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Technology

Powerline Networks Finally Viable? 115

Posted by timothy from the electrical-excitement dept.
Logic Bomb writes: "MIT's Technology Review has an article discussing the current state of digital networking over electrical lines. It sounds like we may be seeing useable electrical-line LANs soon, but this obviously doesn't solve the 'last mile' problem. I remember once reading something about attempts to provide Internet connectivity over the electrical grid; anyone heard anything recently?" This article may be shocking (in a good way) if you assumed that practical powerline networking was still far in the future, and in a bad way if you thought that companies could easily agree on the right standards and methods to accomplish it;)
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Powerline Networks Finally Viable? More

Powerline Networks Finally Viable?

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  • ac line home networking (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    check out intellon [intellon.com]

  • Presumably you would have an access device (an analogue to the Cable and DSL modems) that would plug directly into the wall between the outlet and your UPS (or probably into any other spare outlet in the house) which would pull off the data stream and present it to the computer by other means, like ethernet or USB.

  • I live in a rural area, but current satellite service:
    • has horrible latency
    • has an upload cap
    • does not provide static IP addresses
    • is overpriced
    Some of this may change with the introduction of LEO systems, but that is still several years off in the future.

    It's a good technology, but, unfortunately, it won't have a large market.

    There are more of us that still need a viable broadband solution than you suspect.

  • Clearly you are not entirely kidding, rather you are a visionary and futurist, even if you don't yet know it. Dutchwater [dutchwater.com] (See what happens when you legaize pot? You get a burst of innovation... followed by the munchies.) has already taken this idea to the Internet infrastructure business, so CPE cannot be far behind. (Or would that be CPP, for customer premises plumbing?)

  • Re:Wow (Score:3)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @03:28PM (#127149) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps what happened over the weekend was that the Slashdot server, having achieved sentience, attempted suicide because it was just so embarrased.
  • I guess Verizon has been using the CA powergrid for their networking.
  • The number one saying in American households in the year 2018:

    Goddammit who flushed the toilet! My download was almost done.

  • Shoving packets over the power grid is not a swift move, given the problems of interference, atmospheric effects, solar wind effects, surges and brownouts, NOISE from industrial equipment, uncontrolled attenuation (do you really want your packets going all over the neighbourhood? In Nevada, maybe in NYC, the collisions would make it unusable.)
    1. ``Does that mean I'll need to protect my breaker panel in the basement with a firewall?''

      I wouldn't want just anybody DDOSing my X10 devices.

    2. ``What effect will adding network signals to the power lines do to the overall RF noise levels?''

      There was a lot of concern about this years ago when cable TV became widespread. Cable companies have a pretty poor record of performing good quality cable installs. ``Leaky'' connections were supposedly resulting in measurable amounts of RF noise. Even though that noise isn't in the same band as, say, an aircraft's landing system receiver, the added RF energy could generate interesting IM harmonics (either by swamping the receiver's front-end or just through combinations of the various RF signals that the receiver sees) that could affect the receiver's performance.

      Something tells me that the power grid is not wired for clean transmission of hig speed data. I, for one, would sure as hell hate to find that I'm augering in because someone's downloading a collection of Metallica MP3s.


    --

  • I assume that I'd still need a router or hub if there are more than 2 machines hooked together over this interface given that it's just a power line ethernet interface, right?

    Ben
  • launches a DOS at my machine and takes down the power grid to my block

    This sort of thing has been going on for months in California...and here people have been blaming power companies instead. :-)


    ---
  • Just make sure no data gets transmitted at 60 hz!
    Wait, don't they have different frequencies in different countries? And different voltages too? We don't want a direct bridge for that! (suddenly all of our power got drained to Uzbekistan . . . they work on the 3V standard . . . ;)
    We'll get it eventually!

  • They have tried setting up broadband networks over electrical lines, but there is too much cross-talk in the line transformers. They could route around current transformers, but not effectively. (They still "need" the trasformer to do it's job.)

    They have a few solutions to this problem, but all of them require enormous infrastructure investments to roll out. (And with less performance that current solutions) In Europe, where more of the power lines are buried, it is wildly unfeasable.

    ~Hammy

  • Re:Wow (Score:1)

    by ywwg ( 20925 )
    slashdot really really realyl needs story moderation. this is pathetic.
  • The superior format was VHS, because it initially was able to offer the magical two hours of recording (over Beta's one hour). Beta never recovered from this initial disadvantage (IMO).

    http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vhs.h tml [urbanlegends.com]

    BTW, I grew up with Beta (which were very popular in Hawaii), and had to switch to VHS when we moved to California. I also bought an Amiga then, and loved it. But everyone else eventually caught up (mostly)...
  • As I recall, Energis route perfectly ordinary cables alongside on the pylons, working on the grounds that they had space and that that was cheaper than putting up their own poles and digging their own trenches.

