So long as those who win the "standardization" tag have to put their patents in the public domain, that's great. But if the IEEE is simply pushing one product over the other, and anyone using the technology then has to pay huge amounts in patent fees to follow the standard, then the whole standards process is fundamentally flawed.

After they've decided which they are going to use, they'll then have to install the equipment in every substation in the country.

Meanwhile, BT continues to install and improve broadband.

Whteher or not it will interfere with my amateur radio installation is another thing, and vice-versa...since I run over 100 watts of RF from 1.8 to 29.7 Mhz, and 50 watts from 144 to over 1200 mhz.

Look it just doesn't work. It tries to use that nice power (mains) wires for something other than they were intended for. What happens is that they use the power lines as silly antennas which radiate all over the place, and pick up interference from every spark in the house. I've got a cooktop that has electronic ignitors that spark like mad (really screws up the TV). They do it about once a second when active, and the way my wife sets it even more. This will REALLY screw up things. In addition billg and company want to use the "white spaces" between TV over the air channels for networking. Solve the problem correctly, buy a spool of CAT5 wire (less than the cost of a couple of adapters!) and go to town. Much better, and even more secure. If you need wireless, go with 802.11a/b/g/n (or whatever they are using today), it has the range needed to fill a house.

Anything else is a WASTE OF MONEY, not to mention time, and RF spectrum.

It does work. I used HomePlug kit out of desperation in the end beause wireless networking will not cover my house, and I'm not willing to drill/knock holes in walls to put in CAT5. You plug homeplug in, and it just works. No configuring, it's the best example of plug and play I've ever found. No discernable interferance, it runs faster than my broadband connection which is all I ask of it, nothing in the house objects to it running or has any interferance problems caused by it or to it. It runs alongside the wireless network perfectly and if you really want security, then all of the adaptors (The HPA ones at least) supporrt encryption.

I've been using a Netgear Powerline HD to link my PC to my living room-based router and media extender for several months now, and it works a treat. Much higher bandwidth than wireless and (probably because of that) lower latency for remote control.

Of course it's not perfect for everyone - no solution is - but a waste of time? Spare us the hysterical capitals, DramaTom

First off i have no personal experience.

But they ran a test with different brand adapters in a consumer format on TV here very recently (a few weeks ago). They tried to stream DVD content over it in different houses and to different location within one house. Of course the whole thing was not very detailed, but the test setup was probably not too broken.

Their conclusions were mostly that

a) different adapters had vastly different performance.

b) house installations also made quite difference - for one quality of lines, then whether the sender and receiver were on the same fuse or not and finally also devices interfering as mentioned in other comments.

Since they only tried DVD they did not test peak rates, everything that was constantly over ~10mbit/s was equally rated as "ok".

However some adapters already started out with maybe 5mbit/s floor under the best conditions they tested, others were capable of staing above 10mbit/s floor for most installations and distances and only fell clearly below it under "extreme" circumstances (this were perfectly normal houses tho, not in an industrial environment or such).

Either way, depending on what you want to do with it it may work out for you.

But personally i get annoyed by my current 100mbit/s ethernet (maybe 20-30mbit/s effective).

If it's a *new* *wired* application it should at the very base compare itself with 1GB ethernet and not 10mbit/s ethernet that was available "decades" ago. Just IMO though.