Essential Guide to Home Networking Technologies, The

TECHNICAL OBSTACLES OF IN-HOME POWERLINE NETWORKS

Typical data and communications networks (like corporate LANs) use dedicated wiring to interconnect devices. But powerline networks, from their inception, were never intended for transmitting data. Instead the networks were optimized to efficiently distribute power to all the electrical outlets throughout a building at frequencies typically between 50 to 60 Hz. Thus, the original designs of electrical networks never considered using the powerline medium for communicating data signals at other frequencies. For this reason, the powerline is a more difficult communications medium than other types of isolated wiring like the Category 5 cabling used in Ethernet data networks.

The physical topology ...