Netgear's 802.11g HomePlug extender
posted Oct 5th 2004 2:52AM
We haven't met many people using powerline
networking (anyone out there taken the plunge?), but Netgear just introduced the WGXB102, an 802.11g wireless access
point that connects to a home network using the HomePlug powerline networking standard. The whole point behind HomePlug
is that you use turn the electrical wiring in your home to create a network. It hasn't gotten much attraction, but if
you have a home that's too big to be covered by a single wireless access point and/or you don't feel like stringing
Ethernet cables everywhere (not that there's anything wrong with that), it's definitely a viable option. Anyway, the
one thing to keep in mind is that while the WGXB102 will let you use HomePlug networking to add 802.11g hotspots to
disparate wings of your McMansion, the top speed of HomePlug networking gear is just 14Mbps, which means you won't get
the full benefits of making the move to 802.11g(which runs at 54Mbps) if you're looking for a speedier way to
wirelessly whip files around your home network.
I used power line networking for about a year when I was poor, living in an apartment, and married.
Since I was poor, I couldn't afford the fledgling and unsecure 802.11b hardware that was rolling out. Since I was living in an apartment, I couldn't string cat5 wire in the walls. Since I was married (still am!), I couldn't run wires willy-nilly around the place.
Power line networking was more reliable than I expected, but s-l-o-w. It's hard to imagine any reason to stick with it these days--unless your home is a giant faraday cage, you can probably build a wireless network including a few repeaters for about the same cost as the 3Com stuff I bought a few years ago.
Unless things have changed, power line networking would be a really bad idea in an apartment complex. Any of your neighbors with the right hardware would be able to access your network. I'm sure there's some sort of security available, but you know how that goes.
Quite frankly it's a lot cheaper to build an 802.11b/g network than powerline or HPNA.
. . . to get around areas where a wireless signal won't penetrate. I use it to get coverage on my roof by connecting a wireless acess point to the receiving powerline device and it works flawlessly. Speed isn't an issue at all unless you're transferring massive files between pcs. 14 mb is more than enough to handle any current internet feed.
I'm using it right now. The apartment I moved into a couple months ago has no phone jack in the bedroom I chose for my home office. I'm getting a pretty solid 8-10 Mbps over the AC, which is more than adequate for getting the Internet (1.5/384) into the room where the computers are.
As for security, it seems adequate. It's triple-DES, which isn't exactly cutting edge, but probably about as secure as an analog modem in an apartment complex (just open up your phone jack and odds are good you can get access to your neighbor's wiring). If you assign a private name to your powerline network, nobody else's powerline dongles will connect to it, and your network won't show up in the configuration software. In any case, lots more people have 802.11 cards than have HomePlug dongles, and there are dedicated key cracking tools for WiFi. There isn't any such software for powerline networking, and you'd have to hack the dongles to even be able to snoop someone else's traffic anyway.
I was surprised and pleased that the SMC starter kit I bought came with Mac OS X configuration software. Since the dongles are Ethernet bridges, there is only a tiny bit of configuration: enter each bridge's device key into the software so you can manage them (if you don't do this, you can only manage the one that's on your local network segment), then change the network name from the default to make it private. After that, the configuration utility is useful mostly to see what speed you're getting. If you have the option, try different outlets; I found there was a good 2 Mbps difference between various outlets I could reach from where I'd set up the networking equipment.
hey I love the powerline networking.. it alot better then wireless in my opinion, my house is not that big. but for me to reach the next computer which was 3 walls over it could not make it via infrastructure mode. but could do it adhoc by hoping other wireless connection, but that was only if a third computer was on. but now just plug it in to the homeplug and away it went no problems.. and same thing on the padio/garden which is about 200 feet away. plug in the adapter outside and I could connect anywhere outside for a good 1000 feet or more. now I connect all my internal computers via homeplug( no worries now about the microwaves or wireless telephones killing my connections) and the wireless extender I place any where in an outlet near by, to give my laptop connection to the internet. just love it..