This concerns me more than encryption

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texasemt13

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It shouldn't concern you too much. Where it interferes primary users of the amatuer radio band (or primary users on any band for that matter) we have some recourse. In this instance it is the duty of the "interfere-r" to resolve the situation.

You can see a lot of enforcement letters against Utility companies here.
 

zz0468

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It shouldn't concern you too much. Where it interferes primary users of the amatuer radio band (or primary users on any band for that matter) we have some recourse. In this instance it is the duty of the "interfere-r" to resolve the situation.

It SHOULD concern him. Do you have any idea how difficult and time consuming it can be to track noises like this down? And when you DO find where it's coming from, unless it's in your own house, you have no control over it being turned off immediately. Going to the FCC is a nearly useless prospect, they don't have the resources to go after tens of thousands of these things.

You can see a lot of enforcement letters against Utility companies here.

But the utility companies aren't going to be using these things.
 

rdale

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Don't put these in your house, and don't move to Europe, and you won't be impacted at all...
 

dnoyeb

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I was under the impression that house hold appliances can not interfere with 2.4GHz, 800MHz, 5.8GHz and the other frequencies used for various public communications. And that they must accept any interference those appliances cause with it.

Is that not correct? In other words, interference is illegal. True?
 

brandon

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Unless I'm mistaken the Belkin F5D4076 can be purchased at many retail outlets such as Best Buy, Frys, etc. I would never install one of these, but should any neighbor get the idea to do so, it would be disastrous.
 

Ref-Jazzy

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Ok, This guy appears to no understand what is going on here. Powerline equipment works by introducing a signal into the electrical lines in your home. You will notice that all the radios he was using to show his interference problem were plugged into the electrical lines. The radios are going to see the powerline signal as interference/noise. Sometimes referred to as "dirty power" had he fired up a radio that was battery operated he would not have see the same results. The interference is not coming from over the air, it is coming from the power outlet. If your neighbor were to install 1 or over 9000 of these things in his home you will never know nor see any added interference to your radio equipment.

Now if you live in an apartment building, and the land lord were to have commercial powerline equipment installed in the building then you may see issues due to the fact that commercial installs include installing a powerline gateway at the main electrical panel for the building so it may service all the tenants living in the building if they wish to subscribe.
 

talkpair

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It looks like this thing is a home networking device, and not something used to provide internet service.

If these devices operate as poorly as their "wireless phone jack" and "wireless intercom" counterparts, they'll probably end up on the bargain table at electronic stores after being returned by dissatisfied customers.

I would guess the range of this device is probably limited to the wiring of those customers connected to the same secondary of the last power company transformer.

This really doesn't look like a device I would see any of my neighbors owning......Most of the houses are constructed in a way that makes cabling pretty easy.
 

kruser

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I bought a Belkin branded gigabit speed powerline ethernet model for testing only as I'm fully hard wired.
I'll post results when I get time to hook the thing up.

I do know for a fact that I have had interference form a neighbors powerline ethernet devices. He has since moved. I am in an apartment and I can see these things being popular. When the neighbor was here, we did some tests and I could see his network from my power outlet but the noise back then sounded a lot different from the video link in this post. I don't recall the manufacturer.
After watching the video in the link, I suspect I am again seeing strong interference from a similar device as I get the same exact noise as can be heard in the video from time to time. My stuff gets wiped out from HF up to at least 400 MHz so I'm really thinking similar type equipment is the cause.
I'm using various rooftop mounted antennas for everything from HF up to 2.4 GHz.
I use longwires for HF stuff. Everything is coax fed to reduce or eliminate interference from my own equipment as well as from other apartments.
I also kill ALL my AC power when doing RFI sniffing to minimize the possibility of my own devices causing unwanted junk. Everything is run from battery during my testing and nothing remains powered except the radio(s) used for RFI sniffing.

I wonder how one fights back from these devices? Inject a ton of noise back upon the powerlines to render the device unusable in hopes the user will write them off and stop using them? Sounds like a dirty trick. I also know that whatever wipes out my stuff also wipes out my Motorola VHF handheld so bad that I cannot communicate through my VHF repeater at work about 2 miles away. The repeater hears me fine and full quieting but I cannot hear the repeater due to the interference at my end. At first I suspected a local power company sub-station. But they have worked with me now for several weeks in hunting this noise down but they concluded just this past Friday that they are not generating the interference. They did find and repair some intermittent RFI in the HF range but nothing near my noise levels or problems.

I don't know when I'll be able to test this device but I'll be sure and post back in this thread when I'm done along with my findings.

I do have a question beforehand though. If I do find that it is one of these devices causing my problem, do I have any legal recourse seeing as to how it does wipe out my commercially licensed business radio service? I also know it wipes out police radio as I've spoken with officers hear for other calls in the past and they cannot hear their own dispatcher. They are aware of my findings but I do not know if they filed a formal complaint with the FCC. I only know they also contacted the power utility like I did as they were the prime suspect at that time.
 
