Building Regulations and Electronic Communications Services (Broadband)
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amazing lack of forsight. Shows no appreciation of the rapid pace that electronics develops.
Proposals meet needs of 1999 not 2006. For instance requires internal ducting for cabling (see diagram 1) when a wireless router provides a much better and more flexible connection method (and cheaper than cabling).
Only good point is requirement for a comms duct into the building from the street. How long before that need is bypassed by a non-cabled solution?
Civil servants must feel real good working in a different century.
And less secure, more interfering, less capable in busy environments, ... WEP has already fallen as a means of encryption. There is no especial reason to believe that WPA is vulnerable - but there is no reason to suppose that it will remain secure forever.
> Truly amazing lack of forsight. Shows no appreciation of the rapid
Yep, late 20th rather than 21st - notable is the absence of optical fibre in their list of transmission media (except in the broadest sense of "electro-magnetic" media); with the increasing use of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz "unlicenced" allocations for data comms, cordless phones, video senders, baby monitors etc. the spectrum's going to get very crowded and other media are going to be needed.
RF transmission has limitations - even with spread-spectrum coding schemes as used in the unlicenced bands, once enough users are squeezed into the relatively narrow bands interference *will* occur (and already does in some locations where, for example, multiple wireless ethernet networks are installed in shared buildings) with reduced function demonstrated by lower data rates and the need for retransmissions to make links reliable. In some locations, a wired infrastructure is far more reliable and has much better bandwidth than RF. The current trends to higher insulation standards in home construction have also made RF communications more difficult, with foil-backed plasterboard in timberframe buildings effectively blocking mobile signals etc. - but at least it might trap the wireless network signals inside and mean the boss can't get me on the 'phone ;o)
Fibre has many really useful attributes, not least the electrical isolation it offers, the complete absence of interference between services, the very high bandwidths available (anything up to hundreds of Gigabits/sec) and relatively low cost when compared to methods for transmitting similar high speed data over copper. It's a great shame that it appears to have escaped the notice of the civil servants responsible for the draft regulations, and is seen as "too expensive" by the commercial carriers, at least for the "last mile" drop to homes where it would have to be installed alongside or instead of conventional copper cableing (most of which has been in the ground for decades and is a patchwork of repairs and faults).
Dave H. (The engineer formerly known as Homeless) (who will be using fibre to connect as much as he can in his New House, even if it's just the audio)
Please direct me to an affordable 1Gbit/s, provably secure wireless networking system that doesn't cause excessive RF interference and works through thick walls and foil covered plasterboard.
There is no wireless link that provides a *better* connection method than cable. It might be more convenient - that's all. As well as any performance deficit, it is by nature less secure, less reliable and more energy hungry.
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