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Broadband Over Power Lines ??

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Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Anyone know about Broadband Over Power Lines... inside buildings?

Given the unreliability of X-10 I find it hard to fathom how it could
work very well.

Comments?

...Jim Thompson
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Jim,

Anyone know about Broadband Over Power Lines... inside buildings?

It is commonly called PLC if you want to search Google. In Germany they
rolled it out in some areas and what I heard sounded like rather mixed
blessings. Sustained data rates not that great, lots of EMI issues. The
power grid is not at all a suitable medium for communications. Plug in a
piece of equipment with really good Y-caps and your comms might go
down. Then there is uncle Leroy's blender where he should have changed
the motor brushes a long time ago but never got around to it. That can
look like a hail storm on the analyzer.

Personally I do not believe in this technology. Just MHO.

Given the unreliability of X-10 I find it hard to fathom how it could
work very well.

X10 is IMHO an ill-conceived protocol. I do not understand how an on/off
AM protocol could be adopted on such a noisy channel. On our X10 stuff I
also found that many modules were grossly mis-aligned. Tuning them all
improved things quite a bit but it is not 100% reliable, of course. Then
the controllers also have issues, maybe buggy code. Once in a while they
go on the fritz and you have to power cycle them.
 
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Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim Thompson said:
Anyone know about Broadband Over Power Lines... inside buildings?

It seems to have almost died given the popularity of WiFi these days. I take
it you need to go further than 802.11b/g can go without more repeaters than
you'd like?

If you are going to go the power-line networking route, I'd suggest something
like
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...f=pd_bbs_1/102-1493441-8181722?_encoding=UTF8 -
- it's the only one I've heard people actually say works, although of course
it's seldom I talk to anyone who uses such things.
Given the unreliability of X-10 I find it hard to fathom how it could
work very well.

Well, X-10 was designed, what?, 30 years ago by folks who I never felt were
all that horribly sophisticated; the power-line networking stuff I'm told is
much more sophisticated with adaptive equalizers, better retry protocols, etc.

Let us know how it fares if you end up using it... :)

---Joel
 
P

Pooh Bear

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joerg said:
Hello Jim,

I've heard of it being trialled here and there but not much activity. Wireless
eems to have a decent chunk of business though.
It is commonly called PLC if you want to search Google. In Germany they
rolled it out in some areas and what I heard sounded like rather mixed
blessings. Sustained data rates not that great, lots of EMI issues. The
power grid is not at all a suitable medium for communications.

One power company here used their 'grid' as a backbone for comms but in a
different way. They installed optic fibre over their HV cables ( literally wound
round it IIRC ) and created a network that avoided all the issues like digging
the roads up.

Graham
 
J

John - KD5YI

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
Anyone know about Broadband Over Power Lines... inside buildings?

Given the unreliability of X-10 I find it hard to fathom how it could
work very well.

Comments?

...Jim Thompson



Hi, Jim -

Try this...

http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/

I hope you can find the information you want there.

Cheers,
John
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Graham,

One power company here used their 'grid' as a backbone for comms but in a
different way. They installed optic fibre over their HV cables ( literally wound
round it IIRC ) and created a network that avoided all the issues like digging
the roads up.

That's the way to make additional money out of long distance power
lines. You can string almost as many fibers and thus bandwidth as you want.

But data transfer over mains wiring is just plain wrong as an approach,
IMHO. I believe it's not going anywhere as a technology.

Regards, Joerg
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello John,

http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/

I hope you can find the information you want there.

That is one problem they run into in Europe. However, ARRL mentions DSL
as one of the "good" technologies and non-polluting. Well, I have DSL.
When DSL runs it thoroughly drowns out strong stations around 6MHz that
I like to listen to at times. With or without an outside antenna. Phone
lines aren't very well shielded and the condition of the shield of a 30+
year old phone line that was just turned into a data autobahn is, well,
rather uncertain. Sometimes these shields look like glorified chocolate
wrappers.
 
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martin griffith

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Graham,



That's the way to make additional money out of long distance power
lines. You can string almost as many fibers and thus bandwidth as you want.

But data transfer over mains wiring is just plain wrong as an approach,
IMHO. I believe it's not going anywhere as a technology.