    Different cables, though - they're not running over the same wires as the national high voltage grid.

  • News? (Score:1)

    by Basje ( 26968 )
    Is this so shocking? After all, in Germany, internet for consumers over the electric grid, will be introduced next month.

    click here [wired.com] for a story about it.

    ----------------------------------------------

  • So let me get theis straight. Redundancy and competition is bad?
  • Nope. the autopsy reports are consistent with blunt trauma to the cranium ,consistent with a crazed physicist with a hammer wreaking vengance for the cat pissing on his lab notes.

    Yeah, this'll cost me some karma.
  • ...in apartments :)

    Tap into the power line of the apartment next doors, and have my TV shut off their dishwasher every time I put on a movie.

  • Damn - If this takes off, does that mean I can throw out my cisco firewall and use my surge protector?
  • More technical info on the HomePlug standard can be found here [csdmag.com] (3000 words).
    --
  • IP over Power Lines has been the holy grail for broadband internet for quite some time. Power lines go everywhere, and there's no need for talk of "the last mile", since a computer is hooked into the power grid, unless you're into making your own power.

    The problem has been that the idea never really got off the ground. I think that most people believed that they had a hard time justifying why they could get 2.4 gb/s over high voltage powerlines when DSL could barely get over 2mbps over copper wire. The homeplug standard said they could only get 6mbps and that was over lines internal to the house.

    They've had quite a long time already to make it work. I've had a suspicion that if it actually worked as intended, that they would've been in the running for broad band service long ago.
  • Ascom Powerline (a Swiss HQ'ed company) (http://www.ascom.com/powerline [ascom.com]) has be piloting powerline networks for at least a year. They are going live in Germany this summer. Transfer rates of 200-500Kb/sec are 'easy', but there are some environments which nothing works (e.g. car factory floors). csw
  • <rant>
    Yeah, now that I've spent literally weeks, running cat5 cable to every nook and cranny of my house, so that I could use my linux firewall, and my cable modem to get access in any room, now you're telling me I coulda just used the existing powerlines, which are ALREADY IN EACH FSCKING ROOM I WANT!?!?
    </rant>

    On another note, I wonder how reliable this is. I'm already using X10 stuff through my house. And I get very strange continuity problems. There is one switch that I have in my house, that when it's on, the X10 stuff doesn't work on this one light that I have. But when that switch is off, everything works great.

    But it's actually not that simple. Sometimes it does work with the switch on. Most of the time it doesn't, but occasionally it does. I have yet to figure out the combination of things that make it work when the switch is on.

    I wonder how reliable in home powerline networks are going to be and if you'll end up running into strange problems like this.
    --

  • The "" around modems is not necessary. Cable modems actually do MOdulate and DEModulate the data signal. That is why you can still get cable tv on the line at the same time. I think that either 64 or 256 QAM is used for the downstream modulation and 16 QAM is for the upstream. Not sure exactly though.
  • Okay, offhand, let's say that we are using the 60Hz standard for electric power lines as a carrier. Okay, that gives us a potential (as in theoretical) data rate of a big, whopping (drum roll) 30 symbols per second. With 120 Volts, we could get a lot of information in that big wavelength, about 240 bits per symbol (assume a 24 volt peak-to-peak wavelength (that is, +/- 10% on the 120V) and a variance of 0.1V per data symbol step). So, power lines would get a bit-rate of 7200bps, or 900 Bytes per second or 0.9KB/s. Stop the presses! This is great news!

    Now, then, let's assume that we will not be the 60Hz bandwidth, that we will be using a second carrier. So, we have to build a high-pass filter capable of separating a signal of x volts from three phase power of 220V. Assuming x is neglible compared to 220, that is one expensive piece of heavy-duty and fine-tuned electronics, and one very high standard of noise reduction you have to bring the power lines up to for transmission. Assuming X ~ 220, congratulations, you have just solved high-voltage at high frequency transmission problems, and just doubled your phone bill.

    Of course, we haven't even begun to worry about SNR on a power lines. If the power companies are having trouble keeping 220V @ 60Hz clean, then how the hell are they going to keep xV @ yMhz (assume 220 > x, and 20 > y > 1.0).

    In a word, this sounds like a whole lot of marketing. Don't hold your breath.
  • and just doubled your phone bill.

    Grrr, that should read "and just doubled your electric bill"

    And, for the sarcasm-impared, that first paragraph should have ended with a sarcasm tag.
  • In the US, yes it is. In Europe a single power transformer serves maybe a hundred homes, which can be served by single internet connection.

    In the US, only about a half dozen homes are served by a single transformer, meaning you need at least 10 times as much connection equipment.

    Power line networking will be limited to the internal home uses in the USA for a long time. There is a lot of room to grow in this area, alot of which will be driven by energy costs, and having applicances communicate, and having them run during off-peak hours.

