Non-Invasive Networking - HomePNA vs. HomePlug?

zonker asks: "I live in a relatively new, moderately sized home that doesn't have conduit in the walls, nor does it have extra wires for networking. I am investigating getting a broadband connection, but first I have to decide how I will connect the network for the 6 computers in the house. As per the owners, I am not allowed to drill holes in the walls, and as per my girlfriend, I am not allowed to run Cat5 through the halls, so I am looking at my alternatives: wireless, HomePNA, and HomePlug. I'm afraid the house is a little too big for wireless without getting expensive, so it looks like either phonewire, or electric-wire. I've done some initial googling for people's opinions of these products and my quick findings where that magazine and website reviews seem to be favorable of some of them, while personal accounts seem to vary wildly. What solutions have worked for you? Are these things ready for primetime? Or should I suck it up and buy a few WAP's to extend the radius of a wireless network?"

Comments

No wires?

[Jonny 290]

Let me get this straight? She says that you can't run Cat5 along the hall baseboards?

Dump her and buy yourself a spool. You'll end up better off in the end.

In situations like this, the best solution is the bitchy-girlfriend-less network, rather than the wireless network.

HomePNA

[TheDarkRogue]

I've had nothing but trouble with the PhoneLine networking. It would go in and out sporadically without any good reason. I can say though that it is about the only thing you can fix by Singing.... Just picked up a phone on the line they were on and started to sing abit and BAM, the conection was present again. It would of course go out again in like 10 minutes, so we just replaced all the phone wiring in the house with Cat5 using the 2 free pairs. And what is with this house that you can't use Wireless? are all the walls lined with metal or something? And on the note of PhoneLine, how good is the phone wiring in the house? PowerLine, Linksys says it's shit can do 12-14mbps, but I've never really heard of anyone using powerline networking for anything other then Home Automation. Also if you are using DSL I think (NOT SURE) that you can just forget phoneline, they I belive will interfere.