Broadband Internet through an electric socket

cranoo

Broadband Internet through an electric socket
More than a million customers in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana will have the option of plugging into broadband Internet access through a standard electrical outlet this month. The alternative to cable and DSL is considered a boon to rural customers.
The service, called Broadband over Power Line (BPL), will be provided by a partnership of Current Communications Group and Cinergy Broadband. Critics have complained that BPL interferes with ham radio transmissions.
According to Current Communications, consumers will be able to plug a HomePlug power line modem into any electrical socket in the house without professional installation. Depending on connection speed, it will cost $29 to $39 per month.
Source: [url]www.pcworld.com:80 [/url]

Xcellor

Time to move to Ohio then...

X

cranoo

Jaysus if that was to come in here and was reasonably priced it would give Eircon one up the arse.

Cranoo

griffdaddy

i remember reading somewhere about 6months that esb were looking into it and preparing to do tests, havent heard aout since

Ryaner

This has popped up a few times lately. There rumours that they are in fact testing this or planning it. I've heard nothing official and no one else has thats posted a link so.

Wookie

There was something in the news this week about inner city schools in Dublin getting ESB BB conections. I think the project is private sector funded. I also remember something about 4.5Mb connections

I asked Mr Google and he came up with the following...

ENN

FF Web Site

No mention of the ESB, other than their fiber backbone.

Sangre

But how fast is it?
Cant see any mention.

BigEejit

I'm surprised that the Ham radio heads havent jumped all over this thread like they usually do [edit]actually its not a they but a him - from the wesht[/edit].... personally - I think that the sooner the better - but I believe that the ESB wont run with it .... theyre just proving to Government that they are working on it

Ryaner

Last I heard ESB Shops were selling pc's that fitted the system.
Was posted in the BB forum while ago.

The online store has nothing about it so I dunno. Be interesting if it does happen

Moriarty

Originally posted by BigEejit
I'm surprised that the Ham radio heads havent jumped all over this thread like they usually do [edit]actually its not a they but a him - from the wesht[/edit].... personally - I think that the sooner the better - but I believe that the ESB wont run with it .... theyre just proving to Government that they are working on it

In fairness now BigEejit, the person you're speaking about makes decent points and backs them up with facts. That you might not like what he has to say isn't reason enough to go sniping at him.

Mutant_Fruit

What they were selling was computers with 10/100 ethernet built in. I distinctly remember that thread, as the sales guy was saying this computer was gonna be 1000 times faster than orhter computers on the internet. (or some ediculous figurelike that).

Ryaner

I was in the ESB shop today in Artaine, and noticed, while reading one of their new pc/laptop brochures that one of them had "Onboard 10/100 LAN (Broadband Ready)"

On asking one of the ESB-heads if a particular laptop had onboard lan (it wasn't marked as such) he immediately went into a conversation about a big cable going from america, around ireland a few times, then onto England. it's owned by the ESB, and that it will, next year, allow all users of any home LAN to have broadban access onto their LAN, and that this LAN would be a LAN that was Broadband Ready. Aswell as being a Broadband Ready LAN, it'd be a LAN that would allow all users of a home LAN to have Broadband Access - that is, if home users have a LAN, then they can use a Broadband Ready LAN to use Broadband

Read the thread here
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141239

uteotw

It seems that ESB won't have a end-user BB offer.
ISPs and wanabe ISPs will buy from ESB and then sell it to you.

http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9384976.html

BigEejit

Originally posted by Moriarty
In fairness now BigEejit, the person you're speaking about makes decent points and backs them up with facts. That you might not like what he has to say isn't reason enough to go sniping at him.

Lookit, all the HAM radio heads around the world are always giving out about anything that may or may not impinge on their little chats (I wont say that they are working in concert, but the HAM radio organisation has a website showing possible technologies that may interfere).... the fact of the matter is that a bit of an increase in the noise floor for them means broadband for millions ... this is a case of the few having and the many doing without (the many being mostly rural customers that will probably never be offered DSL, and even if they are in a WISPS footprint they may not be able to get a signal.....)

