5 Powerline Networking Devices Reviewed

An anonymous reader writes "Most people who can't or won't hardwire for broadband have an obvious alternative: Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, there can be architectural anomalies between floors or even between rooms that can interfere with Wi-Fi signals, resulting in spotty, or even dead, signals. So what do you do? Well, you can try using a powerline device. Computerworld reviewer Bill O'Brien tests powerline units from Belkin, D-Link, Linksys, Netgear and Zyxel, and compares their performance to that of his wired and wireless setups."

Only metric is time to transfer 8.05 GB?

[corsec67]

What about packet loss, ping, ping jitter and resistance to interference?

Bulk transfer is useful, but may not be important to gamers or people who want responsive.

Seriously?

[MBCook]

When your router/modem is "here" and you have one or more computers either upstairs or downstairs from that location -- or both! -- life begins to get complex. Hardwiring your network is fast and efficient, but it's often not a practical answer, especially for homes and small offices.

What kind of small office wouldn't be able to run a piece of CAT5? If you can't afford to do that (and I'm including the done by hand up through the ceiling by the CEO method) then your company has bigger problems.

Renters may have difficulty convincing their landlords to let them rewire a home or apartment that they don't own themselves. Even wiring your own place may not be fiscally feasible.

$20 of CAT5, $10 of jacks, and a $20 fish-tape isn't fiscally feasible, but these gizmos are?

In testing the power-line devices, I started with a room-to-room test where I plugged one of the modules into a [...] electrical outlet downstairs and the other module into [an older] electrical outlet upstairs.

These real world speeds are pretty bad. The D-Link didn't even finish the test. It looks like they came out at about 2.4 MBps. His WiFi was 4x faster. Ethernet was 10x faster.

I also set up the power-line equipment using a 90-foot extension cord into which one of the modules was connected downstairs; that extension cord was then plugged into the same outlet upstairs as the second module.

Oh, yeah, that's a common test. Why is it you can't let the Ethernet cable hang through the hall again?

Basically, this represented a connection through a length of electrical wire in which there were no phase leg, aging or wire condition problems. In a new home, or if you had an electrician run two outlets from your breaker box, you would probably find transmission times similar to these.

Wanna bet? I've seen new houses where it was dumb luck (and incredible fault tolerance) that let the phone jacks work. When you try to go from one end of a new house to the other, or across floors, I doubt this will be representative of anything.

(This was the setup I used when testing the power-line devices with video streams.)

So these things can't stream video under real world conditions. Excellent.

Finally, I plugged the two modules into the same outlet. In theory, with little to no electrical wire between them, this would be the fastest they could communicate with each other under any network load condition, offering performance under what would pass for ideal conditions.

Nice to know the top speed, but obviously you'll never run into this case except in the same room. And if both boxes are in the same room... run the Ethernet cable hanging from the ceiling.

If you really want to these kind of gizmos for your little office, how well do they work with 3 computers? How about 5? What happens if your 2.4 MBps goes to 0.3 when you add the 3rd computer? He mentioned that at least one has some kind of security. How good is it? Does it compare with WPA2? What are the chances the next office over is close enough (though the power lines) they could be on my network?

Pull a wire. We fussed with WiFi for years, and it is often problematic. If you are in a house or office, pull the wire. It's no that hard (for the simple cases he is listing, like two rooms above one another). Get the land lord's permission if you don't own the place. It's not worth all the fussing you may end up having to do with WiFi (thanks to neighbor access points, cheap $30 APs, etc).

Re:Nicest thing about moving to the country

[TooMuchToDo]

Just a mile? You should see what us private pilots can pick up from 10,000 feet =) (yes, yes, I'm aware that's right around 1.5 miles)

Re:Only metric is time to transfer 8.05 GB?

[gad_zuki!]

>What about packet loss, ping, ping jitter and resistance to interference?

Heck, how about reporting in standard units? Time it takes to transfer his porn collection in a zip archive, i mean 8.05gigs of data? What the heck is that? How about just running iperf and reporting standard mbps.

Re:Seriously?

[TooMuchToDo]

Argh. Is there anything you can do in the UK without a permit and inspections?

Re:Seriously?

[westlake]

$20 of CAT5, $10 of jacks, and a $20 fish-tape isn't fiscally feasible, but these gizmos are?

not everyone is a twenty-something DIY geek eager to cut into the sheetrock.

Why is it you can't let the Ethernet cable hang through the hall again?

because your wife said no way in hell.

Re:Does this mean...

[corychristison]

What if all your equipment is hooked up to a UPS?

Wont work. Any line conditioning will kill all communications.