How about those power surges when you have a device hooked in to the power cables in your home - presumably they use both the +ve and -ve wires to carry a signal? Or is the device connected only into the -ve? I'd be anxious about spikes getting into my PC via a backdoor.
There is an argument that says that the market will be most efficient when there is competition. This is essentially a capitalist argument, brought into being by people who wanted in on lucrative markets. Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing, because it often works. When you have people providing a commodity where there is no discernable difference, you pick the cheapest, or the "best value" option. But it doesn't always work.
Power is a really good example of when this doesn't work. In NEw Zealand, where I live, we have full competition for selling power, introduced in the last three years. Power has never been more expensive. Why? Well, there are two main reasons.
1) Suddenly, we have 25 or so companies that all want to sell you power. This has reduced to market share of most of the retailing power companies. But each company needs a number of people to provide service, billing, administration, marketing yadda yadda yadda. So, their overheads don't drop in a a linear relationship to the number of customers that they have. So, as the new companies erode the market share of the old monopolies, the overall overhead in the market has risen.
2) Generators sell their power to retailers. When the generator is the retailer, they sell it to themselves. However, many retailers don't have generation capacity to match their demand. Result = the generators charge higher prices for the electricity than they did before, because the retailer needs the power. Oh golly! say the generator/retailers. Now that we're charging the other guys more, we can whack our prices up too.
Furthermore, because the government here wanted to 'eliminate monopolies' and allow 'open access to electricity distribution networks' they made the old power companies sell off the networks. So, now there are at least three companies, but usually four, involved in getting the power to you. The generators, the transmission (long-distnace) company, the distibution (local network) company and the retailer. And all are making a profit. We used to have two companies invloved (the generator/retailer/distibutor and the transmission company). Simple match shows that 4*profit > 2*profit. Not forgetting the basic overheads of running a company.
So, while it has been calculated to *cost* about NZ$0.025 per kWh, at the moment, generators are charging up to NZ$0.20 at peak de3mand times. Where we used to pay about $0.075 per kWh for power, we are now paying $ 0.13
Good old competition!!
My father's friend owns a high-end audio shop. He sells insanely-priced stuff to people, but says that it's largely wank-value. His home system sounds unbelievable, and is so remarkably simple.
A single bit CD player. An (old-ish) Perraux amp and pre-amp. A DAT player. And 4 Magneplaner MGIII speakers (at around 8 foot tall each...)
It's a sub-$50,000 NZ system (or around 25K US) and you would have to have the ears of a piano tuner to want better (in my opinion mind...) No boomy subwoofers needed, the house shakes anyway when 1000 watts goes into the 2 foot wide main woofer. But really, the sound is so good that you don't need big volume to enjoy it, just loud enough to block out any annoying bird noise, car / neighbour / airplane etc etc etc.
But I'd rather spend that sort of money on fast cars and loose women.
- If you want light at the end of the tunnel, turn around.
Re:Interesting, but I wouldn't want it...
on
DSLBlaster?
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· Score: 1
Some ISP's here will also cap the data rate - for example, the cable company caps at 1Mbps, but my lovely ISP doesn't cap things at all. There s a natural capping effect when heaps of people log in to their service through whatever means, as my ISP has 2x100Mbps connections to the Internet, so in theory, 80 concurrent users @ 2.5 Mbps would max it out, but I find that the bandwidth OUT of sites is the main issue - that limits how much of the pipe you're using anyway - plus, if you are using sites etc rather than downloading MP3 or MPEG files, you tend to use the pipe in pretty short bursts. But hey, I remember when I got my first Hayes 9600 baud modem. I was king speed freak for about 6 months until someone brought out the 12.2kbps beasts. So what are we complaining about anyway? Even 512 K is pretty good really
And you have to use a USB modem? Pah. I hate clutter and external devices. I like my PCI jobby.
Re:Interesting, but I wouldn't want it...
on
DSLBlaster?
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· Score: 1
Yeah, we worked with some companies that had claimed to have solved this problem.
There are methods of bypassing transformers but these involve adding extra hardware to the power lines. It's a fact that the way in which step-down transformers work cause electrical, magnetic and radio interference (buy a house next to one and try and get a good TV signal...) This means that you have to correct the signals, but a step-down transformer causes a big reduction in usable bandwidth.
The extra hardware that you have to put in pace to bypass the transformer is (currently) expensive. You either have to use a special device (like a xener diode) that allows a copper wire to conduct in one direction only (or else your step-down transformer will get bypassed by the electricity...) or you need to use an bit of optic cable, along with transmit/receive boxes.
