I've got a few of the Netgear "HD" 200mbit powerline ethernet kits.

I have a 1000sqft townhouse.

From the downstairs to the upstairs, actual transfer rates were *considerably SLOWER* than 802.11g (comparing transfer rates to my appletv via scp).

...so don't expect anywhere near 85mbit.

mtnsports wrote:Not uncompressed...

That's because you don't stream uncompressed video through packets over a network.

If you want to stream uncompressed HDMI 1.3, like you are implying, then you can do it over a dedicated cat6 wire.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever actually moved a gigabit of data in a second over Gigabit Ethernet? I've got quite a lot of Gigabit laying around and I never get that much through put. Most I ever see is somewhere around 300 Mbps.

I use ActionTec 200 Mbps (x4) and have no issues - even have an 8 port switch hanging off one.

Folks dissing these have no idea what they are talking about.

mtnsports wrote:You can't stream 1080p even on Gigabit ethernet (which is more than 11x faster than 85 Mbps).

I know I'm not the first one to say this but, you're wrong. And I know I've said this already in a different post but Blu-Ray disks are only streaming at ~40Mb/sec. For example the new Star Trek BD video streams on average at 32Mb plus another 4Mb for the TrueHD audio. (source AVS Forums Blu-Ray Disk reviews)

jhfranck wrote:how do these work

Networking over powerlines works by hiding the network signal inside the regular signals produced by AC power. AC current changes directions 60 times every second, however network devices can read signals many times faster than that. Basically, between every AC cycle, this device will transmit several zeros or ones.

This is an established standard, however it certainly isn't used as often as wireless.

The Newegg reviews http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16833124307 say that these devices can transmit a sustained 45 Mbps rate, which is significantly higher than you'll achieve with wireless devices in most cases.

mtnsports wrote:Not uncompressed...

Nobody streams uncompressed video over a home network.

showcaller wrote:These things, like many balderah techie gizmos, don't even seem like a good idea for fifteen seconds, at which point you ask yourself, "is this really worth the hassle and aggravation?" Woot offers many cool, groovy items from close outs to stuff that just didn't make it in the marketplace. This isn't one of them. This is just wierd and a hassle all rolled into two packages.

Let me summarize: "I've never used it, ignore me please."

gimpyestrada wrote:Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever actually moved a gigabit of data in a second over Gigabit Ethernet? I've got quite a lot of Gigabit laying around and I never get that much through put. Most I ever see is somewhere around 300 Mbps.

Yeah, sorry about that. I've been using a bunch of your bandwidth for a little experiment I've been working on.

I feel dumb asking this question, but does this replace my internet that I pay for every month?

mtnsports wrote:Not uncompressed...

Let me enlighten you.

The read speed of a Bluray player playing a movie would be 12x at max. That works out to be 432 mbits/s or 54 mbytes/s. Speed source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

Gigabit (1000mbit) doesn't usually operate at that speed unless you've got quality wiring and quality switches. On a $40 switch with cat6 cables, I get around 800 mbits on a ram to ram transfer between hosts. I get closer to 1000 mbits on more robust networks using cat6.

I have absolutely no doubt that you could stream 1080p content over gigabit, as long as you used good wiring and decent NICs. I easily exceed the 54 mbytes/s of Bluray using 4 year old Sata 1.5 drives. My raid pushes 110 mbytes/s over the network.

slba34g wrote:I feel dumb asking this question, but does this replace my internet that I pay for every month?

No it just moves it from one room to another.

mtnsports wrote:You wouldn't even have to be in the house. Most houses have external AC outlets that could easily be accessed. The only thing stopping someone from hacking the network would be the 56-bit encryption.

I'd love to see the youtube of this going wrong...

I think this is more a matter of security by obscurity. I can't see the RFI given off by this has very good travel distance to be picked up by a passerby.

To woot or not to woot... that is the question.

I have a wireless network set up in my home office and would love to be able to connect my DirecTV and bluray in the living room all to the network. The rooms are both downstairs I assume this would work by connection the single to my router now and then the 4 outlet one on the other end.

Or is there a wireless solution I don't know about which would be better? Many are suggesting going wireless instead... what product would I need?

Anyone know the real range on this? Say for instance, would it work in a large business like a hotel with tons of power outlets or would there be a considerable drop/down grade in quality of the signal?

