Using HomePlug PowerLine Adapters for Home Networking?

dbaman asks: "I have previously used a router with my broadband connection and run cables thru my house to have a home network. Now I'm in a new house, and I don't want to drill holes in the wall and run cable thru the attic again. I have considered 802.11 wireless, but am more interested in the HomePlug Powerline standard, which lets you use the electrical outlets in the house as the network. Powerline uses 56 bit DES encryption rather than WEP like wireless, and is apparently a bit faster than wireless. LinkSys, GigaFast, and NetGear have adapters out, and a Powerline-based router from LinkSys will soon be available. Does anyone have any experience or advice with this new HomePlug PowerLine networking standard?"

Works well.

[The Fink]

In my experience, they're adequate for most home networks, as long as you're not addicted to 100Mb/sec networks, as am I. :-)

Only major problem is that you're exposed to the line, and serious surges (read: lightning strikes on powerlines, or transformer breakdowns) will get through. Mind, the kind of surge I'm talking about there is likely to pop most surge guards - and a fair few cheaper UPSen - as well. Something else to consider, I guess.

The Queensland Electricity Commission, back in the early `90's, toyed with doing something like this - at a whole 2400 baud - to get some level of signals from one power station to another. By the time they finally got around to doing it, they got broken up - and had fibre networks anyway.

56-bit DES is weak

[photon317]

56-bit DES is very weak these days. While it might keep a non-technical neighbor at bay, the very idea of sniffing your traffic off the power circuit would probably have kept them at bay anyways. If you do anything at home that's the least bit sensitive, I wouldn't entrust it to 56-bit DES.

Facts from when the EFF machine broke the DES challenge (it was 56-bit DES like you're about to use):

Time to crack key: 56 hours
Total cost of machine, including R&D: US$250K

The R&D was extensive, and would probably cost less now that people have an example to follow. Also, this was done in 1998, so there's been four intervening years to make it faster and cheaper.

Fair enough call.

[The Fink]

Fortunately, there's usually enough power-altering equipment between you and your utility's lines - e.g. power meters and transformers - to limit the propagation to merely one or two houses.

It's the same as wireless from the point of view that you should always assume that you can be sniffed, and take suitable precautions for the kind of data going across the link.

Previously on slashdot..

[maunleon]

This has been touched on previously in this thread from last month:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/17/10 27208&mode=thread&tid=137 [slashdot.org]