That PCWorld site linked to by the initial poster had the following quote, which makes it plain that the ARRL (HAM radio organisation in the states) will have to prove conclusively that there is interference:

The ARRL argues that the FCC rules will place the burden of proof on licensed users of the radio spectrum experiencing interference from BPL. But [FCC} commissioners downplayed interference complaints while voting to move forward with BPL rules. "While we must be mindful of harmful interference, we cannot let unsupported claims stand in the way of such an innovation as BPL systems," says Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. "... We need to push the boundaries to accommodate new technologies."

You'll note that a FCC commissioner has said that the ARRL's claims of interference are "unsupported". You can put money on one thing though, if its allowed in the US it wont be long until its allowed here.

Here's a question for the HAM people:
How many HAM radio people are there in Ireland?, the world?

Wookie

It seems that ESB won't have a end-user BB offer.

I think uteotw is right. [Roy Keane]At the end of the day[/Roy Keane] you get the feeling that the ESB will leave the last mile to third party companies. All the same out of interest I will keep trawling as I am almost positive that the story I saw on the news suggested that the school were connecting through power sockets.

oscarBravo

Originally posted by BigEejit
the fact of the matter is that a bit of an increase in the noise floor for them means broadband for millions ... this is a case of the few having and the many doing without (the many being mostly rural customers that will probably never be offered DSL, and even if they are in a WISPS footprint they may not be able to get a signal.....)

You don't seem to have noticed Brendan's much more relevant (from the broadband perspective, if not the amateur one) point that it's simply not a runner anyway. It just doesn't have the range to deliver rural broadband.

Can anyone point to a trial that has shown BPL to be capable of delivering broadband over distances that would make it useful in a rural environment?

Moriarty

BigEejit, from what i've read there is serious problems with the core technology at the moment. Broadband over powerlines has been mooted for nearly ten years now with vast numbers of trials undertook - and yet there is a suspicous lack of full services being offered now. There is also apparently the major problem of this having far less reach than DSL. The ESB would have to place repeaters every few hundred meters throughout their entire network to be able to offer this service to everyone.

The frequencys that are allegedly interfered with aren't soley used by ham operators either, it's a very special frequency band with unique properties that is used for a large number of applications, some of which are rather important.

If it does interfere to the extent that ham radio clubs are saying it does, it might not be a price worth paying.

bminish

Originally posted by BigEejit

You'll note that a FCC commissioner has said that the ARRL's claims of interference are "unsupported". You can put money on one thing though, if its allowed in the US it wont be long until its allowed here.

the proposed FCC rules for PLT are interesting if you look closely though, PLT (BPL as it is called in the US) started off life as a Part 15 service but is now much more restricted than that. I have posted elsewhere about that

Here's a question for the HAM people:
How many HAM radio people are there in Ireland?, the world?

I don't think there are very many ' HAM people' in Ireland.

In Ireland there are about 1700 Licensed Amateur radio operators and worldwide there are several million, i don't have exact figures but the
US has 678,668 licence holders
http://www.speroni.com/FCC/Licenses.html
The UK has 57,734 licence holders
http://www.speroni.com/UK/G-Stations.html
Japan Has 3,137,893 Licence holders
http://www.speroni.com/MPT/JA-Op's.html

I don't have sources of figures for other countries But amateur radio is certainly popular in all the eastern European countries.

Amateurs only have access to around 10% of the very crowded HF spectrum. Other users include
Aviation, ALL transatlantic flights use HF radio for Air traffic control

Marine, HF radio used extensively for ship to shore communications outside VHF range (~30 km), the other option is Inmarsat but at 1 US cent per byte or $ 7.50 per minute for voice / 2400 Bd traffic on Inmarsat C (which is the marine approved system) HF radio sees plenty of marine usage.

