[ILUG] [OT] Power Line communications ?

[Niall O Broin]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2002 at 04:13:21PM -0000, Declan Grady wrote:
> Anyone know if this is feasible ?
> 
> www.ds2.es
> 
> 42 MBit/Sec over your power line ?
> 
> Makes very interesting reading, but I cant understand how it could work ..
> surely it'd be like having every 'net user in the country on the one pieces
> of thinnet ?

I recently read an interesting article on this very topic (I thought it was
in Wired but I looked in the only copy of Wired I have to hand and it wasn't
there). Basically, as someone else mentioned, the big problem here is
transformers which act as wonderful bandstop filters for the data
frequencies. 

The subject of the story had amanaged to convince some very heavy hitters in
the U.S. that he had the transformer problem cracked. Despite the scepticism
of his technological peers he managed to extract some serious money from
various people, encouraged by said heavy hitters. Unfortunately the laws of
physics had their evil way, as they do, and lots of people got pains in
their hips.



Niall

P.S. 42 MBit/Sec ? Isn't that very close to 45 MBit/Sec ? Remember when the
last snake oil vendor tried to sell us that ?