*sigh*
But forget about transformers for now - where the impossibility of things came in was substations. Once you got near a substation, the interference inherent in the power line prevented data transmission totally. So you had to divert into some other transmission medium about 500 meters from a substation. In Wellington, where we did the trial, there are around 250 'subs', and around 1800 step-down transformers, for a population of about 400,000. So we would have had to have put in place 1800 bypass devices and 250 junctions into a proprietary fibre-optic network to get good bandwidth.
The cost of installing such bits and pieces was (ludicrous as it may seem) similar to that of installing fibre-optic cable. (Most of our power lines in residential areas are on poles and the cable companies have been able to use the existing pole infrastructure to carry the FO cable) So why would we have bothered? The company I worked for were very, very serious about getting data down their power lines, as they could have gained extra revenues from existing infrastructure. But it wasn't to be.
Yes, we got data from here to there, ans yes we could make it reliable, but it was not broadband, Latency was a big issue, even in our pilot programme. And we didn't have the routing issues that the full-blown network would have had.
I'm not scorning the idea of powerlines as a data transport mechanism, I'm only trying to point out the inherent problems with it at the moment.
Maybe in a more densely populated area than Wellington, NZ, the cost/benefit analysis would look very different?
Re:Interesting, but I wouldn't want it...
on
DSLBlaster?
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· Score: 1
Why is my bandwidth so cheap? Well, we have some pretty good competition in New Zealand for bandwidth. I could get a cabble service (including about 15 TV channels and two phone lines and a 2Gbps data link) for around $US 50-60. Also, the major national carrier, Telecom NZ, inherited a really good national network when it was privatised - it had been a government-owned entity. I live about 1.5 - 2 KM (1-1.3 miles) from the exchange. Telecom has to charge low fees for ADSL because the cable is pretty cheap.
There is a data limit of 1200 MB on my plan, but (and here's the cool bit) if you use certain services, such as their dedicated gaming service, those bytes don't count towards your limit.
The other reason is that a US dollar will buy you about 2.5 NZ dollars. My plan costs $69.00 so really thats about $25 US...
We do suffer though from a natural latency in most of our internet surfing because of the geographical distance between NZ and the US and Europe. The speed of light dictates that we will always have about 12-15 ms lag.
Re:Interesting, but I wouldn't want it...
on
DSLBlaster?
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· Score: 4
Yeah, right. Signals down the power line. That's so far in the future that it's funny, Trust me. I was invloved in a full-on pilot of this in Wellington, New Zealand, and while it works fine over short distances, there are a number of major issues yet to be overcome.
1) Transformers. They furk the signal up completely. You can't get a signal 'upstream' from a transformer any faster than 9600 bits/sec.
2) Ripple control - the signals that the power co's use to trip multi-register meters (like day/night meters or 1/2 hourly meters etc) When the pulses go down the line, the signal is completely porked.
3) Surges. Not flash for signal quality, to say the least
4) Loop length. Even without pesky transformers etc, the signal gets pretty weak at > 5 km (3 miles)... although the same can be said for DSL.
5) The kind of wire that is used in the electricity cable is optimised for conducting high to medium voltages so frequencies that can be used are limited, limiting bandwidth for concurrent users.
However! Most of these things can be overcome... in time. The problem is, the technology will only be useful if the power line folks can match the prices for telephone lines, with the same speed and reliability. Right now I get between 4 and 5 Mbps for around $30 US per month via ADSL. Power lines are gonna take a really long time to match that.
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How about those power surges when you have a device hooked in to the power cables in your home - presumably they use both the +ve and -ve wires to carry a signal? Or is the device connected only into the -ve? I'd be anxious about spikes getting into my PC via a backdoor.
There is an argument that says that the market will be most efficient when there is competition. This is essentially a capitalist argument, brought into being by people who wanted in on lucrative markets. Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing, because it often works. When you have people providing a commodity where there is no discernable difference, you pick the cheapest, or the "best value" option. But it doesn't always work. Power is a really good example of when this doesn't work. In NEw Zealand, where I live, we have full competition for selling power, introduced in the last three years. Power has never been more expensive. Why? Well, there are two main reasons. 1) Suddenly, we have 25 or so companies that all want to sell you power. This has reduced to market share of most of the retailing power companies. But each company needs a number of people to provide service, billing, administration, marketing yadda yadda yadda. So, their overheads don't drop in a a linear relationship to the number of customers that they have. So, as the new companies erode the market share of the old monopolies, the overall overhead in the market has risen. 2) Generators sell their power to retailers. When the generator is the retailer, they sell it to themselves. However, many retailers don't have generation capacity to match their demand. Result = the generators charge higher prices for the electricity than they did before, because the retailer needs the power. Oh golly! say the generator/retailers. Now that we're charging the other guys more, we can whack our prices up too. Furthermore, because the government here wanted to 'eliminate monopolies' and allow 'open access to electricity distribution networks' they made the old power companies sell off the networks. So, now there are at least three companies, but usually four, involved in getting the power to you. The generators, the transmission (long-distnace) company, the distibution (local network) company and the retailer. And all are making a profit. We used to have two companies invloved (the generator/retailer/distibutor and the transmission company). Simple match shows that 4*profit > 2*profit. Not forgetting the basic overheads of running a company. So, while it has been calculated to *cost* about NZ$0.025 per kWh, at the moment, generators are charging up to NZ$0.20 at peak de3mand times. Where we used to pay about $0.075 per kWh for power, we are now paying $ 0.13 Good old competition!!