Shortwave broadcasting, more than 100 countries broadcast internationally on Shortwave, over 100 Million people listen to the BBC world service alone on Shortwave

Military, all the world's military forces use HF radio extensively

ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) One growing use of HF radio (at around 13 Mhz) is to query RF ID tags

You can see a full list of frequency allocations Here the HF Spectrum is generally considered to be the bit between 3 and 30 Mhz and it is very heavily used indeed. it's simply not worth sacrificing for an inferior delivery mechanism for Broadband with a very short line reach.

In-house PLT (I.e the recently announced schools project in Dublin) Makes no longterm sense either, why lock the schools into using a totally propriety system with inferior throughput ?
Would they not be better served using standards based technology such as 802.11a/b/g and ethernet allowing them a choice of suppliers when they need to add to the system and offering far better throughput at lower cost.

.Brendan

rardagh

Hi,

Using internal power systems for distributing Ethernet has been gaining popularity with an increasing amount of broadband equipment vendors.

There is an industry alliance, similar to the Wi-Fi alliance, that has been formed to generate and 'encourage' interoperable systems development.

It is found at http://www.homeplug.com/

Best, Rory

uteotw

About ESB wholesale price... €50,000 for 100mbps for 1 year.
I wonder what else is required to set up a private ISP ? How do you get houses connected then ? Is it just some "splitter" on a socket and then ESB activate it ?

Let's say an association of 100 people decide to pay the €50000.
That's €500 per head , or less than €42 per head per month for 1mbps with 1:1 contention, or 10mbps with 10:1 contention... or 100mbps with 100:1 contention

Anyone knows more technical and logistical details ?

bminish

Originally posted by rardagh
Hi,

Using internal power systems for distributing Ethernet has been gaining popularity with an increasing amount of broadband equipment vendors.

There is an industry alliance, similar to the Wi-Fi alliance, that has been formed to generate and 'encourage' interoperable systems development.

It is found at http://www.homeplug.com/

Best, Rory

Yes, but What SMART are putting into the Schools in Dublin is ASCOM PLT equipment, not Home plug alliance stuff so it's not able to interoperate (or even co-exist ) with Home Plug alliance Kit.
You can see my post on this in the IrelandOffline forum Here

The Homeplug alliance also designed their system in cooperation with Amateurs to minimize the potential for interference, something the PLT companies have consistently refused to do. A PDF is Here showing the results of a test done jointly with the Home Plug Alliance and the ARRL.

Homeplug also operates at much lower radiated emission levels than those proposed for PLT which of course severely curtails the useable range for homeplug devices, range is good enough for a typical House or small office but not a school or a hotel.

.Brendan

BigEejit

Couldnt be arsed quoting ye, too many beers , it should be obvious as to what I'm replying to, if you cant figure it out get a 5 year old to show you.

Can people stop taking it for granted that BPL (PLT, whatever the fuck you want to call it) IS causing inteference, when this has not been scientifically proven (as indicated by the FCC) ... saying that it'll intefere with everything in the HF band, thats just scare tactics .... show unbiased proof (i.e. from an unbiased source) before making claims.

When you say that radio is used a lot for ship to shore i can unequivocally say bollocks ... I know several people working in Valentia radio and they are worried for their jobs because there is fuck-all traffic ... people use GSM phones close to shore, further out they use satellite phones because that is cheaper than routing through the radio stations. The only lads doing ship to shore are the cheap ass boats out of Spain and Portugal and West Africa who wouldnt pay for any new equipment. The radio stations are mostly listening for distress calls, and they arent even getting them much any more because people are using satellite beacons .... and anyway, dont throw marine radio at anyone ... they wouldnt notice inteference .. boats are transmitting in the tens to hundreds of watts, the radio stations are transmitting in the thousands of watts ... I have seen a 1kilowatt tube from Valentia radio myself, it stood about 2 feet tall ... And inteference in the milliwatts that would be many miles away would not affect the >100foot masts that they are listening with (nearest town has free satellite broadband - Caherciveen, so little or no chance of the ESB trying to get the foot in there)

The HAM radio RF range is also no stranger to high wattage - when I worked in Galway one of my many jobs there was installing 2-way motorola radios in Taxis etc ... A lad came in one day looking for a transmitter to be repaired and got talking to him, he was was "having little chats on the radio" as he put it, near Rahoon (cant remember the estate name, he had a 60 - 80 foot antenna) had up to 100 watts if I remember correctly ... if this is normal for HAM radio I cant see how you can talk about inteference.. you could cook food at the power he was putting out.

