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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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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'?
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
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.
Well, I've actually used broadband internet over powerlines between June 2002 and July 2005. Ping-times were horrible, the service was mediocre at best, and the modem was a PITA. But it was easy to set up(and easy to plug out and return to the ISP). Mostly it was the ISPs fault, because they underestimated the use, and overestimated their own capacity. Claimed a normal speed of 1Mbit/s, I usually got a 256kbit/s service. Used a modem by the Swiss company Ascom.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
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.
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
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 work for a company that is rolling out BPL in Arizona. I'm not 100% involved with the project but I get to sit in on a lot of meetings. What follows is my general understanding of how it works.
Currently the power companies have no way of monitoring their grid except for watching for major drops in consumption. Basically, they don't know your power is out until someone from your neighborhood calls them and lets them know.
We install what is basically a low end PC at each transformer which is used to inject the signal for the area covered by that transformer. There are additional apps running on the PC that are constantly communicating back to the power company about the state of the transformer, load, etc. If the node reports a problem or if communication to the node is lost they know there's a problem and can send someone right out. Should result in much higher response times.
MG
Until the infrastructure fails. -w7com
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I am assuming a local loop for the broadband that doesn't have to concern itself with the higher voltage stepdowns. I believe 220 is what comes out of the local substations. A broadband carrier could tap in at that point with backhaul and only have to deal with the 220-110 stepdown. The issue is physics, so until you see them up on the poles replacing the big ugly transformers with something sleek and digital-looking, I would not hold my breath for broadband over powerlines.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
Shocking news!
(Sorry... couldn't help myself...)
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
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
This kind of thing is called SCADA -- supervisory control and data acquisition, and it doesn't require BPL to accomplish. If the power companies are trying to claim it does, then look for the real agenda.
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.
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
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It is the monkied monkey that monkies with another monkey's monkey. Monkey.
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.