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Technology Stocks : Echelon Corporation (ELON) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Boplicity who wrote (1435)	3/15/2000 12:25:00 PM
From: Roger A. Babb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3076

Greg, I am an electrical engineer with a background in powerline carrier communication systems. You may be assured that they will not be using the powerlines to communicate houses back to the power company for the following reasons: 1. Radio frequency signals will not pass through a transformer, it acts as a large RF choke. Yes, you can use a bypass capacitor to take the RF signal around the transformer but see #2. 2. If you placed multiple signals on the main return powerline, now you have a bandwidth problem. The powerline is not a jacketed cable and will radiate RF like an antenna which means that only very low frequencies, and thus low bandwidth, is allowed. All this does not mean that powerline communications within a house is not practical, it just means that some sort of telephone or cable modem must link the house wiring system back to the communications hub and that hub will NOT be on the powerlines. But this opens a world of possibilities. Imagine a modem connected at your power meter and then anywhere you plug up a computer (or other device) in your house it picks up the Internet connection through the plug. I would imagine that they would install an RF choke at the power meter so that the signals from one house do not communicate with another house.