You say that it is not suitable for long distance comms .... what is your basis for making this observation and isnt it possible that a company (or a load of them) may have developed a method of doing it over longer distances in the last couple of years.. Or did you find out the facts for one trial and consider that all possible scenarios will suffer the same fate? you dont know what's possible or impossible in this regard, no-one does.

As for LAN traffic over a houses internal wiring, thats just daft, get a few wireless cards and a router, it'll do the same thing

bminish

Originally posted by BigEejit

too many beers

So I am arguing with a drunk !

Can people stop taking it for granted that BPL (PLT, whatever the fuck you want to call it) IS causing inteference, when this has not been scientifically proven (as indicated by the FCC) ... saying that it'll intefere with everything in the HF band, thats just scare tactics .... show unbiased proof (i.e. from an unbiased source) before making claims.

Do I have to repeat links given in earlier threads?
Here are submissions made to the EU working committee on PLT these from many sources including commercial HF users and broadcasters as well as companies and individuals closely associated with the PLT industry

Do the Red Cross, The BBC, FEMA, The DRM consortium, The German telecom regulator, The Australian telecom regulator, The Japanese Government, the Finnish Authorities just to name a few parties raising concerns or objecting outright not count then?

The FCC actually ended up (despite media spin from the PLT lobby ) restricting PLT more than It is currently under the FCC part 15 rules. They didn't loosen the standards to suit PLT they actually tightened the standards and added the following conditions.

1/ Listing all installation areas, modulation systems and frequency ranges in use
2/ MUST take action to mitigate interferace when reported or face closure
3/ The FCC did not raise the permissible field strength limits as requested by the PLT lobby

Obviously for the FCC to take this course of action shows that they DO take seriously the risk to HF radio users. The ARRL and the Amateur community in general feels that this action does not go far enough

When you say that radio is used a lot for ship to shore i can unequivocally say bollocks ... I know several people working in Valentia radio and they are worried for their jobs because there is fuck-all traffic ...

then you really haven't a clue then do you?
Valencia is not on HF at all, it handles VHF and a little MF traffic. In any case the job cuts on Irish coast stations have nowt to with declining use, it's all part of a plan to centralise the system with the other stations under remote control from a central location, this has already been done for some other Irish Shore stations

people use GSM phones close to shore, further out they use satellite phones because that is cheaper than routing through the radio stations.

Iridium, and Inmarsat mini-M are cheaper but the marine approved Inmarsat C is certainly not. in any case not all traffic is phone calls

boats are transmitting in the tens to hundreds of watts, the radio stations are transmitting in the thousands of watts ... I have seen a 1kilowatt tube from Valentia radio myself, it stood about 2 feet tall ... And inteference in the milliwatts that would be many miles away would not affect the >100foot masts that they are listening with (nearest town has free satellite broadband - Caherciveen, so little or no chance of the ESB trying to get the foot in there)

But shore stations need to have a low noise floor to receive signals. In any case Noise is cumulative (second law of thermodynamis applies.) The impact on the noise floor at sea of the old UK cordless phones that had the base units transmitting on 1.7 Mhz has been documented and measured.

The HAM radio RF range is also no stranger to high wattage - when I worked in Galway one of my many jobs there was installing 2-way motorola radios in Taxis etc ...

Which you seem to have managed to do without gaining ANY knowledge of radio..

.. had up to 100 watts if I remember correctly ... if this is normal for HAM radio I cant see how you can talk about inteference.. you could cook food at the power he was putting out.

100 watts is typical of an amateur HF installation and would have no problem meeting the Non-Ionizing radiation (RF) exposure limits by a wide margin, no danger of cooking anything.

