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I know someone who experimented with powerline networking in a building that already had a Family History Center. We wanted to teach a Family History Class on the far side of the building where the wireless didn't reach and thought this would be an ideal solution. Unfortunately, we ran into a snag - we could only reach part of the building. There is more than one power supply coming into the building, and they are, for all intents and purposes, completely separate. Power from the electrical utility is high-voltage two- or three-phase, which is brought in that way to the building, where a set of transformers step it down to the voltage we use. From there, the distribution panels supply it to different parts of the building as needed. I once saw one of these input leads fail, leaving the building partially powered. What this all means is that the power-line networking can only service the parts of the building that are on the same input lead. For us, that meant that we could
network across half of the building, but the far classroom that we wanted to use was inaccessible. You can install bridges across the different segments of the power system, but that adds complexity, and you are left with a kludge that still isn't very fast. In the end, we just set up a temporary wireless access point for the duration of the class. Powerline networking might work for a private home, but I would be skeptical about proposing it as a general solution.
Brian Cooper
>>> Jeremy Slade <jeremy at jkslade.net> 3/3/2007 10:22 AM >>>
>>Does anyone have experience with the new generation of powerline networking equipment? I wonder how well that would work as an alternative to wireless networking within a church building?
>>My understanding is that the network link is always encrypted, so it should be at least as secure as wireless. Seems like the biggest issue would be the range, if it could handle going from one side of a large stake center to another. The powerline network speeds aren't nearly as fast as normal wired ethernet connections, but should be plenty fast for simple internet access (where the incoming internet link will be the bottleneck).
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