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IOGEAR Homeplug Networking Reviewed
Chris Allen writes "Wired or wireless? This is always just about the first thing anyone thinks of when planning their new home/soho office. It always comes down to price/performance/practicality, in whichever order you feel is more important. Sometimes it just isn't possible to run CAT5, for a variety of reasons. The only options available for the average consumer is wireless, HomePNA, which uses your existing telephone network in your house, and HomePlug, using your existing power grid. HomePNA has been around for around 3 years or so, and has matured some, starting out transmitting at dismal speeds and lackluster reliability in regards to interference. HomePlug is short for HomePlug® Powerline Alliance."
Gee first comment, and it wont be off or on topic, just an interesting side note...
Anyways there's an interesting side note to the history of the ricochet modem. It's parent company developed and deployed a network over powerline technology for some LA based power company years ago. Too bad they went bankrupt otherwise i'd have a link.
On an ongoing basis you can expect maybe 5-8Mbps from HomePlug. The newer HomePNA hardware is faster (steady 10Mbps) and works well. If you're basically using it to share an Internet connection, both are fine of course.
Also, make sure to set the password on your HomePlug hardware or everone on your street up to the transformer is on your LAN.
Will this work as good? ;)
How about power spikes? I live in a neighborhood that is on the top end of what voltages are tolerable, so the quick, small, and frequent power spikes are more noticable and damaging and burn up lightbulbs frequently. If I were using this wouldn't I have to worry about it burning up the modem every couple of months?
I assume putting it behind some sort of surge supressor to protect it from the spikes would ruin it's ability to communite on the power lines.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
Most people are going to go for Wireless, its simpler to install, you can move around, don't need new sockets for new devices, and every network should have a wireless element in it.
BUT if you are connecting key elements together, like a primary desktop, a server or even just the major working at home point (in front of the TV with the laptop on my lap) then wired rules the world. Why ? Well apart from being able to transfer things around the network quicker, no drop in quality if the next door neighbour sets up their own wireless LAN with the packet clash party that can grow into. There is one bigger advantage to wires (no not security as you do need wireless to work in the garden).
Wires are maintainance free, they won't require upgrading as broadband gets broader. Legacy kit comes with the connections built in.
Wires for infrastructure and key sections. Wireless for roaming.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Which the two "home" brand solutions do stop you needing wires all through the building, it's worth noting that you do have to have another wire going to a power socket or a local phone socket.
There's only phone sockets downstairs at my place, so HomePNA might as well be a slow CAT5. HomePlug would be more useful but how well does that work when plugged into a couple of extension cables and a 10-way multiplug? Would this affect speed or stop it entirely?
Incidentally in my case it is just for internet connection sharing so I use as cheap an 802.11 as worked.
This is always just about the first thing anyone thinks of when planning their new home/soho office.
Yes, that is always the first thing on my mind when planning my new home/small office home office office.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
What about when you get GBit to the door over fiber.
You'll have to upgrade the wires at sometime in the next 50 years I expect, though it shouldn't be too much hastle and should always be quicker than anything else (unless you're using wormholes)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
...just use the old TV aerial wiring.
We got cable a couple of years ago, which left all our old TV aerial wiring totally unused. This was great, because we needed a network cable running from a room downstairs with a TV aerial socket to a room upstairs. I found the other end of the aerial cable, poked a hole through the loft, and brought the cable down. Then it was just a matter of putting a BNC end on that cable, and changing the wall socket downstairs to a BNC socket. Hey presto - a nice, simple solution using existing wiring and technology! Who'd have thought it?
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
On one of the foldout diagrams that comes with the HomePlug hardware, it makes the following claim: "By offering 56-bit DES encryption, HomePlug is also much more secure than other home networking technologies such as wireless ethernet." Yeah, right.
What do you mean, are you actually using felines for networking? What do you do, duct tape a floppy or CD (For higher bandwith) to the cat, then throw catnip on the destination station?!?!?!
Oh...sorry, that was CAT5...
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
to run cable? I would think that in most cases if it is "not possible to run cable" then that is either A) due to a lazy person who doesn't want to pull cable or have it running in the ceilings or B) the house and thus wiring is old and has many physical stopgaps to overcome. If the latter, then that probably means old, dirty electrical lines and if the former then we are just talking about someone willing to pay more for less. Run the damn CAT-5 along your ceiling and be done with it!
I've looked at the website but cannot find anything about the following:
Here in the Netherlands we have two kinds of power you can have where the cable comes into your house: 220V or 220V times three (380V or 'power' current which is three times 220V but slightly phase shifted). Then these different phases are used for different groups in the house.
When I connect two of these HomePlug devices to two different phases, I guess it will not work will it?
