Powerline Ethernet Adapter

Does anyone have any experience with "wall mounted ethernet bridges" (Powerline Ethernet Adapters) ?
Any advice and experiences ?
Recommended and non recommended brands ?

 

PC Magazine reviewed devices meeting the new Powerline Alliance standards several years ago. I am sure it is searchable. These devices met the first industry wide standard, were rated at 14mbs, and worked great.

The newer standard supports speeds up to 200mbs, depending on how big a liar the marketing people choose to be. Expect nominal rates of 125mbps or so.

Some releases are available now. The Consumer Electronics Show in January, 2007 will show lots of new introductions for standard two devices.

Mossburg, the Wall Street Journal review:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060817.html


Fred Langa, of the Langa letter is a convert from the standard one days:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20030108S0003

Several manufacturers of standard one devices combine them with a wireless access point; notably Apple (A/B/G), D-Link and Linksys (both B/G). This use was the one that caught PC Magazines testing eyes and their recommendation for a mixed powerline, wireless and cabled use in residences and SOHO settings.

Right now I estimate for a job spending for CAT5/6:

$US 100 per drop for new construction
$US 150 per drop for existing commercial construction
$US 275 per drop for residences

Compared to cabling or wireless, I can beat these costs by using two powerline standard one ethernet adapters for under US $100, and complete a reliable link that effectively will fall between wireless 802.11B and 802.11G, with no degredation due to distance. This obviously beats the cost of using pure wireless, with often much more satisfactory results as well.

With the newer devices offering up to 200mbs, the cost equation shifts strongly to any network consultant becoming familiar with powerline. Without a blink of an eye I would use these before wireless for printer connections. If my cable costs exceeded $US 100 for a point-to-point connection for Internet and general LAN use, I would strongly think about using powerline standard one devices, and have done so. For example, since most ADSL connections and cable are well under the effictive bandwidth of these devices, it seems silly to use wireless in many cases. Powerline is cheaper, its rates stable with no distance degredation, and idiot-proof.

And no, the AC voltage cannot transfer to the ethernet Cat/5 side of the little box even if it massively failed.

Standard one and two devices can bridge sites with phased AC. Even if more than one transformer serves a large site, you can ask an electricion to "bridge" the panels serviced by different transformers involved. If you are behind the same transformer, the fact that several panels are used makes no difference, and no other steps are required. Remember that several large power companies are testing, effectively, using their transmission lines to become ISPs.

You can enable encryption so that all traffic is secure. This encryption is comprehensive, and no plain-text transmission can occur. This does not require an onerous overhead bandwidth hit.

You can use them without problems behind surge protectors. Depending on how your UPS works (does everything pass through essentially the battery protected circuit first, or does the battery kick in when needed) you can use them behind many but not all UPS protectors as well.

Three examples where I have used them:

. Bridging. The cost of a microwave or infrared bridge device was not line of sight, where wireless was not line of sight, between buildings in a commercial campus setting. Powerline adapters for under US$ 100/pair resolved an otherwise expensive cable or other bridging method.

. My brother's home. Due to some quirk in how they figure this, he could get DSL and cable broadband, but none of his neighbors in the cul-de-sac were eligible. They had pooled resources to try wireless, without success. So, of course my brother asks me to come up and visit, and "you might want to bring some tools or whatever, because my neighbors and I have a slight problem.. "

I visited with seven powerline adapters, and gave six households broadband internet access (preserving their wireless routers for their homes) in under an hour. All were behind the same transformer at the pole, an important consideration. There was no cost effective way to use wireless in this instance. And nobody wanted to mount a large antenna. And cable was of course out of the question. I paid US$ 39.95 per adapter at my local large computer retailer. That was four years ago. they are still in use although my brother bumped his DSL to 3up and 1 down. No speed degredation at any of the neighbor sites.

. My home, a three story with full basement, traditional all-brick with real plaster walls (no drywall anywhere) constructed home built in 1923. I could shoot the house fairly well with a single wireless Linksys WRT54G V1.1 after some third-party firmware changes, and some self-built parabolic reflectors. But my wife complained that she could not use here laptop very quickly from the patio area, a distance exceeeding 200' from the router.

I added a D-link powerline ethernet adapter to the router side, and a D-Link powerline access point device to an enclosed outdoor box used for the sprinkler system, lights, and other junk. It has been there for nearly three years, untouched, and you can speedtest your wireless connection with results that match my cabled indoor internet connections.

I like them. With the newer standard two devices, they are worth looking at again for streaming video, and my kids connections to an ever ending series of new game box devices.

The only ones I have ever met who did not like powerline were:

. those that tried to use the X-11 controller devices, which are completely different
. those that have never used them at all

Under standard one devices you could have 14 devices at one time. Under standard two I think, (I do not know yet for a fact), you can have eight. With some proprietary "Turbo" or whatever they want to call it, you might be limited to four devices. See the manufacturer's spec sheets to be sure.

But in my bag of tricks I have always appreciated powerline. It just works, and is idiot-proof.

As to the merits of various manufacturer's of these devices, I just do not know what to recommend other than use Google.

Just remember to distinguish between standard one and the newer Powerline Alliance standard two devices. (and the pre-standard devices).