That Developer

I am a happy resident in a townhome that is about 15 years old. I am mostly happy with the house but my biggest complain has always been that it is not wired for ethernet. I do have a Wireless N setup, but the signal does not quite reach all the places where I want connectivity. My master bedroom gets frequent signal drops and my HTPC cannot reliably stream *anything*.

I researched wireless extenders. However, it appears that they reduce bandwidth. I also looked into wiring up the house. But connecting one important outlet (where my HTPC would be connected to) would have required a lot of drilling. Seemingly without a good solution, I pushed off fixing my network over and over again.

But recently I decided to get powerline networking a try. As with most people, I have been very skeptical of the technology. But a recent Netgear product has been getting a lot of good reviews on both Amazon and Newegg, and I decided to give it a try.

The product I purchased is the Powerline AV+ 200 Ultra Adapter Kit. The name is quite a moutful but basically the kit comes with two power adapters. When hooked up to two different power outlets, the units basically acts as an ethernet cable that could hit up to 200Mbps (follow the link and check out the diagram).

The packaging is quite minimal, which I like. I plugged one unit next to my cable modem and wireless router and was delighted to see a green blinking light, indicating a link rate of over 80 Mbps. I connected that unit to my router with the bundled ethernet cable. Then I plugged another unit next to my HTPC and connected those two with the other ethernet cable.

I then booted up my HTPC. And sure enough, the wired connection was recognized and the transfer speeds were unlike anything I have seen on that PC. It is rare that I come across a product that is simple and works so well. Some people appear to have issues with their powerline signal strength but given what I have seen so far everything works exactly as advertised.

I am already planning to purchase Powerline AV Wireless-N Extender unit so that I can plug it into a power outlet that will maximize my Wireless-N coverage. (Currently my wireless router sits in the corner of my house.) These units aren’t exactly cheap, but I think they’re worth every penny.