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HomePNA
Ethernet has been the de-facto standard for local
area communication for a long time. Initially there was 10Mbit, then
came 100Mbit and now its not rare to find 1GBit Ethernet. But the need
for the communication medium has also been changed. Now a days the trend
is to become wireless. But the often forgotten phone line can also
provide a decent performance when it comes to a communication that is
not very bandwidth hungry.
During the mid 90's a company provided its own
technology for providing data access through telephone lines at 1Mbps
and it became very popular. Then different companies like AMD formed an
alliance named Home Phone-line Network Alliance (Home PNA) to provide
standardization for the telephone line communication. They developed a
data transfer standard based on the Tut Systems' technology for
telephone lines and called it HomePNA 1.0.
The first version of this standard was identical to
the Tut Systems' technology - 1 Mbit/s, 25 computers in the HomePNA 1.0
network and a communication range about 150 m. Then they released
network cards (PCI and USB), different communicators, Ethernet-to-HomePNA
bridges etc. The HomePNA technology is a usual Ethernet with 1 Mbit/s (HomePNA
1.0) and 10 Mbit/s (HomePNA 2.0) in all aspects. The CSMA/CD,
IEEE-802.3, MAC addresses are applicable not only for the Ethernet but
also for both HomePNA standards. This technology differs from the
Ethernet only on a physical level. And installation of HomePNA cards
doesn't differ from that of HomePNA adapters. Operating systems operate
with these adapters as with usual Ethernet ones.
HomePNA 1.0 is used successfully in office buildings
- practically all of them have their own telephone network, which can be
used for the Internet as well. It is very convenient both for clients
and providers. HomePNA networks can be built in those buildings which
have phone jacks. I.e. you don't need hubs and switches, but only
HomePNA cards. Theoretically, the HomePNA 2.0 standard has every chance
to reach 100 Mbit/s speed!
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