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Craig Mathias

Powerline Carrier – Close, but Likely No Cigar

I have been experimenting with powerline carrier modems for many years, going back to the first 10 Mbps products of more than a decade ago. These do exactly what you think - turn the electrical wiring in your house into a virtual LAN cable. In one sense, we might even call this wireless, since we're using somebody else's wire.

But, as you might also guess, this is an endeavor fraught with complications. AC wiring is most certainly not designed to carry data; based on some crazy wiring I've seen in a number of homes over the years, it often can barely carry electricity! While AC wiring itself is standardized, two phases are normally present, and reversing two of the three wires involved (hot, neutral, and ground) is not uncommon. Even low-speed (e.g., X10) applications can maddeningly live somewhere between less than reliable and time to give up.

So, when a new crop of 500 Mbps HomePlug-compliant products started to hit the market, it was time to think about testing a few of these to see what they could really do. I was expecting disappointment, based on what I noted above - the technology is fabulous, but the PHY of house wiring can be even worse than the PHY of the world of 802.11.
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