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Good. No high speed data communications should be done through power wiring. Specifically, none of these devices should ever be approved for sale within the USA

Good. No high speed data communications should be done through power wiring. Specifically, none of these devices should ever be approved for sale within the USA by the FCC. They emit far too much radio interference, and lots of it down in the HF bands where it propagates around the entire world. Building power wiring is never impedance controlled. It is just two parallel wires as a transmission line. Any time this unshielded line gets next to a piece of metal, or it bends too sharp, or whatever, the impedance changes in the RF frequencies significantly enough that it will radiate (and accept incoming interference by reciprocity). These devices literally fill the airwaves with interference. So why does the FCC allow them? Because for FCC testing they're allowed to use contrived setups/jigs of power wiring that are nothing like those that happen in actual buildings. FCC approval of these thing should require actual testing in actual house/building like wiring. If they did none would ever be approved and all existing ones would be taken off the market. So... yes, you can technically legally use PowerLine networking. But if you do so knowingly you're being extremely rude and a bad person. Like, throwing trash on the ground in a national park type rude. The radio spectrum is a limited shared resource. Please don't ruin it.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>No high speed data communications should be done through power wiring. It bears considering that "compromise" technologies like powerline ethernet aren't because we should, it's because we can. There's nothing technically appealing about powerline ethernet, it's always going to be inferior to simple ethernet cabling and at best a sidegrade to wireless ethernet or repurposing coax cabling or telephone wiring. Its practical appeal is the convenience of not having to run new ethernet cabling in an environment where wireless ethernet or reusing other kinds of existing wiring also aren't an option. Running new ethernet cabling can be an arduous task, especially if you want to do it nicely, and sometimes practical convenience trumps objective superiority.
- superkuh 3y ago
  Most people I know that use powerline networking do so because they have aesthetic objections to running a little cable along the baseboards in their apartment/house. Arduous? Only if you are pulling it through the walls because of aesthetic objections to just running the cable along the wall. This "can" in this case is assuming a premise that the aesthetic appearance of your living space is more important than not littering and degrading a shared public resource. It's not. That's rude.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>No high speed data communications should be done through power wiring. It bears considering that "compromise" technologies like powerline ethernet aren't because we should, it's because we can. There's nothing technically appealing about powerline ethernet, it's always going to be inferior to simple ethernet cabling and at best a sidegrade to wireless ethernet or repurposing coax cabling or telephone wiring. Its practical appeal is the convenience of not having to run new ethernet cabling in an environment where wireless ethernet or reusing other kinds of existing wiring also aren't an option. Running new ethernet cabling can be an arduous task, especially if you want to do it nicely, and sometimes practical convenience trumps objective superiority.

superkuh 3y ago
Most people I know that use powerline networking do so because they have aesthetic objections to running a little cable along the baseboards in their apartment/house. Arduous? Only if you are pulling it through the walls because of aesthetic objections to just running the cable along the wall. This "can" in this case is assuming a premise that the aesthetic appearance of your living space is more important than not littering and degrading a shared public resource. It's not. That's rude.