Netgear Powerline Ethernet Adaptor????

guys!

i went to circuitcity and came across this one thing:

NETGEAR POWERLINE ETHERNET ADAPTOR

connection speed up to 200Mbps

does this thing work as advertised? if yes it's better to have it rather than using a wireless connection at home.

 

It works with a few caveats.

If you have multiple breaker boxes that seperate power in your house, the powerline adaptor wont bridge from box to box.

If your electrical wiring is terrible, network speed suffers.

Asides from that, it works surprisingly well.

 

Your internet will not be any faster. It is only good if you are doing data transfers to/from your computers in your house.

Oh, and you'll probably only get 10/100 speeds anyway since most PCs support 10/100 and 10/100/1000...and not 10/20/10/200 and the like.

 

That's useful to know, but let me paraphrase just to see if I've got it right. Is it correct to say that the signal generated by these powerline adapters will not cross over a breaker box?

Let me try with a different hypothetical: suppose I live in an apartment building where each apartment has a single breaker box that controls the power to the entire apartment. If I use these powerline adapters within the apartment, the signal will not travel past the circuit box that controls my apartment, and thus will not be accessible by my neighbors, is that correct?

 

That's a great question from a great person. The signal will travel everywhere as long as it doesn't find resistance. I don't know what is the frequency response of a breaker but I don't think it would be that different from an ordinary wall switch. So, I would say it will go beyond the breaker. It will most likely get attenuated at the pole transformer and very little come back again inside the house.

 

oh well..then i should stick with wireless connections. that thing is also expensive.

thanks for the info, guys.

 

In other words, if I'm living in an apartment building where the electrics have a main trunk running up the vertical service shaft, with a main circuit for each floor, off of which there is a separate circuit for each apartment, with a circuit breaker set at each branching of the circuits, sort of like this diag:


then it's possible that, if I live in Apt B1, that my neighbors in Apt B2 could receive my signal if I'm using the powerline adapter, and that there's also a risk, though smaller, that my downstairs neighbors in Apts A1 and A2 could also receive my signal?

If that's the case, I don't think I wanna be playing around with this thing in anything other than a single-family house.

 

They must have the right equipment though, they must get connected in the outlet, filter the AC signal, remove the desired signal, etc. I believe the signal can go as far as 1000feet, so yes it could go everywhere. I bought it just to play with it but it was a home application not an apartment block situation. May be the implementation in your case it would require another device to be installed on your central panel so the signal terminate there, is just a low pass filter that is needed.

 

Since my next-door neighbors are no more than about 10 to 20 feet away, if they've got the powerline adapter as well, then it seems to me that they would potentially be able to "see" the network traffic and, if they were so inclined, could figure out what my network IP was and then connect into my network if I didn't have security enabled.

Of course, right now, since I have wireless, they can "see" my network signals without even going looking for them, provided they also use wireless, so I guess that, provided I had security enabled, there wouldn't be much difference between the powerline adapter and the wireless I use now.

 

I have a Linksys version of this, and in practice it really does work on the scale that I use it....which is a single connection between a multimedia (SageTV) server and a remote media extender attached to a TV. With this I'm able to stream standard def video (not HD) stutter-free, where streaming the same over G wireless was hit and miss depending on who else was on the wireless.

Now, my house has up to date wiring, and there are no ther devices connecting to the Powerline network and competing for data, so YMMV. But under the right conditions these things actually work pretty well.

 

The biggest issue with power lines is the noise, each switch up and down, AC going off, refrigerator kicking in, TV turned on, etc. creates current spikes causing data errors, reducing this way the data throughput.

 

I can see how that would happen; I imagine that in a big apartment building the noise could be very significant. In my building there's something else that might have funny interactions with the powerline adapter - apparently because they got tired of little old ladies putting extension cords under carpets, and then walking across them until the cords frayed, ignited the carpets, and caused serious apartment fires, the management in the building put in circuit breakers that are hair-trigger. I've actually triggered one of them just by switching on my beard-trimmer. I realize that the powerline adapter doesn't boost the draw on the circuit by much at all; however, I wonder if playing around with the frequencies in a circuit like that might not give a circuit-breaker like that a little indigestion?

 

Hahahaha, indigestion is the story of my life, I have a very delicate stomach so I'm sick often, so whatever I go I bring my ENO (mineral salt) to deal with my stomach.

Powerline Internet makes a lot of sense in Europe where the power line infrastructure is different from here, I believe England has some communities using the power line. Now I'm talking about the ISP really using the power lines to bring Internet into your home, not just making a home network using the AC outlets.

Anyway, we'll talk about that another day, is time to hit the bag, good night.