These powerline network kits give you an ethernet connection anywhere in your house. You can do the same thing by running an ethernet cable through the whole house where you want the connection, but this setup eliminates the ethernet cable and uses the house wiring to put the connection where you want it (and where there's an outlet). And yes I did have an ethernet cable running through my house along the floor because my wireless router couldn't broadcast a signal to the other side of the house where I spent most of my time.

So I bought some used Slinglink SL100s, hooked one up near my DSL router, hooked another one where I usually sit, then I hooked in the wireless router to the SL100 and now I have the wireless bridge where I need it. I also have both of them hooked into my UPS on the non-battery side. And yes I do lose signal when the power goes off but that's ok. I fogot to mention that I even have an old RadioShack Universal Broadband Link hooked up to my Tek Phaser printer in another room that can talk to the SL100 network. I have AT&T DSL Elite and just did a speedtest with speakeasy. I'm getting Last Result: Download Speed: 2943 kbps (367.9 KB/sec transfer rate) Upload Speed: 645 kbps (80.6 KB/sec transfer rate) with my SL100 and an old second generation Snow Airport router. I hope this helps explain the utility of these devices.

Don't expect to get anywhere near the rated link speed. Lucky if you get half. If you're doing much HD streaming, I'd opt for HomePlug 2.0, which is 200 Mbps.

Ok I'm moving into a new house in Jan. I'm in a 900sq ft single story now moving to 1500sq ft two story. I currently have a wireless n router with a laptop, wii hooked up wireless. I have two dish network boxes hooked up using a 25ft and 50ft ethernet cable. Also have vonage 6ft ethernet cable and hava player (sling box) hooked up with 50ft ethernet cable. Also have about 4 x10 boxes that I currently use.

Would these work along with my x10 boxes that control my lights in the house or would I be drawing too much power?

Also the dish box would be downstairs (near the cable modem) and the hava player and other dish box in the basement. I would need two other adapters. Where would I find extra adapters. I'm thinking cost wise it would be easier to drill holes in the wall and use my 25ft and 50ft cable I already have hooked up.

Combine this with a soft-modded XBMC first generation Xbox (no built-in wireless) and you have yourself one of the best media center devices around.

I actually work for a company that manufactures and markets commercial and industrial-grade PLC (powerline communication) equipment so I have quite a bit of knowledge on how PLC itself works... The only difference here is that our equipment has a gateway inject the PLC signal into the breaker panel directly, centrally managing individual PLC endpoints and this is more of a point to point system but the basic principles should be the same.

Good speeds and reliable communication come down to 3 things:

1. Interference. Any sort of a charging device plugged in next to it or on the same circuit can and will cause interference. In a point to point system like this, I'm assuming this would apply to devices next to either endpoint.

2. Surge protectors. It's great to protect your electronic equipment, but pretty much all surge protectors will filter out some or all of the signal the device will inject into the line.

3. Decent wiring. If you know or suspect that your house's electrical wiring is terrible, chances are a PLC solution isn't your cup of tea. Break down and run some cat5, you'll be happier later.

Adhere to these 3 guidelines and your overall throughput should be equivalent to a straight cat5 run, although there may be a small amount of latency.

mtnsports wrote:You wouldn't even have to be in the house. Most houses have external AC outlets that could easily be accessed. The only thing stopping someone from hacking the network would be the 56-bit encryption.

You're absolutley right. I see people in my neighborhood all the time wandering around with laptops and Linksys powerline adapters. I know they are just scouring for external outlets on the odd chance that the homeowner has one of the host units installed.

I bet they'd love to copy my iTunes database!

My bad. It's late and I'm getting pretty sleepy.

ryanmmorris wrote:That's because you don't stream uncompressed video through packets over a network.

If you want to stream uncompressed HDMI 1.3, like you are implying, then you can do it over a dedicated cat6 wire.

Yes, it was uncompressed HDMI 1.3 signals that I had in mind.

blue_94_trooper wrote:I know I'm not the first one to say this but, you're wrong. And I know I've said this already in a different post but Blu-Ray disks are only streaming at ~40Mb/sec. For example the new Star Trek BD video streams on average at 32Mb plus another 4Mb for the TrueHD audio. (source AVS Forums Blu-Ray Disk reviews)

I looked it up and you're right that *average* Blu-Ray rates are about 40 Mbps. The max for the Blu-Ray spec with audio, video, & subtitles is apparently 48 Mbps. As I acknowledge above, I was thinking of uncompressed HDMI at 1080p.