You say you worked in the radio industry, it's a shame that you didn't appear to have the opportunity to learn anything about radio.

You say that it is not suitable for long distance comms .... what is your basis for making this observation and isnt it possible that a company (or a load of them) may have developed a method of doing it over longer distances in the last couple of years.. Or did you find out the facts for one trial and consider that all possible scenarios will suffer the same fate? you dont know what's possible or impossible in this regard, no-one does.

My statement on this is in part based on the fact that not one single Access PLT trial anywhere in the world has been deployed over a line length longer than about 300m without the use of a repeater.

basic transmission line theory shows how lossy power lines are at HF frequencies,antenna modelling shows how effective they are as antennas as do various experiments and measurements made over the years.

Losses occur due mainly to radiation of the signal with some dielectric and resistive losses. Transformers and metering equipment present high transmission loss and need bypassing for PLT to work.

The fact that power lines make effective antennas also makes PLT very sensitive to nearby HF operation.

the fundamental laws laid down by nyquist and Shannon relating to how much theoretical capacity a given circuit can mange for a certain signal to nose ratio and bandwidth apply to powerlines just as much as they do to any other data transmission circuit, powerlines are noisy environments. as a result access PLT using HF will never get past 2 mbs or so shared between all users on a segment so it's a system with no long term future in any case.

As for LAN traffic over a houses internal wiring, thats just daft, get a few wireless cards and a router, it'll do the same thing [/B]

I agree.

.Brendan

BigEejit

Yikes, just noticed how long this post is ... sorry for all time wasted and electrons needlessly hassled....

Originally posted by bminish
So I am arguing with a drunk !

check out the brain of the comeback king!!, there is a difference between having a few beers and being a drunk, sadly it seems to have escaped you.

Do I have to repeat links given in earlier threads?

Yes

Here are submissions made to the EU working committee on PLT these from many sources including commercial HF users and broadcasters as well as companies and individuals closely associated with the PLT industry

Almost all interested parties with something to lose if there were inteference. The likelyhood of exagerrating claims would be higher...

Do the Red Cross, The BBC, FEMA, The DRM consortium, The German telecom regulator, The Australian telecom regulator, The Japanese Government, the Finnish Authorities just to name a few parties raising concerns or objecting outright not count then?

How many on these would have complained without lobbying from interested parties, and I dont see where the Red Cross's objection was on that link.... or the Japanese government either....

The FCC actually ended up (despite media spin from the PLT lobby ) restricting PLT more than It is currently under the FCC part 15 rules. They didn't loosen the standards to suit PLT they actually tightened the standards and added the following conditions.

1/ Listing all installation areas, modulation systems and frequency ranges in use
2/ MUST take action to mitigate interferace when reported or face closure
3/ The FCC did not raise the permissible field strength limits as requested by the PLT lobby

Obviously for the FCC to take this course of action shows that they DO take seriously the risk to HF radio users.

Didnt I read somewhere that the FCC has said that claims of inteference are so far unsupported? regardless of regulation tightening

The ARRL and the Amateur community in general feels that this action does not go far enough

duh!

then you really haven't a clue then do you?

About radio? no ... and hopefully never will, an extremely boring subject and a more boring bunch of gobshites I have never met

Valencia is not on HF at all, it handles VHF and a little MF traffic. In any case the job cuts on Irish coast stations have nowt to with declining use, it's all part of a plan to centralise the system with the other stations under remote control from a central location, this has already been done for some other Irish Shore stations

first Valencia is in Spain - second that decision to centralise the stations has been rescinded and the stations will be at full strength by Summer I believe ...tsk tsk, you should keep up with the current radio news. As for not knowing that the radio stations do not handle short wave, I didnt know, I thought they did pretty much everything...

Iridium, and Inmarsat mini-M are cheaper but the marine approved Inmarsat C is certainly not. in any case not all traffic is phone calls

So Inmarsat C is more expensive is more expensive than Iridium ...... what do you think the Boats will use then? .... "not all traffic is phone calls" whats that about?