    The X-10 system is a very simple implementation that has been around for years. Works fine for semi reliable lighting control.
  • IP over power grid sounds cool, but it has a severe drawback: the information is spread over 3-30 MHz and as the power lines near households are very poorly insulated, they act as transmitting antennas on these frequencies. This raises the noise floor significantly in areas that use this technology.

    If this becomes common, we will have to say goodbye to shortwave listening, amateur radio and many other uses of 3-30 MHz radio frequencies.

    Janne
  • Does anyone else but me think it's a Bad Thing that we will eventually have 10 or so differnet ways to get broadband access to our homes? Or am I missing the point? Not only does each different implementation tie us to the standards of the delivery mechanism, but we also have political boundaries to overcome when dealing with the players involved in every medium. Getting local power companies to agree on a standard might be easier than cable companies (b/c there tends to be fewer power companies), but how many delivery mechanisms do we *really* need for the world to have broadband?

    Wouldn't it be easier if, instead of having everyone jump on the bandwagon trying to make money, they just pooled their resources to make a single, unified delivery solution?
  • Yes. Redundancy and competition is bad. Because most people are too inept to compete effectively. And becase redundant solutions tend to be less expensive (vis a vis lesser quality) rip-offs of the original product.

    Make me the best product in the world, put all your resources to it, and I'll buy it. I don't buy things based on name brand, flashiness or promises. I buy based on quality. And I just can't believe that electric lines are going to be able to compete (in the long term) with more viable consumer solutions.

    Schrodinger's cat may be dead, but only because you opened the box. Leave the damn box closed for a decade or more and *then* we'll talk about quality of broadband service.

    .anacron
  • in 2 german cities (essen and muelheim/ruhr) rwe (a german electricity company) wants to provide a powerline internet connection already in 1-2 weeks. see http://www.rwe-powerline.de/

    it happens that i live in muelheim so i could use powerline if it weren't more expensive than dsl

  • No thanks. The energy crisis in California is bad enough without adding more stress to the lines.

    OTOH, if it were set up so I could zap the living shinola out of those stupid 1337 5kR1p7 k1dd135 every time they do something, I'd pay through the nose and just go around taking out my stress on 13-year-olds.

    I wonder if e-Lectrocute.com is taken yet...


    Zaphod B

  • Funny (Score:1)

    by tycage ( 96002 )

    The "power struggles" among the major companies is a good thing

    Heh, "power struggles".

    :)

    --Ty

  • In trial and working in Sweden ... (broadband via powerlines) .. soon to go public, if it hasn't already.

    ... and this is not even news :)

  • It works during blackouts..(duh!)...basic info (Score:4)

    by jwater ( 112092 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @01:06PM (#127181)
    I have done some research into this area for a project at work. The Intellon PowerPacket uses OFDM this modulates the data in the 4.3 MHz to 20.9 MHz band. This is independant of the 60Hz power signal on the line, and at much lower amplitude(voltages). So it means that this will work during the power outages in CA. Also the security is taken care of encypting your info with a 56-bit DES key. This keeps your neighbors from snooping, but not distributed.net or the NSA. Every powerline on the same side of the transformer as you and in transmission range can be connected. It is also independent of the Frequency/Voltage differences in outher countries. Check out HomePlug [homeplug.org] for the standard wars to come. In essence they have picked the fundamental ideas from Power Packet.
  • Now the electric company can screw me with huge internet costs as well.

  • While it would be cool to run broadband access over the already existing power lines, that's not what the article was about, nor does anyone suggest that's possible.

    Uh, well, while I haven't heard anything about it for a while, there are definitely people suggesting [cnet.com] that it is possible to have broadband access over existing power lines.

  • "We think wireless will remain slightly more expensive because you're talking about radios, and radios are expensive,"

    The "radio" portion of a cell phone has a parts cost of about $10 today.

  • Technology Squables (Score:5)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <{petedaly} {at} {ix.netcom.com}> on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @12:17PM (#127185)
    The fight over the best technology is not a bad thing, any more than Linux is a bad thing because Windows already exists. It will drive competition for better technologies, which is a goog thing in such a immature market.

    I used to work for a company which makes commercial cable equipment. Most cable companies today that offer broadband use different cable modem technologies, but that is starting to change. Based on all the different technologies in the market, a standard (DOCSIS) was decided upon. Whether modems using that technology are out yet or not, I don't know.

    Anyway, incompatible technologies are an importart part of such an immature and unstable industry such as power line broadband.

    The "power struggles" among the major companies is a good thing. When a standard comes out, it will be that much better.

    -Pete
  • You know most people probably think that it's no big deal running internet over the electric lines because when the power goes out, your internet would be gone anyway. But what about those of us with UPS's that will last 30-60 minutes? If I was getting internet through some other means, I could probably last through a rolling blackout...

