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HomePlug products enter the fray

By Toni Kistner
Net.Worker, 12/10/01

Things are heating up in the powerline-network world. Last month at Fall Comdex, Linksys and Netgear displayed the first HomePlug-compliant products; last week Intellon's PowerPacket powerline network chipset was certified as HomePlug 1.0-compliant (a formality since Intellon's chip is the basis for the HomePlug Powerline Alliance's 1.0 spec to begin with); and Toronto's Cogency Semiconductor announced Piranha, a HomePlug-compliant chipset to compete against Intellon's. (A third silicon manufacturer, Conexant, is licensing Intellon's technology for its chipset.)

Everyone placing bets that powerline-networking will take off in the home is haunted by the dismal showing of home phone-line network gear, and wildly intimidated by the success of 802.11b wireless in the home and business markets.

"HomePNA's just not going to materialize," admits Cogency President Ron Glibbery. "HomePNA had Broadcom as the only chip supplier for a good year. I think that really hurt the market. Pricing wasn't that aggressive; people were reluctant to go with just one supplier. But with HomePlug, there are two suppliers out of the shoot. It's a competitive market, and people are more encouraged."

Intellon sees things another way. "The biggest competition to HomePlug is wireless," says Eric Buffkin, vice president of business development. "While it's doing great things for the home network market, it creates more of a challenge for introducing a new technology."

Thus far, hardware vendors like Linksys and Netgear have found success in the home network market by selling products built on a variety of technologies. While they may have lost money on home phone-line products, they've made it up and then some selling wireless and wired Ethernet gear. In contrast, powerline chipmaker Intellon has struggled to get its product to market, suffering job cuts along the way.

Power line poised

Pending FCC approval, HomePlug-compliant products built using the Intellon chipset are expected to reach store shelves in January (give or take a month) from Linksys, Netgear, SMC and Phonex Broadband. "That's when we'll find out how well Intellon and the HomePlug Powerline Alliance have done their jobs," Buffkin says. "I wish we were in better economic times to make that happen, but that's true for everybody. Having Cogency out there is gonna help drive us to make better products."

Despite some pretty big obstacles, HomePlug products could really take off - for a number of reasons. First, the data rates are pretty high, 14M bit/sec (actual throughput should be about 8M bit/sec). Second, because the products use wired Ethernet, they're self-configuring and easy to use.

Third is convenience. The average home has 44 power outlets according to Cogency. Skeptical, I checked my own house - and we have 63. (Not to beat a dead horse, but that's compared to five phone jacks.) Also, HomePlug appears to be an excellent technology for network entertainment components like TVs, stereos and DVD players - they're often stationary, near power outlets and demand high bandwidth.

With HomePlug gear, you can network your home's entire electrical infrastructure. To share a broadband connection, plug a HomePlug router into your broadband modem via Ethernet, then plug the other end into a power outlet, either in the wall or on a power strip. To connect PCs, attach a HomePlug USB adapter or PCI card, plugging the other end in to your power outlet. (As a side note, don't expect to see HomePlug PC Cards for notebook systems any time soon. The design is prohibitive; imagine a power cord hanging off your PC Card...)

Pirhana in the pool

From a design perspective, Cogency's Pirhana chipset offers distinct advantages over Intellon's. Cogency reduced the overall area of the board, which means vendors can build smaller devices. While the first adapters will be desktop USB devices and internal PCI cards, Cogency believes vendors will build a wallboard adapter with an Ethernet port that plugs right into the power outlet or strip.

Cogency is bullish on the wallboard design. "It almost shields the customer from the technology," Glibbery says. "With the right product, you can just call it an Ethernet adapter and not even push the powerline concept."

Another advantage over Intellon's existing chip is that the chip is software-upgradable, allowing vendors to download drivers, new features, bug fixes and security enhancements onto the board. Also, the die size of the chip is .18 microns compared to Intellon's .25, which means it's smaller and cheaper to produce, allowing vendors to drive the cost down quickly. Cogency claims that using its chipset vendors will be able to charge $99 for a USB adapter, $129 for a broadband router and $79 for a PCI card.

In contrast, the first shipping products from Linksys will cost $179 for the router, $149 for the bridge (which you buy if you already have a router) and $149 per adapter.

"At this point in time a lot of Cogency's features are pretty attractive," Netgear CEO Patrick Lo says. "They'll get some market share, absolutely. But then again, Intellon won't be standing still."

Buffkin also says Intellon won't be standing still, adding, "We've been working in this technology for 12 years now. We've shocked ourselves many times."

If you're interested in the technology that allows you to run data over power lines, check out a technology explainer on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM).

Toni Kistner is managing editor of Net.Worker. Contact her at tkistner@nww.com.

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