Regards, Joerg
Yep. When I was in video engineering I tried to get people to use 75
ohm coax for power distribution, between the bays, to save all those
power distribution boxes


martin
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello John,


That is one problem they run into in Europe. However, ARRL mentions DSL
as one of the "good" technologies and non-polluting. Well, I have DSL.
When DSL runs it thoroughly drowns out strong stations around 6MHz that
I like to listen to at times. With or without an outside antenna. Phone
lines aren't very well shielded and the condition of the shield of a 30+
year old phone line that was just turned into a data autobahn is, well,
rather uncertain. Sometimes these shields look like glorified chocolate
wrappers.

When I ordered DSL, the gal said "we have to test the line". Apparently,
this particulat line had never been used for DSL, so they had to check to
see if it'd reach. It took about a minute, while I was on hold. I wonder
what that "test" constitutes, since this end just dead-ended at the
junction box. Check for reflections a la TDR, maybe? (it was a different
physical wire pair than the one I was talking on.)

Thanks,
Rich
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Rich,
When I ordered DSL, the gal said "we have to test the line". Apparently,
this particulat line had never been used for DSL, so they had to check to
see if it'd reach. It took about a minute, while I was on hold. I wonder
what that "test" constitutes, since this end just dead-ended at the
junction box. Check for reflections a la TDR, maybe? (it was a different
physical wire pair than the one I was talking on.)

That was different here. Ok, I was the first to get DSL in this
neighborhood but they still come out AFAIK. A service technician showed
up with a handheld analyzer and checked the levels. Only then did he
begin to mount the hardware. Afterwards he checked it again.
 
B

Ban

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joel said:
Well, X-10 was designed, what?, 30 years ago by folks who I never
felt were all that horribly sophisticated; the power-line networking stuff
I'm
told is much more sophisticated with adaptive equalizers, better retry
protocols, etc.
Let us know how it fares if you end up using it... :)

Well, every electricity counter here is read-out by the power provider in a
remote fashion. You can press the button and retrieve your data and also the
time in apparently real-time and given the amount of counters and the
sensibility of the data, it seems to work pretty reliable. The new counters
are fabricated somewhere in eastern Europe, and the guys who are mounting
them hope to find some work in the company after the change is all done.
 
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Rene Tschaggelar

Jan 1, 1970
0
Pooh said:
Joerg wrote:




I've heard of it being trialled here and there but not much activity. Wireless
eems to have a decent chunk of business though.

Wireless ? Forget that. Doesn't like steel reinforced concrete.
This means it is limited to two storey wooden buildings.

Rene
 
R

Rene Tschaggelar

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ban said:
Well, every electricity counter here is read-out by the power provider in a
remote fashion. You can press the button and retrieve your data and also the
time in apparently real-time and given the amount of counters and the
sensibility of the data, it seems to work pretty reliable. The new counters
are fabricated somewhere in eastern Europe, and the guys who are mounting
them hope to find some work in the company after the change is all done.

PLC never had a problem when the data rate was
sufficiently low. Reading out a counter can be
done with 1200 baud or such.

Rene
 
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Marc Guardiani

Jan 1, 1970
0
There are a number of tests that can be run, just one of which is a
TDR. A TDR is good for determining line length and finding bridge taps
(stubs). Bridge taps cause a notch in the frequencies that can be used
by DSL.

More likely what they did was to run a test looking for load coils and
splitters first. If you have any coils or splitters on the line, they
must be removed before you can get DSL. If the test showed no coils and
splitters, they could then run an insertion loss measurement. From
that, they could predict the bit rate you might be capable of obtaining
so that they would know what they could sell you.

BTW, the abbreviation I generally see for Broadband over Power Lines is
BPL.
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
Anyone know about Broadband Over Power Lines... inside buildings?

Given the unreliability of X-10 I find it hard to fathom how it could
work very well.

Comments?


http://www.intellon.com/ which is based a few miles from here.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Robert said:
It will work as well as any audiophool junk...


Well, the website says they have sold five million chipsets so
someone must like the way it works. I know people who work there, and I
doubt they would be there if the stuff was no good.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
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