My father's friend owns a high-end audio shop. He sells insanely-priced stuff to people, but says that it's largely wank-value. His home system sounds unbelievable, and is so remarkably simple. A single bit CD player. An (old-ish) Perraux amp and pre-amp. A DAT player. And 4 Magneplaner MGIII speakers (at around 8 foot tall each...) It's a sub-$50,000 NZ system (or around 25K US) and you would have to have the ears of a piano tuner to want better (in my opinion mind...) No boomy subwoofers needed, the house shakes anyway when 1000 watts goes into the 2 foot wide main woofer. But really, the sound is so good that you don't need big volume to enjoy it, just loud enough to block out any annoying bird noise, car / neighbour / airplane etc etc etc. But I'd rather spend that sort of money on fast cars and loose women. - If you want light at the end of the tunnel, turn around.
And you have to use a USB modem? Pah. I hate clutter and external devices. I like my PCI jobby.
There are methods of bypassing transformers but these involve adding extra hardware to the power lines. It's a fact that the way in which step-down transformers work cause electrical, magnetic and radio interference (buy a house next to one and try and get a good TV signal...)
This means that you have to correct the signals, but a step-down transformer causes a big reduction in usable bandwidth.
The extra hardware that you have to put in pace to bypass the transformer is (currently) expensive. You either have to use a special device (like a xener diode) that allows a copper wire to conduct in one direction only (or else your step-down transformer will get bypassed by the electricity...) or you need to use an bit of optic cable, along with transmit/receive boxes.
*sigh*
But forget about transformers for now - where the impossibility of things came in was substations. Once you got near a substation, the interference inherent in the power line prevented data transmission totally. So you had to divert into some other transmission medium about 500 meters from a substation. In Wellington, where we did the trial, there are around 250 'subs', and around 1800 step-down transformers, for a population of about 400,000. So we would have had to have put in place 1800 bypass devices and 250 junctions into a proprietary fibre-optic network to get good bandwidth.
The cost of installing such bits and pieces was (ludicrous as it may seem) similar to that of installing fibre-optic cable. (Most of our power lines in residential areas are on poles and the cable companies have been able to use the existing pole infrastructure to carry the FO cable) So why would we have bothered? The company I worked for were very, very serious about getting data down their power lines, as they could have gained extra revenues from existing infrastructure. But it wasn't to be.
Yes, we got data from here to there, ans yes we could make it reliable, but it was not broadband, Latency was a big issue, even in our pilot programme. And we didn't have the routing issues that the full-blown network would have had.
I'm not scorning the idea of powerlines as a data transport mechanism, I'm only trying to point out the inherent problems with it at the moment.
Maybe in a more densely populated area than Wellington, NZ, the cost/benefit analysis would look very different?
There is a data limit of 1200 MB on my plan, but (and here's the cool bit) if you use certain services, such as their dedicated gaming service, those bytes don't count towards your limit.
The other reason is that a US dollar will buy you about 2.5 NZ dollars. My plan costs $69.00 so really thats about $25 US...
We do suffer though from a natural latency in most of our internet surfing because of the geographical distance between NZ and the US and Europe. The speed of light dictates that we will always have about 12-15 ms lag.
1) Transformers. They furk the signal up completely. You can't get a signal 'upstream' from a transformer any faster than 9600 bits/sec.
2) Ripple control - the signals that the power co's use to trip multi-register meters (like day/night meters or 1/2 hourly meters etc) When the pulses go down the line, the signal is completely porked.
3) Surges. Not flash for signal quality, to say the least
4) Loop length. Even without pesky transformers etc, the signal gets pretty weak at > 5 km (3 miles)... although the same can be said for DSL.
5) The kind of wire that is used in the electricity cable is optimised for conducting high to medium voltages so frequencies that can be used are limited, limiting bandwidth for concurrent users.
However! Most of these things can be overcome... in time. The problem is, the technology will only be useful if the power line folks can match the prices for telephone lines, with the same speed and reliability. Right now I get between 4 and 5 Mbps for around $30 US per month via ADSL. Power lines are gonna take a really long time to match that.