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Gigabyte Modems over Electric Lines
Ryan Wilshere writes "C|Net has an article on so called 'Power Modems'. They claim they can do Gigabyte transfers over regular electrical line. Dallas-based start-up Media Fusion has won a U.S. patent on a process it says can send data, video and voice over electric wires at speeds thousands of times faster than current high-speed Internet access technologies."
They keep on trying. We keep on hoping.
Dallas-based start-up Media Fusion has won a U.S. patent on a process it says can send data, video and voice over electric wires at speeds thousands of times faster than current high-speed Internet access technologies."
:)
In other words it appears Media Fusion has patented an electronic signal on a metalic fibre called a wire. They must be so proud of their Intellectual Property
The UPS that will keep the internet connection live in the event of loss of electricity...
:) -Dan
It sounds wonderful until you start thinking about it. Communications all boils down to signal-to-noise ratio. The 60 Hz (50 Hz in Europe) power wave is no problem, but what about all the switching noise, corona discharge, insulation arcing, etc? Then you have to get past [around] transformers.
Also, over long transmission lines signal tends to get spread out (smeared) as the velocity-of-propagation varies. AFAIK, Power lines were not designed with any consideration of Vp.
Patents do NOT impress me.
-- Robert
I know many of you are saying how this has been tested, and it failed. In the related story over the weekend, posters were talking about the transformer issues and things of that nature.
Did anyone read the linked story from the weekend?
This is not about sending an electric signal over power lines. This is about manipulating the magnetic field which forms naturaly around a wire when you send an A/C current through it.
This is new. This is exciting.
Now if there was only a way to get this kind of speed with no wires at all!
I dream of an inexpensive, wireless gigabit/sec connection!
Well, afaik some of the most high-end wireless consumer networks available at this time would be Hiperlan (23.5Mbps). Some information is available
here and here.
There exists faster wireless networks, however then we're not in the "consumer end" any more.
-- "Life is a bitch - and she hates me..."
Are we going to open up a discussion thread everytime somebody mutters "Power Lines" and "Modem" in the same sentence? This is twice in the last couple of weeks, and no new information has come to light beyond a process patent.
I mean, really.
A valid point was also raised about cost for this sort of service. When living in Canada, I paid CND40 for 24/7 CableModem service. Currently, in Ireland, I pay about IRP100 per month for heavy useage over a standard modem. This is because Eircom (formerly Telecom Eireann) was only recently privatised, and there is still little enough local competition. I believe there are a grand total of 20 cable modems in Dublin, all currently being tested (In Terenure, if any Dubs are reading.) At any rate (pun!), isn't there a threat regarding cost in the States? I'm not certain, but I thought the power grid was government property, and I can imagine how much they would enjoy the added revenue provided by fixed-cost high speed internet service. And I don't see an independent startup laying power lines in order to compete, personally.
This seems like little more than a pipe dream (pun!), particularly for those already enjoying the wonder of Cable Modems and DSL links. If anything, this new tech -- if it ever becomes new tech -- will up your prices and knock your smaller providers out of the market.
-l
Go read the article, I'm trolling in the least. It's fucking ubelievable.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Yeah, I've been curious about the penetration of DSL and cable into the American internet market ... nobody has compiled hard numbers, that I know, but it would be interesting to find out what effect broadband has had on backbone traffic to date.
Even with all the tier 1 ISPs hauling giant circuits, interexchanges are still hosed. This will be the limiting factor, I think.
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
Of course it was around the the conductor - all electronic signals are transmitted as changes in the magnetic/electric fields around a conductor - thats basic physics.....
Um, no.
Signals in most circuits are trasmitted as a flow of current _within_ wires, driven by an electric field gradient _within_ the wires (called "voltage"). Electric fields outside the wires try to move current between the wire and anything nearby, but this is an unwanted side effect, stopped by something called "insulation". However, the electric fields also result in capacitive coupling between nearby wires, which causes something called "capacitive cross-talk". This is minimized by keeping wires far apart and minimizing the amount of parallel surface area of conducting regions.
As a side effect of the current flow, a magnetic field is set up both around and within the wires. The current flowing within the wire and the magnetic fields around the wire are intimately connected; you can't have one without the other, and they interact very strongly with each other. You can't "transmit information in magnetic fields around the wire" without interacting with currents in the wire too - the magnetic field is _caused_ by local currents in the wire. In most systems, magnetic fields are an unwanted side effect. As there is mutual inductance between any two wires in a circuit, the magnetic fields caused by current in one wire will set up currents in other wires. This is called "inductive cross-talk". It is severe only for wires that are very close to each other, or that have a particularly vulnerable geometry.
For an excellent book on the basic physics involved, I recommend "Fundamentals of Physics, Fifth Edition", by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. Another good reference is "Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Extended Version" by Tipler.