HomePNA Achieves 320Mbps With Copper

illeism writes "Ars Techinca is reporting that the HPNA has made a significant stride in copper speed. From the article: 'The HomePNA Alliance, backers of a networking spec that works over coaxial or twisted pair wiring, has announced the release of the HPNA 3.1 specification. The big news comes in the form of a speed jump from 128Mbps to 320Mbps, which pushes it above competing networking standards HomePlug AV and MoCA (Multimedia over Coax) for the title of fastest networking tech outside of gigabit Ethernet and makes it a more attractive option for triple-play providers.'"

Or Fiber to the Premisis?

[parvenu74]

Isn't Verizon installing fiber to the premises these days? And what about hybrid-fiber-coax, especially when accessing remote terminals in your neighborhood that have fiber connections back to the service provider (which is what my cable company does)?

Re:A boon for twisted pair or coax

[inKubus]

Yeah, but in old houses the phone wiring is often substandard, spliced together multiple times, aged insulation, dirty copper, etc. So this ideal transfer rate would probably require retrofit in most of the places that would use it. So, while you're at it, just retrofit to the standard Ethernet. Networking that is not Ethernet generally fails. Ethernet is a good standard, although it does leave some things to be desired especially over crappy cables and connections. But worst case you negotiate a lower rate such as 10Mbps and get a more reliable connection. If you need more than that, you shouldn't have a problem with pulling a few legs of CAT6 or "fibre". I mean, this is a HOME we're talking about; it's not that hard to pull 3 or 4 rooms of Cat 6. Might take an hour or 2......... And most new homes already have CAT6 to the wall with a central panel where you have cable, phone and the cat6 terminated. Then you can have your choice of phone, cable or network at any of the endpoints in each room.

Great but...

[Fnkmaster]

I can't even buy HPNA 2.0 hardware anymore. I use the old Netgear PE102 bridges to extend my ethernet across my Manhattan apartment and it is far and away the best technology for this. Wireless is great for using my laptop in the living room, but for my desktop in my bedroom it would suck - latency, intermittent interference, and the difficulty getting transmission through multiple structural walls in an apartment building make wireless useless for this purpose.

HPNA 2.0 is great, but is 1) only 10Mbps, so not so impressive for higher bandwidth file transmission within my apartment and 2) no longer supported by ANY manufacturer because they mistakenly think that there is no demand due to wifi.

802.11b/g/a serve a totally different and complementary purpose to HPNA, which is great for bridging more distant rooms in a house or apartment that would cost thousands to properly wire for ethernet. Two 100 dollar bridges do the trick beautifully.

Powerline networking sucks in comparison - it was way overhyped and actual throughput is usually a fraction of the advertised throughput, whereas HPNA 2.0 worked exactly as promised and the PE102 boxes I use are so reliable it's sick.

I would absolutely love to see even a 50 or 100 Mbps HPNA standard that some manufacturer will support!

Re:A boon for twisted pair or coax

[DaWorm666]

> ... you shouldn't have a problem with pulling a few legs of CAT6 or "fibre". I take it you don't actually live in a house, especially one with more than one floor? When you don't have a crawl space underneath, or an attic overhead, the only way to get the wire from place to place is rip out the wall, drill through the studs, and put the wall back up. Most people aren't going to do that if they can use another pair from the pre-installed phone wires. It certainly isn't "simple".

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you don't have good enough UTP, but you're certain you've got enough runs of unused and SUITABLE coax sitting there? Not just "any old coax" works. You need the right impedance, half-decent shielding, and preferably not 20yo cable that's all oxidized.

The odds of having all the coax one needs already in the right places and all is every bit as remote as already having 6e everywhere.

Also, Gbit ethernet is becoming very popular (built on pretty much all motherboards nowadays - also means one less thing to buy) and is a well know and well supported standard. Switching equipment has come down a LOT in price too. And it's faster. And basically anything plugs on that network (good luck plugging your xbox or such devices on this new coax thing - even a laptop will need a new PCMCIA NIC at least)

Between pulling new 6e and buying a bunch of weird (and possibly expensive and not necessarily well supported) network cards and pull lots of new coax (and also need to buy a nice new F-plug crimper, coax stripper and such), I sure know what I pick.

Too little, too late. Especially with the faster wireless technologies coming up.

Re:What?

[k0lee]

When I was younger and electricity was still being installed in homes, it was necessary to run wire in existing walls. This was a challenge because the lath and mortar walls had little room to get the wire through them (dry wall had not yet been invented). We figured out how to wire the homes using drop chains and fish tape to get the wires to where they needed to be. I drilled a lot of holes by hand. Now that people are faced with running CAT5E through walls, they are stymied and instead are trying to figure out ways around it by superimposing high frequency networking signals on to existing copper (like phone or power wire). Even worse, they decide to pollute the RF spectrum by using wireless networking to interface fixed equipment. Wireless networking should be used for mobile, battery-powered equipment, and nothing else. But I digress...

I experimented with HPNA in the 2.0 era (around 2001) and found that it over delivered as far as throughput. Its throughput buried the equivalent Wifi and it was rock solid even during simultaneous use of the copper with analog phone calls and DSL connections. But then the HPNA manufacturers abandoned the market. I don't have faith that anyone credible will come in to implement the HPNA 3.0 spec.

I've since given up on the mis-application of copper media and have instead gotten out my drill, drop chain, and fish tape and recommend you do the same. Gbit over CAT5E is cheap and reliable and will be around for many years whereas the non-standard interfaces will fall by the wayside.

-Lee
http://www.k0lee.com/ [k0lee.com]