Home Networking With Powerline Ethernet Adapters

By Author: Apa Holde
Total Articles: 42
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Powerline ethernet adapters are not a brand new technology, but they've come into eminence with the need for high speed home networking because of gaming systems, cable and dish television, and voice over IP applications which require fast network connections. Remember though, powerline ethernet adapters speed up your LAN, that's your local area network that includes of your home. They do not speed up the WAN, that's your access to the Net and the Wide Area network. If you have a slow DSL connection, or maybe worse, a dial-up modem, powerline ethernet will allow your home network to be fast, but will do nothing for your connections to the exterior world.

Powerline ethernet hopes to be plug and play. Ideally, you would simply plug in your first adapter into the outlet, and your second adapter into the second outlet, and connect your network cable to each of these adapters, and you would be prepared to go. Fortunately , this does happen some of the time, but there can be issues with interference, different electric circuits in the home, or some configuration issues if you set up your adapters for encrypted connections. ...
... Remember though, this is a consumer good, and the setup should work, otherwise support is available.

The speed you achieve with these adapters would most likely be between 15 and 50 mbps. Advertised speeds are between 85 mbps and 200 mbps, though some gigabit powerline ethernet adapters are also being publicized these days. The speed becomes slower as interference or distance becomes an issue . Homeplug 1.0 is the right standard to use, and though the homeplug coalition claims that makers following its standard will be intercompatible, it might be best to not only choose the same brand, but even the same make and model of powerline adapter to make sure additional adapters are compatible. The reason why I say this is that some specifications on products are discussing incompatibility.

as compared to wireless technology, powerline adapters have some advantages like better bandwidth, and better connections in big spaces. Wireless-N would be the sole equivalent technology to powerline connections, and the choice will depend upon the express situation. Some folks will have poor wireless connections due to wireless phone interference, walls or other obtacles and will achieve superb results with the powerline ethernet. So far as cost, it seems to me that wireless-n and powerline ethernet are about equivalent. If you have got a laptop, or a cell phone that may use the neighborhood network, you definitely want a wireless network.

but for 2 story houses, you may even have a mixed approach. You'd need a wireless router downstairs which connects to the wan, and one of its ports would broadcast the ethernet upstairs using the powerline adapter. Your 2nd powerline ethernet adapter would get this signal, and this would connect to a wireless access point. This would broadcast a wireless network in your 2nd floor, and you could connect both physically and wirelessly upstairs ( assuming your WAP had both physical ports as well as the wireless capability ).
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John is the owner of Linksys PLE300 page - part of a cool site about powerline ethernet adapters