5 Powerline Networking Devices Reviewed 153
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."
Re:Only metric is time to transfer 8.05 GB? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about they try turning on a toaster, microwave, dish washer, space heater or some other high consumption device as well? I played around with these back in the day and somebody turning on a toaster in the different room on a completely different circuit was enough to murder my connection.
There are still a few hitches. Here in the U.S., we tend to run split-phase wiring. The electrical service enters our homes as 240 volts made up of two 120V lines (or legs). Our 120V outlets are derived from tapping off one or the other of those 120V legs. As a result, you may not be able to network devices that are plugged into outlets on different legs.
Good catch on the different legs of split phase. Always wondered about that. Guess they can't use the ground wiring for some reason?
Re:I remember these... (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the article, they are still much slower than Wi-Fi.
They used 802.11n. The results are more competitive with b/g. (It might be tempting if you don't want to run cable but want the security)
and security? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nicest thing about moving to the country (Score:1, Interesting)
I've built a few "custom" ants myself for wifi (highest gain was about 16db) and while they ar'nt much to shout about in the city, you may be picking up ssids from 1/2 a mile away or so but nothing useful, in the countryside they really come into their own,you can beaming shit 2 or 3 miles becomes trivial. I've seen a post once where some lads used a homemade parabolic reflector's and USB sticks to make a 300mile LoS link.
So yeah, in the country encryption is doubly important, wardrivers don't even need to be in the same county as you.
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
You missed:
" ... if you had an electrician run two outlets from your breaker box, ... "
If you could afford to pay an electrician to install outlets into the rooms, you can afford to pay to have network cable installed.
Also, I concur with your comment about the extension cord.
I have only two uses for wifi right now:
1. iphone (no wired option)
2. between two buildings 800 feet apart with no right-of-way to run any sort of cable.
I can't imagine any situation where I would want to run networking over the powerline wiring in a house.
Networking good, telephone bad (Score:4, Interesting)
I bought a set of 3 of these for my parent's house and they worked really well for what we needed them to do - namely, to hook up the TiVos to the home network (these were the newer TiVos that only support the TiVo branded WiFi adapter, unfortunately). As I don't live in their town and was only there for the weekend to help, this was the quickest thing Fry's could arrange.
It worked so well, that when I got home I was inspired to feed a phone line to our tv satellite receiver over a powerline box. That way, all 4 pair in the one cat5 run going to that spot could be used for Gigabit and the phone could go elsewhere. So I bought a set of the RCA phone line over power gizmos. The resulting phone line was so shitty-noisy that I wouldn't want to make a phone call over it myself, much less ask the DirecTV receiver to attempt it.
I wound up buying a set of RTX DualJacks to solve the problem. They use 2.4 GHz to move the phone line and work perfectly, but they're nearly impossible to find anymore. I had to get them used on eBay.
I'm a little annoyed that nobody has made a similar box to transport a phone line over Ethernet. Yes, there are VoIP solutions, but they're way too expensive and over-engineered for what I want. Just two boxes that talk to each other with raw Ethernet frames to move a phone line from here to there oughtn't to be too much to ask, but apparently is.
Comment on Speeds (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone else had posted comments about the speeds over these lines so I figured I'd offer my experiences.
For doing large file transfers, yes they are a little slow. However, in terms of just about anything else they're completely sufficient.
In my house we regularly have up to three clients playing movies off the file server without issue. (In addition to standard internet browsing and occasionally running bittorrent off a laptop..)
1729 Vicarage in middle UK works just fine (Score:3, Interesting)
4 years living in a 1729 vicarage in the middle of the UK, rented, Grade 2* listed. One netgear ADSL/wifi box covered the house just fine, bounced its signals 'through' the 2 foot thick solid stone walls to different rooms, and for people who really wanted a cable, we just ran ethernet cable discretely round the edges of the hall, up the stair and into people's rooms. Lift the carpets gently and run the cable underneath and along the skirting boards.
Not sure what listing status your parents' house is, I don't know about what's covered under Grade 1, but I'm pretty sure you are allowed to run cables under the carpet and tack them to the walls, get some sympathetic ducting etc. Grade 2 says exterior only has to be cleared for planning permission. You can drill holes through interior walls without needing clearance as long as you follow common sense and general building regs (which are there to stop you killing yourself, in practice nobody's going to haul you up as long as you aren't incredibly stupid and try to run electricity near water, etc).
If you can't put cable down - and I am guessing this might be to do more with your mum and dad having beautiful interior period decor and not wanting anything post 1850 around the place rather than building regs (they've got electric cables right? so they've cleared permission previously to drill holes) - then get wifi in, maybe use something like dd-wrt or openwrt and link together a couple of boxes to hop around the rooms.
My guess your issue is more to do with it being your parents house and what they will or won't allow than government regulations ;-)
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)