Comments on: Internet over the grid

By: caoilte

caoilte — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 10:54:32 +0000

It’s SHIT.

The last mile is done by a microwave link and needs rebooting up to two or three times a day (it has been getting better actually).

And the latency… *cries*. Bring back echoing terminals…

Interestingly the reason we have it is actually economic. They never upgraded to DSL in this part of town (I’m in Holland) because the building company laid an optical cable down the streets instead. But…. the company that owns the cable doesn’t think it’s profitable enough to turn on. go figure.

By: dargit

dargit — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 09:04:36 +0000

As funos says, its a bad bad idea. The exception might be the mentioned Corridor system.
http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2004/02/01/1/?nc=1
Powerlines were designed to move power, not internet.

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 14:21:02 +0000

No argument there. That’s how it is, or was, in much of the USA, by my understanding — your telephone company would provision a wet pair for your phone and a separate dry pair, and then your DSL provider would provide service on that dry pair.

Our way works out much better if you do have a phone line anyhow, though, which is probably representative of the majority of the population. (Of course, it only does because the government requires the local phone company to provide access to data-only companies. My “ISP” just leases hardware from Bell in a Bell CO to provide ADSL.)

By: halfjack

halfjack — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:38:51 +0000

Certainly if I could get DSL without paying them for phone service, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:29:09 +0000

Only if your household appliances speak wireless Ethernet.

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:28:30 +0000

But power to your house doesn’t matter here; inside your house, there’s no difference between this solution, your neighbour having a robust SDSL connection and a high-powered access point he shares, or a neighbourhood wifi co-op with a microwave uplink.

Providing wi-fi to entire neighbourhoods at once is one way to provision Internet access without involving the phone or cable company, but I’m not sure that the power company really has a significant advantage over anyone else here (except maybe the right to hang devices off power poles), and planning on provisioning an entire city just doesn’t seem to make a great deal of business sense. Anyone offering neighbourhood wi-fi is going to have to handle the last mile of air from scratch, and it’s been my understanding that the last mile is the hard part in residential Internet access — once you get the connections to individual residences, getting uplinks from there is a solved problem.

(And there’s no technical reason why you have to pay for a land line to get DSL; DSL works fine over a dry pair, but the phone company typically doesn’t offer it in Canada. I’d say phone pairs to houses is as ubiquitous as power to houses outside of the remote North.)

By: funos

funos — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:18:17 +0000

Another problem with BPL (Broadband Over Powerlines) is the
massive RF interference.

Radio Amateurs in the US and Canada are fighting it due to the electromagnetic compatibility problems.
(eg: BPL mucks with HF bands, and an HF station wipes out BPL)

I think it’s just a bad idea all over.

By: halfjack

halfjack — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:17:33 +0000

Actually the other thing I realised is, given that I have a computer running in my house, which of the following do I necessarily also have:

– phone line
– cable
– power

That is, if it works, it’s certainly more pervasive and would give me freedom to dump my land line altogether.

By: halfjack

halfjack — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:15:37 +0000

A standardised IP over power solution also gives you NTP on your timekeeping household appliances, should you want it! No programming your clocks, microwaves, VCRs, etc. I don’t get any cable, but I do get power.