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What about those adapters causes the issue? Is it the devices themselves emitting radiation? The cabling in a house?
by street 10y ago
What about those adapters causes the issue? Is it the devices themselves emitting radiation? The cabling in a house?
- upofadown 10y agoThe cabling radiates like crazy at those frequencies. Interestingly enough, there is enough radiation that you don't really need an actual connection. Someone put one of the endpoints in a field with a generator and got a connection to another endpoint. In a sense power line adapters are just using radio over the air. Sending data over a power line, even at low bit rates is very difficult to do reliably. So all the radiation is in a sense a feature in that it improves connectivity. Not so much a feature to those who have an actual licence to use those frequencies...
- toomuchtodo 10y agoElectrical wiring in your home used to pass data (as a side effect) acts as a large antenna/transmitter.
- drdaeman 10y agoJust to clarify, as someone seeing "instead of wifi" and "acts as a large antenna" from the parent comments may come to an incorrect assumption. In PLC (power-line communication), wiring is not meant to act as antenna. All transceivers are wired. It's an undesirable, unintentional side effect of limited (to the extent of complete lack of) cable shielding - because, well, power lines are usually meant for different application than data transfers.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoThanks for replying and pointing that out. I've corrected my comment.
- peteretep 10y agoSo am I basically broadcasting my data to anyone nearby with a receiver?
- LeoPanthera 10y agoThey're encrypted (or should be), so no.
- arve0 10y agoThe powerline adapters works by transmitting signal over house wiring, and the wiring is effectively creating an antenna. So depending on which frequencies the adapter uses, will potentially radiate the same frequencies and the harmonics.
- askldfhjkasfhd 10y agoI'm missing something, can you help me understand? Wouldn't ethernet cables have the same issues? Does the increased power flowing through power lines somehow amplify the signal? Is that pretty much the definition of what a power amplifier in a radio does, add juice to a signal on an antenna so it gets broadcast further?
- street 10y agoEthernet cables are twisted to minimize this effect. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair
- askldfhjkasfhd 10y agoWhoa, cool, I never thought of that! Does the amount of wattage going through the line effect how "loud" the interference is?