The only thing the HomePlug website mentions is that "... it should support multiple logical networks on a single physical medium and be applicable to markets in North America, Europe and Asia."
Any comments?
Bart
The characteristic impedance of TV co-ax is 75 ohms. Thinnet Ethernet cable is 50 ohms, as is the impedance of an Ethernet card. This will cause a VSWR mismatch.
You are getting a reflected signal off each network card in the system. As you describe it, you have a simple point-to-point link, so your reflections are "only" bouncing from one card to another. This will cause errors in the system.
I would suggest that you get REAL network cable (preferably CAT-5), tie it onto the existing cable, and pull it through. You will then be able to run 100Mbit, you won't have the reflection problem, and I think you will be much happier overall.
(actually, I would suggest that you go to the local hardware store, and while you are picking up the CAT5, pick up a spool of nylon cordage. Strip the end of the coax, and securely tie the cordage to the shield of the coax. Then smoothly tape it over with electrician's tape, starting on the coax jacket and with a 1/3 overlap moving to the cordage. When you reach the cordage, wind one extra pass, then cut the tape and UNWIND and REWIND that last wrap with no tension on the tape. Then pull the cordage through. Once it is through, then tie the CAT5 to the cordage and tape as you did the coax. Then pull BOTH the CAT5 and a new run of cordage. Leave the cordage in place - it will save you grief later if you need to pull an additional cable.)
www.eFax.com are spammers
For laptops, I find 802.11 to be the most convienant option. Not only do I get to move around the house or sit in front of the TV, but it makes it easier for work also. Assuming your work allows 802.11. I find there's nothing more cool than coding and watching Iron chef at the same time.
Does anyone mind If I submit a story for my yard sale?
Last year I talked to a couple of powerline networking and bluetooth manufacturing firms at CeBIT 2002 in Hannover, Germany. I was trying to get an idea of what future products they were working on, because I think both technologies would work well with each other.
What I would like to see is a bluetooth adapter that plugs into the wall socket to provide powerline network access to my home server to any bluetooth enabled device in the room. I should provide a straight through plug so I could still plug, say, a lamp into the socket. PDAs and TabletPCs could access the server through this bluetooth/powerline network, so for example, my PDA could automatically sync with my server when I walked into the house or into my home office. This set up might even be more secure due to the shorter range of bluetooth devices as compared to 802.11 wireless.
The powerline network would also help other technologies get a foothold. For example, I can see synergies in my refrigerator and pantry being intelligent enough to sense intelligent packaging and to be able tell how well stocked they were. (I don't want an Internet-enabled refrigerator though. That is like begging for trouble.) Using powerline networking, I could connect the 'frig to my server (hey, it has to be plugged in anyway!) and software on my server could combine the data from both refrigerator and pantry inventories to develop a shopping list transmitted/updated to my PDA automatically.
Personally, I think the Open Source community should jump on the home server bandwagon soon, and start providing a client/server API and applications that can be used by smart devices to connect via wireless/bluetooth/pwoerline networking to home servers. That is the future. Fighting the battle of the desktop is only of limited future use. The real battle, and the one that Linux and open source can win, is home servers that provide stable support to the intelligent devices finding their way into our homes and offices.
Bureaucracy loves company.
Easy: HomePNA + portable phone! Make sure you use a 2.4 Ghz though.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
So what's the range of this thing? Can I use it to share my internet connections with my neighbours connected to the same transformer?
What security do these devices have to prevent the neighbor from eavesdropping on your powerline LAN? The power lines don't stop at the walls of your house?
Is there some sort of device you can put in at your fuse box to block data going in/out? What are the practical restrictions on someone coming up and using an external outlet at your house (none that I can see)?
This may be somewhat convenient for some applications, and perhaps more secure than wireless, but there are still some physical security issues that seem harder to address than with CAT5.
Throw in the lower level of convenience than one gets with wireless as well as a much lower rate of throughput than with 802.11a, and I don't see much more than a niche market for this sort of product.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Nothing is "impossible;" perhaps "inconvenient" would be a better choice of words. The Product Marketing folks love to say stuff like "that's impossible, unless you buy MY product!"
I lived in NY for four years in a house originally built in 1892 - lotsa plaster over brick. We found knob-and-tube wiring buried under renovations done in the 1950's. Still, we managed to add LAN wiring to the house by installing drop ceilings, or by using the space behind crown molding as a low-voltage conduit. Vertical drops were accomplished with battens and wainscoting. Made the room look nicer too.
Wall panel systems are available commercially. Many include integrated wire ducts for just such an application. Wiremold has been making stuff like this for years (though some of the utilitarian stuff is butt-ugly.)
Anyone know if Linux supports these devices? Does the USB variety just look like a regular old Communications Class USB device?
Okay, I've just gone with HomePNA, and I'm both awed and disgruntled.
