Review The quest for faster home networks continues, and with 802.11n Wi-Fi failing to deliver promised 300-450Mb/s peak speeds to a lot of people – blame sneaky manufacturers slipping cheap, single-antenna, 72Mb/s adaptors into their devices – some punters, even those without wireless blackspots in their homes, are looking to technologies like powerline networking.
Netgear’s XAV5001: the centre light changes colour to reflect the link strength
A year or so back, Belkin introduced its Gigabit powerline Ethernet adaptor, but it was the only mainstream brand to deliver products based on proprietary technology from Gigle, now owned by network chip giant Broadcom. Read the rest of this entry »
Review It has taken Devolo a while to come up with a set of powerline Ethernet adaptors with pass-through power sockets in them, but here, at last, they are.
Devolo’s dLan AVplus: powerline with pass-through power
The dLan 200 AVplus is essentially Devolo’s dLan 200 AVeasy adaptor stretched to accommodate the power socket that’s placed diametrically opposite the device’s own power pins. The pins and socket are placed in the upper half of the adaptor, and the 10/100Mb/s Ethernet port is on the bottom of the unit.
The adaptor’s value to you will depend, then, not only on whether you need that ‘extra’ power socket but also whether there’s room for the 130mm top-to-bottom device to be plugged in. It’s 65mm wide and 40mm front to back. Our test bench main sockets, for example, are placed too close to the top of the bench, so we couldn’t plug the Devolos in there. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Belkin’s Gigabit Powerline HD mains-wiring network adaptor is the first we’ve seen to claim to be able to delivery data transfer rates of up to 1000Mb/s.
We stress the word ‘claim’ and the phrase ‘up to’. Makers of powerline kit also market adaptors that, they say, deliver bandwidth of up to 200Mb/s. But no one who uses one will ever get a data throughput anywhere near that. Almost every 200Mb/s adaptor uses a 10/100 Ethernet port, capping the throughput at 100Mb/s.
Belkin’s Powerline HD: capable of Gigabit speeds?
That’s because real-world powerline speeds are occasionally slightly above but usually lower than 100Mb/s. There’s simply no point in the vendor integrating a Gigabit Ethernet port: the link speed means you’ll never get any advantage from it.
Powerline isn’t alone in this. All networking kit performs some way below the maximum speed quoted by vendors to make sure their offerings don’t appear slower than anyone else’s. It’s high time the networking industry came up with a better measure, but don’t hold your breath waiting for one. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Despite an early charge, powerline networking has suffered something of a stall over the past few years. The stuff is still shifting off the shelves, but we haven’t seen much in the way of improvements in the technology.
D-Link’s DHP-303: no change over the years but the model number?
Back in 2007, we were graced with 200Mb/s adaptors that provided a more reliable alternative to wireless when streaming HD video. Since then very little has changed and there’s still no sign of the 400Mb/s adaptors that the rival HomePlug and UPA groups have been shouting about the past year or so.
So when we heard D-Link had some new adaptors for us, we had our fingers crossed in the hope they would be the first to sport a 400Mb/s chip. Sadly, they don’t. Instead, the DHP-303 units are very similar – both visually and on paper – to D-Link’s DHP-300 adaptors from a couple of years back.
Before we go any further, it’s best to clear up D-Link’s somewhat bizarre naming convention. In what can only be seen as an effort to confuse, it calls the starter kit – as reviewed here – the DHP-303, although the individual adaptors are known as DHP-302s. Read the rest of this entry »
