• Recommend:
• 0 Comments

Power-Line Network Makes Progress

HomePlug Alliance chooses technology for spec, expects products by 2001.

By Tom Mainelli, PCWorld   

In theory, a home power-line network lets you use a house's existing wiring and electrical jacks to link multiple PCs over a network. With power outlets near every PC, a power-line network could be even easier to build than today's home phone-line networks (which require a nearby phone jack).

Unfortunately, power lines are a noisy place to transmit data, and every time you run an electronic appliance they may get noisier. Most early power-line network products didn't work very well.

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance, a growing nonprofit made up of 38 companies, hopes to change the perception of power-line networks as unreliable, says Alberto Mantovani, president of HomePlug. The alliance took a major step in that direction by announcing plans to use technology from member company Intellon as the base for its work toward a specification.

Picking a Winner

Shortly after it formed in April, the alliance organized a team of experts from member companies to evaluate possible baseline technologies, Mantovani says.

The team looked at six candidate technologies and tested each in lab settings as well as in the field. The fieldwork took place in five test homes, ranging in age from 5 to 30 years and varying in size.

The tests showed the Intellon technology provided "a good foundation for building our final specifications," Mantovani says. Now alliance team members will begin working together to improve the Intellon technology to create a more robust specification.

Primary requirements of such a specification are a transfer rate of about 10 mbps and the capability to work with 98 percent of power outlets, he says.

By August, the alliance plans to begin testing its improved technologies in at least 500 homes. By the end of the year, the alliance hopes to publish its first specifications, Mantovani says. Initial products from alliance members should roll out the first part of 2001.

HomePlug will establish a certification laboratory to test those products to ensure each meets the alliance's specifications, he says.

Early HomePlug-based products will likely cost more than comparable home phone-line networks, which have a sizable head start on power-line networks in the market. In time the price of power-line networks will drop into the same price range, he predicts.