  • Rolling blackouts? (Score:3)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @12:09PM (#127187) Homepage
    If the powerline grid will be the transmission medium, what would the rolling blackouts have on the transmissions? At least with forms of transmission (Cable, dialup, DSL), you can use a UPS and stay up and running.

  • This is just plain wrong.

    See http://www.echelon.com [echelon.com] whose open LonWorks protocol / spec works VERY well, and works with all worldwide power specs.

    X-10 is the stone-wheel of powerline communications technology.

  • FUD.

    ENEL (sp?) is implementing Echelon's power-line control network to link-up every household in Italy for remote power management / meter reading.

    This technology is Proven. It works. It's available now.

    www.echelon.com

  • Media Fusion, Inc. [mediafusionllc.net] was working on Powerline Area Network some days back. Now they have their website down, but I prepared some notes at that time. You can have the points:
    - Long distance signal carriage without regeneration
    - Near light speed propagation
    - Enormous information carrying capacity
    - No topology limitation
    - No addressing overhead, no network storms, no re-transmission due to dropped packets, no data loss

    The technology would involve:
    - Inscribing data within the natural low-frequency bandwidth of the electric wave to send information
    - Identifying all data and frequencies riding within the wave
    - Converting those signals into interpretable forms in "real time" by using state-of-the-art signal-processing equipment

    I don't know what happ'd to these folks. Maybe we can ask Edwin G. Blair [mailto]?

  • /me thinks you should take a look at Metal Oxide Varistors.

    Cheap little things (likely under $1) that short out when there's a voltage spike (this is actually good). Otherwise they do nothing (unless they get old/worn).

    That's what those big blue/orange/yellow/brown discs across the phone/power input of many things often are. That is, unless it's a capacitor (or something else).

    Great for anything... power lines, USB cables, ethernet, telephones, whatever...

  • Re:useful (Score:3)

    by andyh1978 ( 173377 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @02:30PM (#127193) Homepage
    It can be really difficult to explain to a newbie what is needed to hookup a few PC's via ethernet - this would make it much easier - "just plug this USB device into a wall outlet".
    Sounds like an episode of BOFH [ntk.net]...

    *bzzzzzzzzt* *AAAARGHHH!*
  • Check out these Power Line modems from Sweden, Sweet. [ilevo.se]
  • Well... I think that the modem unplugged right before the URL was typed in...
    http://www.ilevo.se [ilevo.se]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • and mirroring across transformers would allow for increased numbers to access.
  • Well, they did what the article says in Norway about a year ago. It didn't work, the radio noise was so bad somebody got it shut down after a few hours.... The research done in advance was in that case very bad. OK, it might have improved in Germany, but I don't believe it before I see it. It wasn't that you can't get TCP/IP over it, that's easy enough.
  • Well, there are a few things I don't get, and that I couldn't see mentioned.

    Well, the problem is that you have this 50 Hz sinus, and you try to piggyback another signal on the top of it. This signal might need to be in the MHz range. Now, the problem is that if you put a MHz signal in a wire, then you have an antenna. It radiates electromagnetic radiation... And that's bad.

    The response has been to keep the amplitude of the MHz signal just above noise, but then you'll loose a lot of packets, and from what I've heard, any signal with sufficient amplitude makes the radiation so bad it interferes with just about everything in the sorroundiings...

    There was this test of this stuff about a year ago in Norway. They delivered the packets allright, that's easy enough, and the company proclaimed the test was extremely successful, and that they would roll it out to consumers the following month. That was before they got the bill for jamming all the radio stations around, and the communications inspectorate knocking down their doors telling them to shut up.

    Obviously, the technology may have improved, but it doesn't sound they have addressed this. All they're writing is

    Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, which keeps connections alive by adjusting to changes in power lines. (In older products, electrical "noise" from vacuum cleaners and radios can easily disrupt data, according to vendors and analysts.)

    ....but it's the other way around, the noise from packets on the power lines disturbs everything else... (Wow, just imagine the vacuum cleaner running around on it's own... ;-) )

  • With cable quickly becoming the broadband of choice.. why would people need this?

    I can understand if you live in a rural area.. but satellite competition, which is also eyeing rural areas, would more that likely make this an unprofitable endevour.

    It's a good technology, but, unfortunately, it won't have a large market.

  • I had to do some research on Powerline Networking a few months ago, and there seems to be alot of disadvantages to powerline network.

    The worst thing about it is that there is an illusion of having your own private network. In fact, all the tdata on your network is being shared across your neighbour's powerlines. Security is one issue - but the main thing is that you will be sharing your measly 6Mbps (yes yes - it's 14Mbps, but if you read it, the effective rate is only 6~8Mbps for a optimum environment). So if this thing catches on, then you will be getting degraded network performance. Imagine if you live in a building your power network is shared between all the occupants. Not very fun. Please give me Ethernet!

    Another thing is that it depends on alot of existing wiring, they had their field tests return people that only got a maximum of 2Mbps because of the quality of their wiring, the appliance they use and for many other reasons. Now that isn't very impressive - I'd rather see something like HomePNA (Phone Line Networking) or WiFi.

