible. Search for the city of Linz BPL ISP, which seems to have been stopped in court because of much too high emission in the SW bands. BPL does work in the short-wave frequency region, and the long unshielded power lines make up for a very good antenna. BPL is having fierce opposition by HAM's and SW-Listeners. STOP BPL !
Do what I did. Move "upstream" from a power company supervisor. Last winter a tree fell during a storm and took out both power and phone lines. The power company was out at 8am Monday morning and had it fixed by noon, three trucks and 6 guys. (Of course only two guys were working, the other four sat in the trucks, reading newspapers and drinking coffee.)
The phone company sent one guy out on Thursday afternoon.
From lectures I've seen, from what I understand, is that Tesla did work it out feasably for the very large scale. He envisioned having merely 4 giant coils to provide safe, wireless power for the entire planet. The problem was regulation. Using a Tesla coil to distribute power, there is no way for the power co. to charge for it... so the power co.s conspired against his brillient ideas. Even today... nearly all of Tesla's patents are designated top secret by our govenment. They would have us believe it is for our own protection, but it is suggested that it is to keep the power companies in business with their natural monopolies.
The Admin and the Engineer
Sure, TCP/IP can route around failures if you have a network robust enough to reroute as said before, but its even easier to find the problem when there's only one route. Just do a traceroute for the farthest IP address on the network (line) and you know the failure is between the last router to respond and the first one to not respond. Problem solved.
You may better understand that it doesn't take "hundreds of watts" to interfere when you consider that the interference need only be above the level of a more distant signal - which also has that inverse-square-law propogation. A miliwatt in the right place - where the reciever is - will take out a distant high-powered signal. Take a look at the amount of RF that recievers expect - it's really miniscule - fractions of microvolts.
I think the Cincinatti system is one that has been reported to have problems, yes. Check out the ARRL web site and search for old news.
Unfortunately, the FCC rules don't protect the hams, because they define the degree of protection necessary incorrectly by several orders of magnitude.
When the flooding happened in New Orleans, nearly 1000 well-trained hams showed up to supplement the efforts of the hams who already lived there. The government physically kept them out for a few days (who knows what they were thinking) but had eventually to let them in because they were essential to recovery efforts. You can't really have emergency communications on a "disaster" scale without hams. There isn't another corps of 600,000 trained volunteer communicators in our country to draw upon. And you can't have large-scale disaster communications without 1-30 MHz, as these are the only frequencies that go long distances without infrastructure between the communicating stations.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
"the signature of plant incubator lights"
Give us a break. The cops get a big stack of electrical bills, all the bills for a neighborhood. If every house on a street consumed between 2500 and 3500 kWh except for one house that consumed 9000 kWh well then they know what door to knock on don't they. Cops around here do it so often the (marijuana) growers now as a matter of course bypass electric meters at their grow ops.
The thing that stopped it was that there is no way to profit from giving away free power. Much more lucrative to use wires that can be metered.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
No, even though it doesn't require installing new wire, there are significant fixed costs-per-mile for repeaters, isolators at compensating capacitors, idle power consumption, the extra labor cost of working on hot MV lines, etc. Oh yes, add lightning surge protection well beyond that normally needed for an MV distribution line, or you'll have to replace all that expensive stuff much too often (especially in TXU's territory--severe thunderstorms are frequent!). For all that, the usable throughput is less than a decently run cable system, with the same drawbacks regarding a shared line. Areas with few paying customers per mile don't make a good case for BPL deployment (nor cable, nor DSL). The cost per customer served remains too high in rural areas. Most BPL pilots have served built-up suburban areas, where there is hope the revenue per mile can justify the system's cost. Bandwidth to the Boonies, it isn't.
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Now you can surf the internet at high speed while you're being roasted in the electric chair.
with more than a few students has, at one time or another, had a carrier current AM broadcasting station. Eventually, a lot of them moved to low power FM so as to get stereo and better fidelity. Just do a google for "carrier current" and you get a lot of hits.
Additionally, the power companies have used it for decades for a variety of purposes including monitoring and control functions. These uses were not problematic as they were on a fixed frequency and so did not interfere with other existing radio services. The broadband nature of the RF generated by the proposed BPL applications spews energy across a broad spectrum and therein lies the problem.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Yes, it goes, as I understand it, far enough above 30 MHz to interfere with public service bands. I've been a ham since 1958 and can well appreciate how, in the HF spectrum, a little bit of RF can, at times, cover huge distances. I've talked to Japan and Australia with 4 watts and a 4 foot loaded antenna on the trunk of my car at 14 MHz. If BPL ever (shudder) gets widespread, it's going to screw up a lot of the spectrum far beyond the near-field distances.
Telephones and the Internet are great, but depend on a lot of infrastructure that is very vulnerable to natural or man made disasters. Radio is still the only way to communicate over significant distances with relatively simple, self-contained, battery powered equipment. Visit the ARRL site for more information Visit the ARRL site for more information .
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I just love the BPL posts... it brings all the hams out of the wood work. 73, W7COM
-- I have a private email server in my basement.