The hardware I'm talking about in the US comes from Siemens's SpeedStream family: The 2524 Powerline Wireless DSL/Cable Router (US$130 to US$160) connects to the Internet via cable or DSL and to a home office using either 802.11b wireless or the electrical wiring in your walls. The Powerline Ethernet Adapter (US$75 to US$100) links your powerline network to devices via standard Ethernet cabling. And the 2521 Powerline 802.11b Wireless Access Point (US$75 to US$100) does the same thing via 802.11b wireless.
All three rely on the HomePlug standard, which allows data to ride on electrical wiring at speeds up to 14Mbps. That's somewhat faster than the 11Mbps connections provided by 802.11b, but your mileage may vary.
Though powerline networking has been around for years, I've previously dismissed it. Early examples were slow and never worked that well for me. They also weren't standardised, so mixing and matching products posed a problem. And when you have wireless, why use power lines?
Here's one reason: While 802.11b has a claimed range of 150 feet (46 metres) and can (especially with a good antenna) travel much further than that, the radio waves often have trouble making it through the walls of a home or small office. When that happens, you have to move the 802.11b adapter around until you get a better signal to the gateway. (This is why I prefer USB wireless adapters over add-in cards for desktop PCs. With the right USB cable, you can move the adapter to a better spot.)
Even when you succeed in establishing a wireless connection, it can be as slow as 2Mbps and subject to intermittent dropouts. For those of us who use a small network primarily for accessing the Internet, slow speed may not be a problem. Unless your Internet connection is faster than your actual wireless speed, you won't notice any slowdown. Of course, computer-to-computer file transfers within your home network always benefit from faster connections.
Setup was simple for the Siemens powerline networking products. I installed (if plugging something into a wall outlet can really be called installing) the wireless-to-powerline adapter in an upstairs home office where 802.11b connections had been a problem.
The adapter itself looks like a huge "wall wart" power transformer with the antenna of an 802.11b PC card protruding from the top. Siemens doesn't want you to plug these devices into power strips, probably because doing so would degrade performance, so I plugged it straight into a wall jack.
I then used the configuration software to give the device a network name and move it off the channel the SpeedStream base station was using. Once I'd done that, the adapter appeared as a second access point on my wireless network. The upstairs PC connected to it immediately and the adapter then "backhauled" the network traffic to the home gateway over the power lines.
You could accomplish the same thing with the Ethernet-to-powerline adapter. Plug that oversized wall wart into the socket and attach an Ethernet cable to your computer and you have a connection back to the Siemens gateway.
Such connections would work just fine for a PC you want on the network but don't need to roam around with. While it's easy enough to move a powerline adapter by plugging it into the nearest electrical outlet, this isn't the solution I'd choose for a laptop. That said, adding the wireless-to-powerline adapter improved the signal coverage all over the upstairs areas of my home, allowing me greater mobility and improved signal coverage for my notebooks.
Note also that these adapters can be used to provide an Internet connection to other types of hardware, such as home gaming consoles.
While HomePlug hardware is plenty fast enough for most Internet connections, its 14Mbps data rate is simply too slow for networked home entertainment, something I believe many of us will be doing over the next couple of years. Because of this, the HomePlug alliance is drafting a new standard, called HomePlug AV, to allow audio and video streams to be sent over power lines.
One interesting application for HomePlug AV would be a home theatre that feeds audio to some of its speakers over power lines, meaning you wouldn't need to string speaker wires under furniture and around baseboards. While 802.11 could be used for an application like this, HomePlug seems at least as valid an option.
Siemens isn't the only company selling powerline networking hardware. I tried playing with a product from 2Wire several years ago, but never got it working (for reasons that weren't the vendor's fault, or mine). We're also seeing products from other network hardware vendors, including Netgear and Linksys.
My buying advise? If you have an existing wireless home network, I'd consider upgrading to HomePlug when some piece of your existing hardware breaks or becomes obsolete. But unless you have a specific problem that only HomePlug can solve, such as a piece of hardware that's outside 802.11's range, it's not worth the effort (and dollars) involved with replacing working equipment.
If you're starting from scratch, you need first to consider whether or not you'd actually use HomePlug technology now or in the future, then to compare its cost to the alternatives. If HomePlug wouldn't add significantly to the cost of your hardware, it's probably worth trying, because its flexibility could come in handy.
If you decide to go with powerline networking, I'd recommend buying all your hardware from one vendor. HomePlug may be a standard, but different manufacturers may require slightly different settings, complicating installation of a multi-vendor HomePlug network.
Would you want an all-HomePlug network? Certainly it's doable for many people, such as those who don't care to use their notebooks in their easy chairs (as I'm doing right now). But that lack of portability is too big a trade-off for me. If you have a portable computer, your network should provide enough mobility to support it. Only wireless does that.
What do you think? Do you have a home network now? Would you consider using HomePlug hardware in it? TalkBack below or e-mail edit@zdnet.com.au.
Are the HomePlug network products available in Australia ??