    But thats my AU$0.02 (which is probably 1c US)

  • I don't see pricing anywhere in the article - but it would have to be damn good when you consider the convenience of 802.11b wireless and how pricing is falling in that arena...
  • Jeez... I just want to know if it's a bug in the slashcode and if so, any workarounds?
  • This doesn't help you get broadband cable/dsl into your home, but for hooking up a LAN it seems great.

    It can be really difficult to explain to a newbie what is needed to hookup a few PC's via ethernet - this would make it much easier - "just plug this USB device into a wall outlet".

    I just spent the weekend stringing cable in the attic of a sweltering house, and this seems like a happy alternative. Any idea what speeds it's capable of?

  • I'm pretty sure the focus of this article isn't really broadband, but about using power outlet networking for a LAN application. i.e. it doesn't bring broadband to your house, it's for hooking your PC in the office to the laptop in the living room.

  • News.com article on just this subject (Score:4)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @01:31PM (#127206)
    Power outlets may feed home networking [cnet.com]

    A consortium of about 90 high-profile technology companies will announce Tuesday that the group has finalized a new standard that will serve as a common way for connecting electronic devices to the Net through electrical outlets.

    The HomePlug Powerline Alliance, which includes Cisco Systems, Intel, RadioShack, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, among others, has spent the past year working on a standard for using homes' internal electrical network to link electronic devices. The new standard is based on technology created by little-known company Intellon.

    etc....

  • The submission states:

    It sounds like we may be seeing useable electrical-line LANs soon, but this obviously doesn't solve the 'last mile' problem.

    It doesn't solve the first mile problem either. All it works for is LANs.

    The problem with using the grid to serve the internet to homes is the transition from transmission lines to distribution lines. The stepdown transformers really muck up data transmission.

    At a recent Distribution Automation convention in San Diego, one company touted a technology for using the grid as a WAN. Their stuff wasn't bothered by transformers. The drawback: max speed was 1 bit per second.

    ---

  • for someone to launch a DOS attack on my air conditioner or refrigerator. Perhaps this will encourage conservation, hmmm...

  • can you imagine a beowulf cluster of refrigerators?

    :)
  • So great some friggin 5cR1P7 |1DD13 out there lauches a DOS at my machine and takes down the power grid to my block.... thats all I need now ;-)
  • Now, maybe that's a whole bunch of bunk, but if it's accurate, what effect would this new device have? It surely would "dirty" up your power a bit, not to mention everyone elses on your phase loop.

    It is interesting what happens when someone just guesses about what a technology does. Why are you so positive it will "dirty" up the power? What do you know about the technology? Why on earth would 92 companies agree to something that is not going to play nicely with the appliances in people's homes? Seems to me that would be a good way to piss off your customers and invite lawyers to your doorstep with class-action lawsuits.

    I'd wager any standard they end up with is going to be "safe" in your house for appliances.

    On another note, wouldn't this technology have similar problems as cable modem? If the whole neighborhood signs up, what kind of throughput will you get?

    Well, seeing as how this technology is for LAN's, not WAN's, I don't see how this argument applies, at all.
  • Does anyone else but me think it's a Bad Thing that we will eventually have 10 or so differnet ways to get broadband access to our homes? Or am I missing the point?

    I think you're missing the point.

    As long as the varied broadband connections do not breed incompatibility, it's definitely a Good Thing (tm)

    The more choice the consumer has, the better. The great the variety, the stiffer the competition. The stiffer the competition, the better the service. Finally, we get down to price. Doubtless, with more consumer choice come more competitive pricing schemes.

  • Does this work through filtered power sources? I know any decent UPS works so that the power you're actually getting comes from the battery, past a filter, and what goes /into/ the battery is the raw power, also past a filter/surge protector. All I know is, there's not a 'raw' connection anywhere near my computer -- just a long extention cord (the one-connection kind) going into my UPS, which leads to a power strip. Maybe it'll be good for all the lo-tech homes, though...
    ~
  • hahahahaha. I'm laughing mao. This can't, of course, be serious. here: [dutchwater.com]"We've developed a unique client-side nozzle (CSN), which functions just like a conventional modem" heh. And:
    Dial-up/ISDN 128 Kbps
    Frame relay (T-1) and DSL (copper wire) 1.5 Mbps
    DSL (air interfaces) and Ethernet (LAN) 1 Gbps
    Optical fiber (OC-192) 9.95 Gbps
    Optical fiber (OC-192 with DWDM) 318 Gbps
    WaterNet Unlimited


    Almost had me fooled, Zigurd. Did you just make that site? How'd you get it registered so fast and, more importantly, why "dutch"?




