How many versions of powerline networking do we need?

Photo of author

Tim Higgins

Panasonic’s adapter is based on its proprietary “HD-PLC” technology that advertises a phyisical layer data rate of 190 Mbps. In an unusually detailed disclosure, the press release contains a footnote stating “Actual data rates are 80 Mbps for UDP (measured using SmartBitsR network performance analyzer) and 55 Mbps for TCP data transmission (achieved on Linux-based FTP server)”.

Of course, no mention is made of HD-PLC’s ability to play nicely with either powerline adapters based on DS2’s 200 Mbps technology or HomePlug 1.0, 1.0 plus Turbo or HomePlug AV. But since there is no mention I think it’s safe to assume that HD-PLD, like DS2, at minimum won’t interoperate with the other technologies, and it probably won’t be able to be plugged into the same home’s wiring without causing serious problems.

The HomePlug alliance could have saved themselves and, more importantly, consumers a whole lot of hassle had they gotten HomePlug AV to market two years ago.

Related posts

No. We haven’t changed into NASNetBuilder

You would think from having had four networked storage articles in a row that we've morphed into something else. The truth is just that we've recently been swamped witih NASes and are just trying to keep up with the flow.

Fleishman reports on Draft 11n issues

Glenn Fleishman has a long piece over at Wi-Fi Networking News that expands on some of the issues I covered ...

Wideband WLANs on the way?

The final standard is still over a year in the future and the Wi-Fi certification process for draft 11n products is about 3-5 months away. But companies are continuing to put this Beta-test-in-progress (which you, the consumer, are paying to participate in) into end-products beyond wireless routers and adapters. We've already seen draft 11n integrated into notebooks, and now Apple and D-Link have integrated it into networked media players.

The AppleTV announcement revealed that draft 11n capable hardware (from Atheros, it turns out) had already been integrated into existing Core 2 Duo MacBooks, MacBook Pros and Core 2 Duo iMacs (except the 17-inch, 1.83GHz iMac). All you need to do is run an "enabler" app, buy a new version of the Airport Extreme (in new Mac mini form factor) and voila, you have an interference generator for your 11b/g network. But something that Apple has done right is to put concurrent (or simultaneous) dual-band capability into its draft 11n products. This raises the cost, but also the flexibility since connections in both bands can be made at the same time.