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zz0468

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Ok, This guy appears to no understand what is going on here....

...If your neighbor were to install 1 or over 9000 of these things in his home you will never know nor see any added interference to your radio equipment.

Wrong. The problem is, power wiring is not designed to contain an RF signal, so it radiates.
 

kruser

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Wrong. The problem is, power wiring is not designed to contain an RF signal, so it radiates.

Exactly and also why most BPL trials resulted in failure as it is pretty much the same technology just with lower power levels I'd think. Let the power lines do what they do best, carry power at 50 or 60 Hz.
 

kruser

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Belkin F5D4076 Noise Test

I did some limited testing on the Belkin Gigabit units. Model F5D4076-S v2.
I only did some quick tests but from what I found, it was not good below 30 MHz.
I did not find any noise at all above 30 MHz so for the scanner listener, I think these should not be much of a concern. See below however for performance issues that make these things not really worth the cost even if they do not cause you interference.
Below 30 MHz, they were very bad and caused great noise.
I had a full scale S9+60dB meter reading on an Icom R9000 receiver between 10 and 20 MHz and just slightly less between 20 and 30 MHz. I had the same results with an AOR AR8200 portable although it only has an LCD bar graph type meter but that meter indicated full signal across the entire HF band. This was both with and without any active data transfers. I unplugged one unit and the noise dropped for a split second and then returned. I unplugged the other unit and noise was gone and radio reception restored.
The noise does get much noisier when actually transferring data but even without a data transfer, the noise is very noisy and not even close to something like a full quieting carrier so you cannot hear any signals at all.
Using a handheld portable on batteries with a whip antenna and an Icom R9000 plugged into the AC mains with an external long wire antenna made zero difference. My longwire is located a distance away and is coax fed reduce or eliminate the chance of my own equipment radiating noise back into my receivers. When I installed the long wire, I tested different locations and placing the antenna as far as possible from my own equipment did make a big difference plus feeding it with coax to a balun also helped greatly in reducing interference from my own equipment. That does not seem to matter with powerline ethernet devices. The noise emitted by these Belkin units wiped out the HF spectrum. They do appear to stop just above the AM broadcast band or around 2 MHz so they at least do not interfere there.
But unlike in the video, this model keeps emitting a very powerful has noise even when not in use. I tried looking them up with an FCC ID number search but found nothing. Oddly, the units themselves have no FCCID printed on them. Maybe it is stamped inside but I will not open them as they will be going back as soon as I'm done testing.

They also do not work very well as I expected due to the use of surge suppressors. I tried to hook them up on circuits without surge suppressors but I think every branch circuit I have has a surge device somewhere along the path. I can't imagine them working well in most homes as many residential or consumer electronics devices now have surge suppression built in from the manufacturer. Plus many consumers are sold on external surge strips and what not when they go out and buy the newest HDTV's and home entertainment setups thanks to salespeople in the big box stores and radio shacks across the country.

I was going to run them and tune around with a spectrum analyzer but I think I've already convinced myself that they are junk and should be forbidden so no further testing is needed in my eyes. There is no way you could listen to HF or SW with these devices in use. It would be impossible as they blanket any signal. Right now, WWV on 5.0 MHz is arriving here with a full scale S9+60 signal but if I fire up one of these Belkin units, I can only hear noise and no WWV at all. Pretty sad if you ask me.

If the link LED on them turns blue then you are linked above 200 Mbps Belkin claims.
I had a hard time getting a blue LED due to surge suppression devices I'd guess. I did manage to find some outlets that offered a rate above 200 Mbps (had blue link LED's) but I still could not find any noise above 30 MHz so that is about the only good thing about them. I did not try and walk any distance from my home to see how far they would radiate but my guess is far enough and that if a neighbor had them in a typical suburban residential home setting that I'd be affected for HF monitoring several homes distance away.
I do plan on testing them at work were we have no residential nor do we have a need for HF or SW radio monitoring. So they should not be an interference concern there and my testing will only be for performance to an outside building about 300 feet away. Currently I'm using two pairs of a company owned 200 pair phone cable as an ethernet connection. I can only get a reliable ethernet connection of 10 Mbps on that setup. Any higher speeds and I start seeing a lot of retransmits and collisions or errors.
I'm curious if these powerline devices will transfer along the underground power lines to that building with a higher rate or any rate for that matter above 10 Mbps. I wonder if the power cables being underground will just attenuate the signal. I'm fortunate for this test as I can tap the power just before it goes underground and right were it reappears at the other end.
I will still not use them even if they do work and this is only a performance test. Wireless is not an option for this building in case anyone is wondering. I'll use dsl campus modems should I need a link higher then 10 Mbps.

So in a nutshell, I do NOT recommend these types of powerline ethernet devices especially if you care about and/or enjoy monitoring our valuable radio spectrum or have a neighbor that is into monitoring or is an amateur operator. They should simply be banned but I guess the FCC is only interested in revenue and could care less about polluting our radio spectrum.
 