    Oh wait, click "who we are" at the bottom of that page. April fools.
    ~

  • Radical new idea... (Score:3)

    by 3-State Bit ( 225583 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @12:45PM (#127216)
    Okay. So we transmit through the flourescent lights [technologyreview.com] (/. article [slashdot.org]), which of course doesn't work if you're trying to get some shut-eye or setting up GOOD lighting that bathes your room in light. Now we transmit through the power lines, which doesn't work if you live in California at the wrong time or if you have vacuum cleaners or massive electrovactic flux capacitors or whatever: point is, there's light radiation all over the place, there's power radiation all over the place, hell, there's even radio pollution all over the place (which is why Bluetooth's failing so miserably, as we all know...). But what means of communication do we have that has no parasite devices riding it yet? What magic, wonderful link is there between us and the outside world, over which there is transmited the equivilent of terabytes of raw, reliable data, but which currently isn't at all modulated, although it easily can be made to be, so that rather than what amounts to static today, we get real-live bits?

    we need to start sending last-mile data down the water pipes.


    Yes, it's true, we have a system that currently can vary in pressure by hundreds of pounds per square inch, that currently has a fairly fixed pressure whose modulations no data-gobbling devices currently utilize, and which services a relatively few number of homes per pipe. Sure, it'll be a shared bandwidth -- or "pipe diameter" -- among all the homes in an area, but then so wasn't broadband cable -- and who's laughing at /that/ today? My roughest calculations show an upper bounds, based on where brownian motion starts to interfere with your data, in excess of 2.82 exobauds of data per household. (The lower bounds, based on the pressure difference that you can modulate not when no water flows through the pipes [and when brownian motion therefore is the only thing screwing you] but rather when everyone turns on every water faucet on full, flushes all their toilets, and opens the fire hydrants outside, /still/ results in good, clean data of about 750kbps, with generous redundancy for error-correction. Either way, lower bounds, upper bounds, that's a good hefty amount of bandwidth).


    Latency? That's estimatable from the speed of sound through water -- since sound is, after all, modulation -- which is [womenoceanographers.org] "1400 and 1570 m/sec (4593 and 5151 ft/sec). This is roughly 1.5 km/sec (just under 1 mile/sec) or about four times faster than sound travels through air." (Although it "depends on the temperature of the water, its salinity, and the pressure ") Now granted, a second to travel a mile might seem excessive, but bear in mind that, based on the above, the information still travels four times as fast as if you were to yell it. Maybe we can have an asymmetric system, so that you dial in with your modem, and have downloads come through the fat pipe. Okay, enough silliness.






    (i'm kidding)
    ~
  • Cable or Satellite are my only broadband options right now. Let's see, both are fifty bucks a month, and the ping latency on a satellite rig blows a huge spewing ding-dong. Maybe if I had the additional choices of DSL and powerline solutions, there would be competition and prices might come down to something more reasonable.
  • Why don't you move to a real state which allows competition for utilities, or write your congressman/senator to change the laws in your own state. Bitching about it here is a waste of time.

    I can choose between at least 4 different electric providers in my area, and I would do so if my electric wasn't included in my rent. Same with natural gas too.
  • DOCSIS cable "modems" are out, Road Runner is phasing out the old system for the Docsis system now.
  • Yeah... I have a DOCSIS modem from Motorola [gi.com], they didn't start installing cable modems en masse in the UK until a standard was decided upon. They ran trials using ATM based modems around 1996 though.

    My digital set-top-box has a DOCSIS modem in it too, which is used for the interactive stuff, there's a RJ45 on the back but it's redundant at the moment. I hear Pace [pace.co.uk] are starting to make boxes with 802.11b built in, the idea is they will fit (or you buy) a wireless board for your PC and you're straight on the net. The cable company wouldn't have to bother wiring in a seperate cable modem and ethernet.
  • First of all this isn't a powerline service to deliver data to your house they tried that already in Liverpool but the streetlamps started acting as RF transmitters, the idea was buried [slashdot.org].

    However, I know a company called Energis [energis.com] uses the high-voltage backbones to transmit data&voice between cities, this service gets nowhere near the local-loop and isn't available to consumers though.

    Ok... HomePlug [homeplug.org] is just an internal thing like X10 or HomePNA for linking appliances etc, say linking your PC to an MP3 box on your hi-fi.

    Noise on the phase may well be a problem, and there's the possibility you could sniff your neighbours network, I asume they've done some work with authentification to solve this. People already have this problem with X10, you can fit a filter to your main distribution box that kills any noise in either direction and stops X10 ingress. I have the feeling doing the latter might be beyond your Joe average, I guess they could fit filters to new houses, but new homes will most likely include 'proper' networking like ethernet.
  • We should do the following

    MPLampS - Electricity over IP (with MPLS Control Plane) [ietf.org]

    This will let us send the electricity you need over the existing IP network...