In favor of HPNA- 2.0's speed is excellent (~14mbps peak), and when it works, it's literally plug-and-play - the only security hole (unless you're worried about Van Eckers) can be cured with a cheap DSL microfilter between your home wiring and the telco.
The problem with HPNA 2.0 is that Broadcom has a monopoly on the HPNA 2.0 chipsets. Apparently others are making PHYceivers (see Anandtech's review, in which Compex's poor performance is blamed on a Conexant chip), but the MAC is always going to be a BCM4210 or relative. Even that wouldn't be so bad, but the 2.0 spec is Not Ethernet, and includes some bandwidth-reservation (QoS) tech that's Broadcom's intellectual property.
The end result is that, if you want to use a cheap $9 PNA2.0 card outside of Windows or Classic MacOS, you're stuck with some presumably flaky closed drivers for Linux (hidden on Linksys' site- props to Linksys for at least trying)... If you run a *BSD, OS X, QNX, or anything else, you're stuck buying a bridge.
Now, this wouldn't be so bad- having a bridge means having an Instant Ethernet Drop anywhere you have a phoneline- but the average price for a single port version is in the $150 range. In fact, good luck finding one that even integrates a switch/hub; Linksys made a 1.0 (1mbit) device that did, but their HPB200 doesn't. In fact, the only halfway-affordable solution is to get an old Panasonic KX-HGW200 - that's a full router - closeout from CompUSA for $20, turn off its routing features and run it as a bridge.
(You can mix 1.0 and 2.0 devices on a segment; it's just annoying, because everything on the segment flips back to 1.0 mode.)
Now, okay, so that's where HomePNA lives on the sucks-rulesometer. How about HomePlug?
Well, let's put it this way- nobody's going to make a PCI card with a 110v plug on the back. You only get bridges, and those bridges don't sound much cheaper than their HomePNA variants. By all rights, they have to be much more complex, since power lines are more hostile than phone lines.
Meanwhile, you can turn around and run 802.11 for the same or less money (~$30/client)... but when you're trying to hook up your relatives, who wants to explain signal strengths, WEP holes, and wardrivers?
Thus far, my bets are still with HomePNA - could all you Slashdotters *please* hammer Broadcom to improve the openness of documentation/support? - In theory, a 100mbit 3.0 is in the works, and that might give them a chance to recoup some cred (and even if you're stuck falling back to 14mbit, that's still quite usable vs. 1mbit)...
Picture the scene, its the mid-80s. Apple engineers want a way to network their dinky 9" screen toaster macs. All they have is a serial port, and almost no one has heard of Ethernet.
More importantly, the wife (landlord or whoever) is not going to stand for rewiring the house with some computer nonsense.
Solution: AppleTalk networking over LocalTalk cabling. ie, use the existing phone sockets and cabling to send data. By modern standards it crawls, but it works well and is still in use today (by some unfortunate souls).
Almost 20 years later you have HomePNA. There aren't many new ideas in this world.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
"...I can see synergies in..." BINGO!!!
I've got two Linksys Powerline Etherfast 10/100 Bridges at my apartment which work great. They work to make a bridge between my cable modem, which sits in my living room, and my linux router, which is located in my bedroom. The specs say the devices are capable for transferring up to 14Mbps over the powerlines, although I have not had a chance to test this.
Each unit was about $80 through Amazon and I couldn't be happier with them (except that the config utility must be run from a Win* box). Beats the hell out of wires running over the floor. Anyone who can't easily wire their domicile and doesn't want to roll out wireless should definitely have a look.
could all you Slashdotters *please* hammer Broadcom to improve the openness of documentation/support
Dear Broadcom,
Until such a time as you comply with our documentation/support demands, we will be linking slashdot articles to your primary servers on a daily basis.
Something like that what you're asking for?
I have the Linksys Powerline bridges, and I am *very* happy with them. Consistent 10Mbps+ speed at a distance of over 150ft -- wireless in the same home had lots of packet loss and downgraded bandwidth. If you're frustrated with dropped/slow wireless in your home, I encourage you to have a look at Powerline solutions -- way underrated, IMHO.
That'd work, as apparently the excuse is that there isn't enough of a market among the Linux folk. ;)
Funny how your response gets modded up, but the initial post doesn't..
This struck me as a blatant ad for the powerline/phoneline stuff.
The only options available for the average consumer is wireless, HomePNA, which uses your existing telephone network in your house, and HomePlug, using your existing power grid.
Question- what about 802.11[a,b and g]?
Be careful with HomePNA. I had wired my cousins with 3 drops, including a Linksys HomePNA router to the cable modem.
