Broadband Over Gas Lines — a Pipe Dream? 210
prostoalex writes, "USA Today says we might see some progress in broadband over gas pipes, as startup Nethercomm (warning: Flash site) is working on the technology to deliver broadband Internet over this medium using ultrawideband radio. According to the article: 'Broadband in Gas would require installation of an ultrawideband transmitter that's linked to an Internet backbone... at a gas company's network hub. A receiver would be placed at a customer's gas meter. Build-out costs are about $200 per household, Nethercomm says. By contrast, broadband over power lines costs about $600 per household, while phone and cable TV networks each cost well over $1,000 per home to build.'" The article ends on a downbeat note. The upcoming trials that Nethercomm touts are difficult to confirm: "We're intrigued by the technology, but we never got that far in our discussions," says a gas company spokeswoman. And the ultrawideband chip company that had been working with Nethercomm, Freescale Semiconductor, has turned its attention to other projects.
It's a series of tubes! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It's a series of tubes! (Score:4, Interesting)
Nah, it's just Vaporware... (Score:2)
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Re:Won't somebody think of my cottage. (Score:5, Funny)
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Backhoes: The natural enemy of the internet.
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Finally! New tubes for the internet! (Score:4, Insightful)
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That hottie might just be the last thing you click on.
Power Lines was bad enough! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bet it looks great to the VC (Score:2)
Gas tubes. (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm building a truck. It's gonna be full of drives. You can dump whatever you want on it.
I will then drive this truck wherever you want your data.
P.S. TruckNet can achieve good bandwith, but has very high latency.
Re:Gas tubes. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Back to the station wagon full of tapes eh?
-nB
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Pinging netflix.com [216.35.131.200] with 4831838208 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.35.131.200: bytes=4831838208 time=259200126ms TTL=49
Reply from 216.35.131.200: bytes=4831838208 time=259200160ms TTL=49
Reply from 216.35.131.200: bytes=4831838208 time=259200100ms TTL=49
Reply from 216.35.131.200: bytes=4831838208 time=259200111ms TTL=49
Ping statistics 216.35.131.200:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minim
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sneakernet:
Term used (generally with ironic intent) for transfer of electronic information by physically carrying tape, disks, or some other media from one machine to another. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtape, or a 747 filled with CD-ROMs." Also called 'Tennis-Net', 'Armpit-Net', 'Floppy-Net' or 'Shoenet'; in the 1990s, 'Nike network' after a well-known sneaker brand.
I have a few floppies/zip disks/CD-RWs around label
Next status symbol (Score:2)
An army of electrically grounded, white-gloved, tuxedoed servants passing usb-sticks or portable hard drives containg "packets" delivers the internets to your door!
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The rest of his speech is highly mockable, such as 'internets', but 'tubes' isn't really that bad of an analogy.
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Yeah, I think it might have been more of a case where the people who witnessed the entire speech were awestruck with how unsophisticated Ted Stevens' understanding of the Internet was (and yet he had suck a strong opinion about it!), and the "tubes" analogy was just an illustration of that. Perhaps once it became a meme, people who *also* have an unsophisticated view of the Internet started mocking the analogy itself.
Personally, I think it's ridiculous that the people who are making these important decis
Electronics and gas lines? (Score:2)
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It's a perfectly fine idea, given that there is no air to support ignition. Basic middle-school chemistry, people...
This is also why the Hindenburg didn't "explode"; if there had been oxygen inside the envelope as well as hydrogen, we wouldn't have dramatic footage because the camera, cameraman, and everyone else within at least a quarter mile wouldn't have survived the thermobaric explosi
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How do the electronic meters work? Do they already transmit through the pipes, or are they just mechanical meters with LCD user interfaces and a small radio transmitter that gets read from the street?
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I mean I understand the idea behind it and whatnot and it still kinda makes me nervous. How's the average public going to feel about it?
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Not to mention my gas lines coming up to the house were plastic.. and the tracer lines are not interconnected, they just sit next to thepipes and there's no reason to tie them at the junctions
VC Pipe Dream (Score:4, Insightful)
the real reason (Score:5, Funny)
"We're intrigued by the technology, but we never got that far in our discussions," says a gas company spokeswoman.
"...because everyone kept making jokes about explosive growth at the meetings", she said with a sigh.
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Usually I'm complaining that I get modded troll for posting anti-space-exploration stories and such, but I don't even know how to begin complaining about this moderation! Oh wait...
Good that they're finding other uses (Score:4, Interesting)
Hard to take that article seriously. (Score:2)
Plastic Gas Lines (Score:5, Insightful)
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Gas lines weren't designed as waveguides. My gut feeling is that won't be economically viable for more than a handful of customers. I'd expect in most cases the attenuation would be too great to be useful without repeater stations.
The theory looks sound, but I need convincing about the engineering.
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I'm skeptical (Score:2)
Re:I'm skeptical (Score:4, Informative)
All the gas pipes in my city are made of plastic, making this whole idea quite improbable.
Here in New Zealand (Score:2)
Broadband is likely to follow soon (with major flooding of even more of Wellingtons underground infrastructure).
(For those who don't know, a high pressure water main burst recently cutting a hole in the neighboring gas main and flooding most of the central cities gas network. It took about 2 weeks to drain all the water out of the gas system leaving much of central Wellington without a gas supply).
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Thanks for the explanation, I now see that the approach is at least plausible.
I wonder what happens when when the RF signal hits a bend or a tee junction or a valve that isn't all the way open?
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You get a reflection, which will interfere with the signal.