RadioDaze

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Unless I'm missing something in this thread, the Belkin unit is for distribution around the house of data coming from a traditional mode, such as cable or DSL.

Broadband Over Powerline (BPL)

Broadband over Power Lines would use the city's infrastructure of electrical lines to carry the internet connection TO the house, and any other subscribers. THAT, my friends, will be the wholesale destruction of HF and SW for many listeners in an affected area, not just a house or two away from the Belkin user. The offending signals would seem to radiate from just about any area of the city that is served with electrical power. And probably for a good distance beyond, as well.

P.S. If this were widely implemented, it would be somewhat of an advantage for a disaster-stricken area to lose its electrical power. Otherwise, reliable sources of emergency communications, such as HF Amateur stations, would be rendered useless by the interference. Conversely, hams' ability to render communication assistance to foreign countries during their own disasters will be compromised due to local interference.
 
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kruser

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Unless I'm missing something in this thread, the Belkin unit is for distribution around the house of data coming from a traditional mode, such as cable or DSL.

Broadband Over Powerline (BPL)

Broadband over Power Lines would use the city's infrastructure of electrical lines to carry the internet connection TO the house, and any other subscribers. THAT, my friends, will be the wholesale destruction of HF and SW for many listeners in an affected area, not just a house or two away from the Belkin user. The offending signals would seem to radiate from just about any area of the city that is served with electrical power. And probably for a good distance beyond, as well.

No, I think you have it figured correctly. I think the guy in the video link that the OP posted was just trying to demonstrate that the home version of powerline ethernet can be as bad (or worse in his case) as BPL itself. I think the home version is more accurately called "HomePlug" or something close along those lines. It is almost the same technology that BPL uses and operates using the same theory AFAIK but it is intended as a local LAN extension in place of true Cat5 ethernet cables or 802.11 wireless and is not intended as a broadband delivery method like BPL is. They both attempt to send RF over a power conductor.
I wonder what happens to these home type devices if you are also served with true BPL? Surely one would wipe out the other or severely degrade its performance should they both fight for the same spectrum!

The test I did was only to show that they do indeed wipe out parts of the spectrum although my tests did not show the drastic results that the video link did. I would imagine that I was wiping out several apartments during my tests as I'm in an apartment complex myself. And yes, true BPL would simply blanket the entire area with junk as it is surely more powerful then these tiny home versions.
 

redburgundy

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Most in-house powerline communications devices operate in the 3-30 MHz range. At least some of the BPL (outdoor) systems operate at 30-50 MHz. This new Belkin product is the first in-house device to operate both on the 3-30 MHz frequencies and 50-300 MHz.
 

gary123

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I just bet that the military will love all the wide band noise radiating from every town and city. The 200-350 military air band will be useless. Commercial airlines will love it too (118-136). We wont even talk about all the municipal services (police, fire and EMS) still on vhf.

We tried a similar unit at our service shop and found that the leakage at 155.000 mhz ( motorola HT750 in csq mode) was recievable almost 700 feet (thats 1/8 mile) away. The signal within 200 feet of the shop rendered our repester communications usless (100w transmitter on 120ft tower 3.7 miles away). With interfearance all over the band mobiles entering int or driving by such devices will be knocked off the air, some without ever knowing they are off air due to PL tones being used. I will take a look at a P25 simplex system tommorow if we didnt toss the modem away
 

redburgundy

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What device did you test? Was it the Belkin product or some other brand? I thought the Belkin was the only one operating in the higher frequency band.
 

gary123

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The device is a mediaxtreme by homeplug.

I did some testing on P25 conventional with a 5w VHF portable(155.000) situated 1/2 mile away. With the other unit in the shop and no modem turned on signal recovery was 100%. when the modem was turned on the recieved signal started to have dropouts but the audio was recoverable and legible with no difficulty. when the modem was transfering data the recieving unit dropped out completely. This is not surprising as the recovered signal was hashed to bits by the rf generated by the modem. Remember in P25 once the recovered data integrity falls below a certain level the radio mutes the audio so the user isnt inundated by digital tones and garbage.

The next test was to take the portable outside the shop and check the didstance needed for communications to resume. We found that at about 60 feet from the shop that reception started to recover but was extremly hit or miss but by 75 feet the signal was back to almost 100% and by 80 feet it was 100%.

I would say if these units or similar go into use here in North America whole sections of spectrum will become useless and billions of dollars will have to be spent to move services to unaffected segements of the spectrum (assuming that there will be enough channels available in the remaining spectrum). I would expect that the taxpayer will have to shoulder the burden, Im sure that this will be welcomed by everyone who like me lives in a smaller town where 90% of the public services are VHF.

My unofficial conclusions are that these modems if put into wide operation would disrupt inbound communications for 60 feet arround the average location. If analog was used there is noticable hetrodyning on the signal as about 70 feet and signals become unusable at around 60 feet.
 
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