But shore stations need to have a low noise floor to receive signals. In any case Noise is cumulative (second law of thermodynamis applies.) The impact on the noise floor at sea of the old UK cordless phones that had the base units transmitting on 1.7 Mhz has been documented and measured.

Noise also attenuates, unless BPL is relatively close beside the receiver it wont matter a fuck

Which you seem to have managed to do without gaining ANY knowledge of radio..

Take radio out of box, screw onto inside of car, take antenna and drill and put antenna in roof or wing of car. connect together and connect powersupply. Test. Why the fuck do you think radio installation gives anyone a knowledge of radio use and frequencies ..... I did that job because they were busy and the same guy owned that company and the one I worked in ..... As I said earlier, boring subject and boring people (the enthusiasts rather than working users) ....

100 watts is typical of an amateur HF installation and would have no problem meeting the Non-Ionizing radiation (RF) exposure limits by a wide margin, no danger of cooking anything.

my bad ... see earlier point about boring subject, couldnt be arsed finding this kind of thing out.

You say you worked in the radio industry, it's a shame that you didn't appear to have the opportunity to learn anything about radio.

I actually put my fingers in my ears and starting say naa naaa etc to avoid the subject entirely.

My statement on this is in part based on the fact that not one single Access PLT trial anywhere in the world has been deployed over a line length longer than about 300m without the use of a repeater.

As I said earlier, is it possible for a new method to be used?

basic transmission line theory shows how lossy power lines are at HF frequencies,antenna modelling shows how effective they are as antennas as do various experiments and measurements made over the years.

Losses occur due mainly to radiation of the signal with some dielectric and resistive losses. Transformers and metering equipment present high transmission loss and need bypassing for PLT to work.

The fact that power lines make effective antennas also makes PLT very sensitive to nearby HF operation.

the fundamental laws laid down by nyquist and Shannon relating to how much theoretical capacity a given circuit can mange for a certain signal to nose ratio and bandwidth apply to powerlines just as much as they do to any other data transmission circuit, powerlines are noisy environments. as a result access PLT using HF will never get past 2 mbs or so shared between all users on a segment so it's a system with no long term future in any case.

/me fingers in ears shouting naa naaaa


[edit]
Oh and I did notice that your submission was one of the largest ... does that mean that you would be one of the main protagonists against PLT? .... why us? why us??? ... /me runs off balling crying
[/edit]

oscarBravo

Originally posted by BigEejit
About radio? no ... and hopefully never will, an extremely boring subject and a more boring bunch of gobshites I have never met

/oscarBravo strikes BigEejit off his list of potential consultants for wireless projects...

Tell me, BigEejit, as someone who professes pride in knowing nothing about the subject, why do you persist in arguing with someone who obviously does?

STaN

Originally posted by Wookie
There was something in the news this week about inner city schools in Dublin getting ESB BB conections. I think the project is private sector funded. I also remember something about 4.5Mb connections

I asked Mr Google and he came up with the following...

ENN

FF Web Site

No mention of the ESB, other than their fiber backbone.

AS FAR AS I KNOW...

Smart Telecom are doing this and what their doing is installing a broadband connection (not powerline) and have an internal network for sharing this connection via the internal powerlines.

bminish

Originally posted by BigEejit

So Inmarsat C is more expensive is more expensive than Iridium ...... what do you think the Boats will use then? .... "not all traffic is phone calls" whats that about?

Look it up yourself, Or ask one of the pals you have in the marine radio field what their actual day job consists of ..

Inmarsat Mini-M Iriduim etc are not marine approved this means that they can't use them for their safety related traffic, they use HF radio and Inmarsat C when out of VHF range

Noise also attenuates, unless BPL is relatively close beside the receiver it wont matter a fuck

Better stick your fingers back in your ears then..

Noise is Cumulative and what makes HF unique is that it is reflected worldwide therefore the impact of large scale deployments of PLT will have a global effect.

this has already been seen on a small scale with the old 1.7 Mhz UK cordless phones

As I said earlier, is it possible for a new method to be used?