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Plastic pipes. (Score:3, Informative)
Ethernet via crack-pipe (Score:2)
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Sounds to me like you're just smoking a different brand of crack. The only way WiMax will ever work well is if providers charge such high rates that hardly anybody uses it. Fortunatly for the providers, that's what they were planning on doing anyway. Are you a CEO or high level sales person for a Fortune 500 company? No? Well then you'll probably never use WiMax. Sorry.
reach of UWB? (Score:2, Informative)
Ultra-wideband (also UWB, and ultra-wide-band, ultra-wide band, etc.) usually refers to a radio communications technique based on transmitting very-short-duration pulses, often of duration of only nanoseconds or less, whereby the occupied bandwidth goes to very large values. Ultra-wide-ba
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warning: Flash site (Score:2)
Yeah, a spark in a gas line could cause an explosion.
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repair issues (Score:2)
On second thought all the reflections from the mismatched characteristic impedances would probably kill your signal first.
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(or maybe the designer did not know this?)
Let me get this right??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do we need this? (Score:2)
The internet is fast becoming something ubiquitous, and the infrastructure will follow. I see no real need for internet over gas lines, as eventually there will be more fibre and OC3 lines running to a variety of neighbourhoods. True, it is probably a neat idea for the short term, but long term there will likely be more fiber and more wi
Conspiracy (Score:2)
But, seriously, this is a terrible idea.
Comming to broadband near you..... (Score:2)
BOS - Broadband over sewer
BOU - Broadband over ultrasonics
BOLP - Broadband over laser pointers
BOTCs - Broadband over tin cans and string
This broadband over gas pipes was kind of a running joke on eham.net. One wouldn't think they would actually try this.
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BOPM - broadband over pirated music
BOPIP - broadband over pirated intellectual property
BOCDL - broadband over cease and desist letters
Broadband over Water (Score:2)
The problem with the water pipe one though is someone is liable to start a bittorrent session while you're in the in the shower and you'll get scalded.
Love the acronym... (Score:2)
It's perfect.
Cost to Build (Score:2)
Using radio gives a build-out cost of $0 per household.
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This is of course nonsense. Using radio is quite expensive compared to other technologies, especially when the others are using existing cable or other infrastructure. The radio equipment usually costs more than the modem equipment for other technologies, and the other costs are the same.
Also, don't forget that "munucipal Wi-Fi" really cannot be compared to cable or adsl, let alone ftth. Those provide a lot more bandwidth per subscriber, which is re
off-topic (Score:2)
Prosumer Networks (Score:2)
And today's Slashdot featured news that Freescale's "other projects" turning its attention might just be giant leveraged buyout attack [slashdot.org], not any intrinsic business.
But apart from corporate media war fog, why not blow fibers through these pipes, directly to homes? That seems like a cheap, reliable way to deliver lots and lots of broadband with tech that can join multiple compatible WANs into sites. Without digging or deploying new, specialized
Reminds of the gas powered TV (Score:2)
Unfortunately, a non-starter (Score:3, Insightful)
If you put fibre in 20 years ago, you can still use the latest gear to get the fastest available connection, whereas each wireless technology has had about a six-year life, thus rendering capital asset deployments poorly in the case of wireless. Add in security goofyness, incompatible standards, and broadband over gas pipes looks like a pretty poor value proposition both in terms of capital cost as well as product life.
Next?
Too late for Jeff Skilling (Score:4, Funny)
PVC (Score:2)
Dan
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Ted Stevens (Score:2)
hope it works on canned/bottled gas too :) (Score:2)
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i'll take fiber for 1000 please (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2)
All kidding aside, I can see many problems, and practically no advantages over normal wireless connections.
Whatever happened to microwave antennas on houses? Wireless cable never did so well, but combine it with telephone service and internet access, and you've really got something there.
Phillipe Kahn... (Score:2)
DoS attacks (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if the summary is to be believed, it cost $800 per household to build out.
(i) $800 saved per customer x 1 gazillion customers = 800 gazillion dollars saved
(ii) 1 penny saved = 1 penny earned.
(iii) $1 saved = $1 earned
(iv) 800 gazillion dollars saved = 800 gazillion dollars in profit.
The thing about this is that most places that have a gas infrastructure in place -- dense cities -- probably already have extensive broadband infrastructure in place already. If, however, you want to do a lot of new connections, say addressing underserved poor neighborhoods, if this cost differential was real, and the system worked, it could make a big difference.
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Actually, big cities frequently lag in this respect. Putting in new services in a titanic pain in the ass exactly because the city is so dense. Out in the burbs it's a lot easier to open up a trench and lay some fiber or whatever.
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TCP/IP over Bongo Drums [eagle.auc.ca]
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Why does everyone just know that fiber to the home is too expensive? My house already has an electric power line, a gas line, a water pipe, a sewer pipe, telephone lines and a cable TV feed, and installing all those services didn't break the bank. Fiber is now cheap enough that labor dominates the installation costs, so why not just install it and be done with it? Especially since it can obviate both telephone twisted pair and cable TV coax as it finally brings fast Internet connectivi
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My guess is that the system depends on the pipes to act as waveguides and rectifiers. Pity those who don't have metal pipes.
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But you know, the growth of this new technology could be explosive.
But imagine servicing it... it could give a pro pain.
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Expect Duke Nukem Forever to be the first thing I download ^^
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See if you can spot the condescending,
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So.. does you'r house go Boom! when you suffer a DOS attack?
No, your computer just refuses to let you load programs into anymore than 640k of RAM.
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What do you think is the greater risk:
1. Your sub-watt signal from your cellphone induces a current in a nearby conductor and causes a miniscule spark, igniting gasoline vapors.
2. You drop your phone and the exposed contacts for charging your battery short on some random piece of metal. A tremendous spark welds the circuit in place, allowing it to dump vast maj
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One of the three actually happens, on occasion.
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You should never confuse the presence of warning stickers with the presence of a real threat, especially in the USA.