I give up and am going to get the sleep I apparently need.

phil12021 wrote:To woot or not to woot... that is the question.

I have a wireless network set up in my home office and would love to be able to connect my DirecTV and bluray in the living room all to the network. The rooms are both downstairs I assume this would work by connection the single to my router now and then the 4 outlet one on the other end.

Or is there a wireless solution I don't know about which would be better? Many are suggesting going wireless instead... what product would I need?

If you can access the wireless network from in your living room, there is a wireless solution. You could purchase a second wireless router, install a custom firmware on it (such as dd-wrt), and put the new router in your living room. You can plug your devices into the new router with ethernet cables, and set up the new router to be a client of your primary wireless router.

In practice, this is kind of a hassle.

Just so everyone knows....PoE (power over ethernet) kits, are Cabbage Patch Elvis. There are so many things that can make these randomly stop working...
microwaves
cordless phones
cell phones
SURGE PROTECTORS...thats right, you cant use surge protectors with these or they wont work....
so yeah...if you dont have ANY OF THE ABOVE ITEMS, i think its safe to say youll be safe in your purchase...otherwise, Run an ethernet cable, put up access points, but a range extender...anything but these things.

i work for microcenter, and every one of these that i have sold have come back.

peach73 wrote:Anyone know the real range on this? Say for instance, would it work in a large business like a hotel with tons of power outlets or would there be a considerable drop/down grade in quality of the signal?

This is probably a bad solution for a hotel. If you're using this at home, you have control over what is plugged in where. In a hotel, all a guest needs to do is plug their cellphone in next to the thing (or in the next room over) and it'll either slow the connection down to compensate for the interference or completely lose its connection.

On the other hand, if this is just to link a switch to an office computer or something in a hotel, it might be usable although I'd strongly recommend cat5 if possible, some vdsl point to point modems if you absolutely must and the range isn't too long. As long as you can control what's plugged in near it, it's a stable solution. I can't speak for the range of these devices, but commercial PLC solutions can reach 500+ feet in optimum conditions.

If you're talking about using these things to cover every guest room in a hotel, that's probably a bad idea. I'm not going to advertise for the company I work for, but there are a few different commercial PLC products out there sold by different companies that are designed to provide access in larger and less controlled environments than your home - they also offer a lot more advanced encryption options.

mtnsports wrote:Yes, it was uncompressed HDMI 1.3 signals that I had in mind.

You can send everything uncompressed from your bluray player using an HDMI 1.3-over-cat6 extender box:
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=8081

That uses a cat6 network cable, but does not convert to packets to be sent over a network.

Mannerisky wrote:If you can access the wireless network from in your living room, there is a wireless solution. You could purchase a second wireless router, install a custom firmware on it (such as dd-wrt), and put the new router in your living room. You can plug your devices into the new router with ethernet cables, and set up the new router to be a client of your primary wireless router.

In practice, this is kind of a hassle.

And also terribly slow.

kudv4yn3 wrote:Just so everyone knows....PoE (power over ethernet) kits, are Cabbage Patch Elvis.
...
i work for microcenter, and every one of these that i have sold have come back.

Hope your boss doesn't frequent the blog. These aren't PoE kits.

Thanks for the heads up on the quality of the support I can get at the MC...

kudv4yn3 wrote:Just so everyone knows....PoE (power over ethernet) kits, are Cabbage Patch Elvis. There are so many things that can make these randomly stop working...
microwaves
cordless phones
cell phones
SURGE PROTECTORS...thats right, you cant use surge protectors with these or they wont work....
so yeah...if you dont have ANY OF THE ABOVE ITEMS, i think its safe to say youll be safe in your purchase...otherwise, Run an ethernet cable, put up access points, but a range extender...anything but these things.

i work for microcenter, and every one of these that i have sold have come back.

Uhh, this isn't PoE. PoE refers to injecting power into an ethernet cable to remotely power an access point or another piece of equipment over the cat5 run. This is PLC, Powerline Communications.

peach73 wrote:Anyone know the real range on this? Say for instance, would it work in a large business like a hotel with tons of power outlets or would there be a considerable drop/down grade in quality of the signal?

