Existing ethernet-over-mains adaptors are standalone devices with a 13 amp plug and an RJ45 socket. They use your existing NIC (and its drivers), and all adaptors on the same ring main look like the ports of a non-switching hub.
There are already Linux, BSD and Solaris drivers for many conventional NICs, 16-bit, 32-bit and on-board. Contrast this with wireless networking, where the best you can hope for is often just a "wrapper" which interfaces the closed-source Windows driver to your OS. This of course makes kernel debugging impossible.
Can we be sure that on-board mains networking will be truly OS-neutral (using existing drivers, or new drivers for which Source Code is available) and that this is not all a cunning plot intended to force us all into buying Windows Vista?
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I worry for OS neutrality
Existing ethernet-over-mains adaptors are standalone devices with a 13 amp plug and an RJ45 socket. They use your existing NIC (and its drivers), and all adaptors on the same ring main look like the ports of a non-switching hub.
There are already Linux, BSD and Solaris drivers for many conventional NICs, 16-bit, 32-bit and on-board. Contrast this with wireless networking, where the best you can hope for is often just a "wrapper" which interfaces the closed-source Windows driver to your OS. This of course makes kernel debugging impossible.
Can we be sure that on-board mains networking will be truly OS-neutral (using existing drivers, or new drivers for which Source Code is available) and that this is not all a cunning plot intended to force us all into buying Windows Vista?