Once more unto the power point, dear friends

Do any of you remember about a year and a half ago, when the next big thing in home networking was being able to plug right into your home's power outlets. There were a handful of kits that allowed you to attach a device to a power point, and then

Do any of you remember about a year and a half ago, when the next big thing in home networking was being able to plug right into your home's power outlets. There were a handful of kits that allowed you to attach a device to a power point, and then your entire house is capable of carrying data. The first gen systems were pretty useless in reality, and while they may have worked in the lab, working in the wild was another thing entirely.

Well, we're now on the edge of the second generation of data over your home's electrical wiring, but the concept isn't out of the woods yet. There are at least three standards being brought to market almost simultaneously in the States. Adaptive Networks of Massachusetts has a spread spectrum technology, like wireless networking in theory, while Inari, a veteran of the first generation of powerline networking, has been selling a 2Mb chipset since last year.

However, neither of them belong to the HomePlug Powerline Alliance. The Alliance is a standards body attempting to regulate the market, and so far only one company has met the Alliance's standards. Intellon's networking products utilise a technology called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing to overcome line noise from noisy appliances, and runs up to 14Mbps - in theory.

Well, in theory, as Homer Simpson is fond of saying, communism works. Frankly, I don't think we'll be seeing anything meaningful from this technology until at least the third generation, and even then only if all the kids can decide which set of rules they want to play under. I'll stick with meter upon meter of blue cabling all over my house for now.