Well corridor claim to have a system that uses the magnetic field and the dielectric properties of the line to contain Microwave frequencies, this is based on G-Line transmission lines, plenty of bandwidth and no problems whatsoever for HF radio users, However based on my understanding of transmission lines and in particular the G-Line, corridor's system smells like snake oil.
there's a long history of snake oil in the powerline Internet business see below for example
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.11/media.html


For PLT deployment fibre is required to the local transformer anyway, why not use Microwaves to go the last couple of 100 yards , not as if they don't have pole to put it on.. Some US power companies are actually taking or considering taking this route

/me fingers in ears shouting naa naaaa

Considering you can't be arsed to understand the technical and scientific basis for the arguments against PLT I see little point in trying much further in explaining this stuff to you.

regarding links to the non European complainants, you will find them on the ARRL site.
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc
Complain of bias if you like but you don't exactly appear unbiased yourself

You would not really expect the Japanese radio Authorities to respond to a European consultation would you?
The red cross issue is more recent than that EU consultation and resulted in partial closure of a PLT system

.Brendan

bminish

Originally posted by STaN
AS FAR AS I KNOW...

Smart Telecom are doing this and what their doing is installing a broadband connection (not powerline) and have an internal network for sharing this connection via the internal powerlines.

From what I understand of what SMART are doing is broadly as described above, their supplier is Ascom

Ascom PLT systems work by having 2 segments, the access segment that gets as far as the house and the In house segment.
Presumably Smart are using the in-house segment only.

However the problem is that the ' in House ' segment is as least as noisy to radio users as the access segment, the BBC took measurements of both segments in Crief for example

Ascom's in house segment is a problem to radio users for 2 reasons

1/ The in house wiring makes an effective antenna, more effective than a few 100m of powerline alone, this is partially due to sheer quantity of internal mains wiring and partially due to all the impedance
mismatches caused by all the various devices plugged in / Wired up to the mains.

2/ Ascom's system uses much higher power levels than Home Plug type equipment, this is so that it can cover a whole School / Hotel etc.


It's an interesting choice for schools considering it's networking performance is so poor ( I have seen 4.5 Mbs quoted and this is an optimistic figure for the in house segment of an Ascom system), it's very sensitive to disruption from either mains bourne interference (arc welders anyone.. ) or from radio users
It's also propriety, Surely schools shouldn't be installing propriety solutions since this will tie them to just one supplier

.Brendan

BigEejit

Originally posted by oscarBravo
/oscarBravo strikes BigEejit off his list of potential consultants for wireless projects...

Tell me, BigEejit, as someone who professes pride in knowing nothing about the subject, why do you persist in arguing with someone who obviously does?

Because know-all's bug the living shit out of me (and also FUD spreaders, they can even be the same person!!).... and also because amateur radio people all over are ganging up on this technology .... there's no-one sticking up for the big guys!!;)

[edit]
I just noticed!!, I was on a list of potential consultants?? boy did you get your facts wrong ...
[/edit]

Ryaner

Originally posted by bminish


For PLT deployment fibre is required to the local transformer anyway, why not use Microwaves to go the last couple of 100 yards , not as if they don't have pole to put it on.. Some US power companies are actually taking or considering taking this route

This system is in operation in the states. I cant find weblink off hand but basically the power companys have run fiber across the power lines to the streets and then 802.11b type equipment is then used to get it into the houses on that street.

BigEejit

Originally posted by Ryaner
This system is in operation in the states. I cant find weblink off hand but basically the power companys have run fiber across the power lines to the streets and then 802.11b type equipment is then used to get it into the houses on that street.

Which is in my mind the best way of doing it, I have wondered why they didnt bother with it on a wide scale (either in Europe or in the US), possibly setting up microcells with new 3.5ghz gear or in the 5Ghz free band... nice low contention rates too ... mmmmmm

Ryaner

It's meant to be seen as one the ways forward. Completely cuts out the the last mile from phone providers which is always a plus.