It's not so much the number of outlets that you have... as much as having the two outlets you intend to use on the same house power circuit.

In other words... if you plug one unit at your router or computer room... and the other unit in your garage or home office, and the two locations are on a "different" circuit breakers,... these may not work. Read the reviews on Amazon.

3 dumb questions.

I have charter HS internet. I do not use a router as I only (have been to this point) use internet through our central pc.

1) Is a router necessary, or just a cable modem?

2) Was looking into purchasing an "N Series" router as it looked to be the best bet for maintaining continuous connections for online gaming. Will this perform at a similar rate?

3) Assuming I have both my Nintendo Wii and PS3 utilizing the same outlet behind the tv, will this connect both simultaneously?

ryanmmorris wrote:You can send everything uncompressed from your bluray player using an HDMI 1.3-over-cat6 extender box:
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=8081

That uses a cat6 network cable, but does not convert to packets to be sent over a network.

That's sweet. Wish these were on Woot instead of the powerline network kit.

radicals13 wrote:3 dumb questions.

I have charter HS internet. I do not use a router as I only (have been to this point) use internet through our central pc.

1) Is a router necessary, or just a cable modem?

2) Was looking into purchasing an "N Series" router as it looked to be the best bet for maintaining continuous connections for online gaming. Will this perform at a similar rate?

3) Assuming I have both my Nintendo Wii and PS3 utilizing the same outlet behind the tv, will this connect both simultaneously?

1. In a basic sense, a router will enable you to connect multiple devices to your broadband connection at once. The router gets its internet connection from the cable modem, and shares it with everything else that's plugged into it.

2. If you have to go for wireless and don't mind paying extra money for wireless n adapters, I'd go wireless N. Technically, these devices would perform better. However, depending upon your house's wiring/etc (see my earlier posts) it might not.

3. Assuming that you have an ethernet cable from each connected in to the back of the unit with four ethernet ports.

I use these at home. They work perfectly for my Xbox Live which is too far away from the router to access the wireless. I've also had a very good experience using Netflix streaming. Bandwidth comes stready through it which provides nice quality.

radicals13 wrote:
1) Is a router necessary, or just a cable modem?
2) Was looking into purchasing an "N Series" router as it looked to be the best bet for maintaining continuous connections for online gaming. Will this perform at a similar rate?
3) Assuming I have both my Nintendo Wii and PS3 utilizing the same outlet behind the tv, will this connect both simultaneously?

1) Cable modem + this PLC only would only offer you flexibility of where to put your central computer.
2) for gaming: Wired Cat5/6 > Wireless > PLC
3) You can only do the simultaneous internet with a router of some manner. Computers, game consoles, etc.

Catbertthegreat wrote:The signal can't travel past the master breaker in your home, so it can't go out to the pole.

Not sure where you get that last one; most homes are only truly isolated at the transformer. Ignoring distance limitations, your signal would be shared with homes on your transformer (which could mean anything from 1-8 houses or a whole apartment block).

Of course, DES is not WEP - hacking it still would require some specialized hardware.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard#Security_and_cryptanalysis
Assuming you change the default security password (an error equivalent to using no WiFi security) you can feel fairly confident about the security of your connection.

In fact, security over HomePlug is more secure than any WiFi connection not also protected by VPN since every data frame on HomePlug is DES encrypted.

Good luck!

Jon

CowBear wrote:Hmmm interesting product but it seems like a wireless bridge is still the better way to go.

Agreed.

mtnsports wrote:You wouldn't even have to be in the house. Most houses have external AC outlets that could easily be accessed. The only thing stopping someone from hacking the network would be the 56-bit encryption.

That, and they'd have to KNOW you have this...

i24u wrote:Would these work along with my x10 boxes that control my lights in the house or would I be drawing too much power?

Power isn't a problem, and neither are X10 and HomePlug. HomePlug was specifically designed coexist with these technologies and operates well above X10 frequencies. X10 has a carrier in the 120 kHz range and HomePlug is in the 4-20 MHz bands.

Even better news is that a home where X10 works well is likely to easily support HomePlug.

Good luck!

Jon