Troubled times for home networks
 

People who feel comfortable taking a computer apart sometimes forget how difficult "computer technology" is for the average person.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6949607.stm

I'm glad the Powerline option was discussed, as it is far easier to set up than a wireless network. More secure, too.

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Always worried about Ethernet over Power myself. I mean, my powerlines are connected to my neighbour's right?

I'm assuming that the packets just know that they should stop at my fuseboard ;)

TBH, networking really isn't that hard - it's just a little awkward sometimes :)

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Well yes - but under the road outside your house.

The circuits in your house are redistributed from your fuse board.

I don't think they would get to your neighbor - which is why you don't pay your neighbors 'lecky bill!

BTW - Please don't underline - use bold or italic - I thought it was link and tried to click on it! :rolleyes:

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Surely though the fuseboard in my house is connected to the circuits in the house, and the cables under the road? What stops the signals passing through the fuseboard and into the cables under the road?

Do they simply not have the power to get through the fuseboards?

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Found this on Google....

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Thought as much, gotta love that phrase: "unmeant phase coupling", sounds almost erotic.

Cheers for that :)

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

I think that they're talking crap here. AFAIK the meter doesn't normally contain anything that would 'damp the signal'. I think that they really rely on the noise floor being so high that the signal is lost after a 100m or so of cable.

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

No, that's because they have a meeter just like you. Where do you think the electricity goes if not to the next house?

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

I dont fancy it myself......i`ll keep the Mb`s & Kilowatts seperate me thinks.:)
I`ve wired our whole house for ethernet practically,upstairs and down so a computer can be plonked in most rooms without any trouble.

That would be all well and good if there were enough o those Mb`s coming in in the first place of course.
Theres barely enough for first base....never mind a home run:rolleyes:

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

To be honest I'm a bit fed up hearing people in the media moaning that PCs/wireless/internet security are too difficult for your average consumer to setup properly. Does your average consumer install their own gas central heating or double glazing themselves? No they don't!

While the likes of PC World keep selling computer and networking kit as if they were TVs and DVD players your average punter will expect to be able to take home, unpack it, plug it in and have it working properly in no time. The expectation should be to pay a professional (like me! :dozey:) a reasonable price for a proper installation. In these circumstances WiFi beats a kludge like Powerline every time.

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Not at all. The meter measures power and you only pay for power consumed through your meter. Any house can have a supply but until you consume power your meter will not spin.

In terms of will your neighbour be able to access you network. Firstly the output from a substation is a three phase supply which is load balanced. Therefore theoretically all the houses in your street will be split up between the three phases, each of which is 120 degrees appart, so you would have to find a neighbour on the same phase as you. (its not a good idea to get a cable with a plug on each end and plug one end in your house and the other end in your neighbours house as you would get a large bang of 415volts and a bit of smoke ;).

As already stated the meter will suppress the network signal and also the signal does not travel for infinate distance

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Why? As far as I can see, the apart from being swamped by noise as you get too far away the only other thing that would stop signal transmission is a transformer. If you take a look at the powerline white paper it pretty much says as much there - in the section on security it says that encryption should be used because typically more than one house is fed from the same transformer so close neighbours could potentially eavesdrop.


I strongly suspect that the bit about the meter presenting a physical barrier to the signal was added by the marketing dept.

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Im not sure about this but isnt a meter a bit like a transformer with the same input voltage as the output voltage? If that was the case it would provide isolation

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Security measures are built-in to homeplug devices - see http://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline.htm

I have one device connected to my router, which means other devices can be set up anywhere there is a power socket - including the garage. You can even connect a network switch to a device, just like in a cabled LAN. I do think this is a much easier way for the average person to set up a home network, compared to wireless.

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

What makes that article complete nonsense is that they are suggesting wireless as a simpler solution than setting up a wired LAN!

Wireless is a superset of wired and is far more complicated for the average Joe to set up (and far less reliable).

My house has a wireless LAN (mainly for the kids's MSN) but I use wired ethernet for media streaming and Powerline for ad hoc large file transfers. Wireless is generally a PITA.

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

Not really - a standard analog household meter has two coils, one in parallel and one in series with the house (to measure voltage and current respectively) but there is no primary and secondary coil like a transformer so there is no isolation from the power source.

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

And it works... Very well infact

I get a nice stable 15ms to some of the UK gaming servers now.

Where as before when i was using wi-fi to connect I was getting a lot of jitter and packetloss despite my wlan card reporting an excellent signal.

Interestingly i always seem to get 5 -6 ms when i ping the router so it does add some latency.

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

That is interesting! So if I understand correctly, you used to have a 10ms but unstable signal, and now have a 15ms but stable signal. I wonder if the extra 5ms is a function of the distance between homeplug devices?

Re: Troubled times for home networks
 

I used to get as low as 1 - 2 ms on the wireless when pinging the router but i used to get spikes of 2000ms or more or total packetloss very regularly :(

ive seen about 5ms to the router on the homeplugs and it sometimes goes up to about 8ms if the network is very busy but yet cs:source reports a 15ms ping to some of the UK servers, since i switched to using homeplugs i hardly ever get any Lag issues playing FPS games and when I do its usally becuase im playing on a US server.

Played the ETQW beta2 the other week for several hours with no problem what so ever :D


My connection goes though a wired switch then the homeplug to get to the router...