    Bill

  • Wasn't one of the Electric Boards in the North of England about to roll out net access over their grid last year? I thought they'd got as far as a limited roll-out but pulled it due to patch quality in several areas. *shrug* anybody remember the details?
  • I see a lot of people concerned about "stress" on the power grid by transmitting data across it. This doesn't work that way. It doesn't actually use the power cables to transmit data. The data is piggy-backed along the magnetic field surrounding the powerline, created by the electricty surging thru it. Very cool.

    Just for clarification

  • I did a presentation on this back in college a few years ago. Doesn't sound like a whole lot has changed. Companies involved all think "their" standard is the best and everyone else should conform to them. Not to mention the first time they tried to roll this, it wasn't ready yet. But thats nothing new. Look at the recordable DVD market for further reference.

    I really hope they get this figured out soon. I think the technology is super cool and the speeds are respectable. I recommend everyone to read up on it. You'll be impressed.

  • the "they" that you talk about are lots of different people coming from different angles trying to make money. "they" cannot be thought about as a single entity.
  • you are saying it "can't be done". get real. Of course it can be done. All the things you mention are things the technology will have to take into account. The collisions would make it unusable???? What, you think they'd try to put every place in new york city on one wire? You think it would be impossible to seperate circuits?
  • Yep, that's what a lot of radio hams are worried about. Messing around in the 2 to 30 MHZ bands puts you smack bang all over the HF frequencies, and these are all liable to bounce around the world if you use too much power (1 watt can have you talking from England to Aus). Check this out. http://www.rsgb.org.uk/emc/powerlines.htm
  • this has already been answered above, apparently the signal delivered is independent of the power. They just shove a seperate radio signal down the line. Admittedly the power their radio transcivers might come from the same place as your recently died power
  • this kind of thing has shown to work well in some places and badly in others. Works really well in England, brought down prices - was managed terribly in california, messed up big time. This would seem to suggest the idea isn't flawed but the roll out sometimes has been. Essentially the purpose is to make the companies more efficient, lumbering monopolies with no competition generally have no insentives.
  • I think he meant transmitters, not recievers - and they are (relatively) expensive.

    A crash reduces
    Your expensive computer
  • Great. My network still works during a blackout, shame my PC and network cards don't.
    -------------- Russ
    Conscience? Is that *still* in the dictionary?
  • .. according to Reykjavík Power Company's daughtercompany, Lína.net [lina.net]. Up to 4.5Mbit connection, at a reasonable price compared to ADSL connections from the phone company...
  • Presumably.

    However, you must then deal with power spikes and surges. I don't care if the power surge which totally destroys my computer comes from the power cable into the PC's power supply or the USB cable from said device to my USB port. Either way, the system's toast.

    I suppose you'd have to put a surge protection device between AC Router (for lack of a better term) and the USB port on my computer. Wow. Yet another device.

    Of course, we've been putting surge protection between phone lines and computers for years, so maybe this can be done with a combo Power/USB surge protector if this technology takes off.

    --

  • Wow (Score:5)

    by MxTxL ( 307166 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @12:21PM (#127235)
    Everyone is saying how it's so cool that they could run networking over the power grid. How could you all miss that the article was about IN HOME LAN networking via the wall power outlets.

    While it would be cool to run broadband access over the already existing power lines, that's not what the article was about, nor does anyone suggest that's possible.

  • Apparently you are clueless. There are lots of powerline modems available on the market, for speeds up to a couple of megabits pr. second at least. The problem with widespread deployment is passing the data past transformers. In effect most schemes are based around adding equipment at every transformer.

    In Europe that isn't too bad, since the number of households per transformer is high. In the US on the other hand, the number of households per transformer is very low, hence increasing the cost of using most current powerline modems quite a lot.

    FYI: If all you want is sending data over powerlines within your own house, there are cheap, working boxes to be had from lots of places, and I know at least a couple of people who've built powerline modems like that themselves.

  • > It will drive competition for better technologies, which is a goog thing in such a immature market.

    Just as it has been a good thing(tm) for DVD Rewritables? I take your point, but I'd tend to think that the Windows vs. Linux war (which can be considered a war in roughly the same sense that the united Indian forces vs. Custer was a war), as a competition between existing software platforms, is something completely different from a competition between potential hardware standards. The problem is, hardware wars so often seem to result in not the emergence of the superior platform, nor even any leading platform good or bad. They sometimes just result in technological stalemate. This is where we stand with regard to DVD-RAM, apparently. It's a war of attrition. It probably won't end until someone is just forced to give up and the competitors fall like dominoes to the better (or, more likely, better marketed) standard.

    As for the "that much better" standard finally emerging, I may just be a cynical old nerd (and one prone to cliches), but I have to evoke the old Beta/VHS archetype. "Better marketing" certainly won out there, as it is often prone to do, over simply "better". Hordes of ubergeeks, further, would think me negligent if I omitted mention of the Amiga, and its own failure.

  • Cable has nothing to do with this. If you read the article, it's obvious that the market is for intra-home communications between computers and other smart devices (no reference to the power company, which would have to be involved if they were trying to sell internet service). This is all about getting bits from one side of your house to the other without having to snake CAT5 to a jack on every wall.

    I think that the first few h4x0ring attacks against carrier-current (that's what these things are called) home networks are going to make them a lot less popular than focus-group studies might make them appear. The first time some kid shows an animated disemboweling and decapitation of Barney to the obnoxious neighbor's 2-yr-old or flips pr0n images on the TV during the evening news, the stampede will be on for technologies which have some inherent security (like phone-wire). Sure, carrier-current and RF systems can be secured; we just know that security is going to have holes you could sail a supertanker through to make it "convenient" and "easy".
    --

  • It is interesting what happens when someone just guesses about what a technology does. Why are you so positive it will "dirty" up the power? What do you know about the technology? Why on earth would 92 companies agree to something that is not going to play nicely with the appliances in people's homes? Seems to me that would be a good way to piss off your customers and invite lawyers to your doorstep with class-action lawsuits.

    Companies have been doing irresponsible things for years. I don't see why this should be any exception. And yes, anything that transmits signals through your power lines will "dirty" up the power (slightly). In order to get a signal, you have to "vary" something. Your choices are: voltage, current, or AC cycles. The first two have naturally wide variations, so I doubt that either are being used. Frequency has some variation too, but not as bad. The question is, will the effect of the network even be noticeable with the normal "noise" that exists on your power lines. The answer is most likely that it won't be any worse than your neighbor turning on a vacuum cleaner. But the question should still be asked.

    Well, seeing as how this technology is for LAN's, not WAN's, I don't see how this argument applies, at all.

    Ok, sorry. I was getting a bit ahead and trying to be forward thinking. I should have explained more. Although the article only dealt with home networks, I was envisioning some sort of mini-WANs set up on a phase loop -- any residents on that loop could pay an ISP on the same loop for internet connectivity. Cool idea, but it probably wouldn't work very well anyway.

    GreyPoopon
    --

  • This may be a tad "off the wall," but I'm concerned about impact on appliances. Apparently, power "noise" is so bad that a few years ago, a company made money selling these "green" plug adaptors that conditioned the power oscillations to more efficiently drive appliances. They claimed that their deviced drastically improved power efficiency and increased the lifetime of your appliances.

    Now, maybe that's a whole bunch of bunk, but if it's accurate, what effect would this new device have? It surely would "dirty" up your power a bit, not to mention everyone elses on your phase loop. Enough of these running, and we'd all have to buy whole-house green plugs for everything EXCEPT the outlet we were using for ethernet.

    On another note, wouldn't this technology have similar problems as cable modem? If the whole neighborhood signs up, what kind of throughput will you get? I have to believe that running new power cables (to increase bandwidth) is more expensive than burying some extra fiber.

    GreyPoopon
    --

  • I assume that I'd still need a router or hub if there are more than 2 machines hooked together over this interface given that it's just a power line ethernet interface, right?

    How about a plug strip instead?
  • "We think wireless will remain slightly more expensive because you're talking about radios, and radios are expensive," says Scherf.

    Radios are expensive? It's been around forever, and they're dirt cheap. During second world war people made radios using a crystal, and some wiring to their amalgam fillings. What a tosser.

    Think about this for a second: One of the suggested killer apps for this useless lan technology is supposed to be internet radio. That's right: They want you to get special networking hardware, buy an internet radio and plug it into an electric outlet. The state of the art networks at the moment are 2 mbps, in practice giving 6-700 kbps. Your radio, at 128 kbps, which I think is minimum for decent sound, would consume 20% of the house bandwidth. Does not compute. There's a reason people use the spoon and not the knife when eating soup.

    Other applications was to have appliances talk to each other, for example your dvd player and your tv. If they went with wireless, you could instead do most of the stuff through your remote control.

    Most over the posters seemed awed by having internet over the powergrid. If they read the article, it's about home networking using the power lines in the house.

    Communication over powergrids exists, but the bandwidth is very low, and it is mostly used for signalling for power grid operation. You could get an internet connection that way, but you wouldn't want to call it broadband.

  • Radiolink for above article (Score:3)

    by blang ( 450736 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @01:35PM (#127248)
    Just to back up my claim that radio is cheap technology, here's a link to PoW built radios [pdq.net]

    There was a much smaller model built by Norwegian WWII POW's that used the prisoner's teeth (while still in the mouth of course) as part of the radio, but I can not find a link to that. But it really exists in a museum.

  • Here are some pages for you:

    http://www.domosys.com/ [domosys.com]
    http://www.enikia.com/ [enikia.com]
    http://www.intellon.com/ [intellon.com]

    I think people are just getting excited over the idea of this being adopted by a large power coorporation instead of being only deliverable through specicialized companies.

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