Worked like a charm. Very fast, and "good" latency and such like a regular "wired" network drop. Unfortunately, we had bad reliability of the cards. Some would fry and the cards weren't "recognized" by the computer, others died and couldn't see the network.
Just like old "modems", phone lines aren't exactly friendly to sensitive components. Your modem was made to burn out instead of taking the computer with it. I have to assume that these cards were fried from the phone line. We lost about 5 of 7 cards over 2 years.
4 dlink
2 netgear (one DOA, and exchanged)
1 3com
1 linksys router
Only the router and one of the netgear cards survive today.
Since they are all broadcom chipsets and they all look like a "reference" layout, who knows who's fault it is. I'd stay away, or use caution. It's getting pretty hard to find HomePNA too. Most of the time, you find them on clearance, rather than sale.
We switched to 802.11b when they got a laptop and haven't looked back. (Once we moved the wireless router away from a big old cement wall in the basement) Price of wireless is now on par with other methods too, heck, Best Buy had their $50 D-Link wireless router w/4 100BaseT ports over Thanksgiving.
-Anonymous 'cause I'm lazy. -JL
this interesting technical solution is too expensive to widespread imho. Each node will cost around 80$, plus a network adapter if not already included with the node. So, it's around 100$ per node. Wireless is about the same price or cheaper and it is a cleaner solution, no external box for each node. The phoneline equivalent is cheaper and cleaner. But still expensive, in particular the Ethernet-to-phoneline bridge or the Cable/DSL-to-phoneline bridge. Also, a phoneline adapter is required for each node, twice the price of an Ethernet adapter.
Achille Talon
Hop!
CATS?!?! Oh no!!!!
All your wall outlet are belong to us. HA HA HA...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Well, along those lines is the driver at
http://www.homepna.org/support/faqs.asp#FAQ6_Q1
the only "working" (I use the term loosely) Linux driver for HPNA? It sucks, sucks, sucks. Not maintained and not fully opened. I get a tainted kernel that panics from time to time... I'd use CAT5 ether if I could (sigh)
Apparently we only rate a half-assed token driver... )-;
There is no off postion on the genius switch. - David Letterman
It's the only driver for HPNA 2.0 (14mbit), as Broadcom's the only manufacturer. However, you can use a bridge- they're just pricey due to lack of demand.* The original posting tried to explain the situation, but nobody wanted to waste points on a lowly AC like me. ;)
.5mbit rather than flakiness at high speed on poor lines?) chipsets came from a variety of manufacturers; AMD's chipset was the most popular, and is basically one of their popular MACs with a new PHY (Linux, FreeBSD, etc have all long since been patched to allow selection of the HPNA PHY) ... Davicom made/resold some cards with Tulip-based MACs + HPNA PHYs, too, and Intel did the same thing with one of their sets, though support for those may be harder to come by vs. the AMDs. (Again, 1.0/1.1 is just ethernet with a different physical layer; 2.0 is 'weird.')
1.0/1.1 (~1mbit; I believe 1.1 added rate adaption, allowing fallback to
Basically, if you do need the stuff for *NIX use, and don't mind 1mbit speed, you can use $9 sets of AMD-chipsetted Diamond HomeFree cards off eBay, and all will be fine. (Make sure you get the PNA 1.0/1.1 cards with the AMD chips; Diamond later sold 14mbit Broadcom cards under the same HomeFree name.)
*I think part of the pricing problem is that these things are the equivalent of DSL modems to folks in Finland and related locales; HPNA is apparently used as a curb->house tech there. As such, Linksys and friends are pricing the hardware up, probably because the service providers eat the cost and pass it on as an activation fee... and users, blissfully unaware, go on to string plain ethernet within their dwellings.
Netgear PE102s are down to $60 on eBay, at least.
Some high-end home theater equipment is sensitive to power irregularities, and there's an entire market around line conditioners and the like. What effect will the noise this system MUST introduce have on my $6,000 HDTV and other equipment? I can't imagine it would be good for it - while electronics manufacturers design them for certain tolerances I doubt the high frequencies, etc., from this type of network were thought about and could pass through causing all manner of possible harm. Couldn't it? Or am I missing something? I would hope the networking equipment vendor thought about all of this!
(I hope nobody else posted this...)
The post mentions a home/soho office. So let's expand the abbreviations out - we're looking at solutions for a home/[small office/home office] office, which means this is for either a home office, a small office office, or a home office office. Wouldn't "soho" have been enough? That's the point of abbreviations! don't surround an abbreviation with filler words! Aaah!
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
I looked at some of the homeplug.org web sites and member sites like Asoka.
Homeplug runs natively at 14Mbps (USB devices are limited to USB's 12 Mbps speed), though effective speeds are often lower, depending on how noisy your environment is (one site said 80% of their tests got 5Mbps or better), and it's good for up to 1km, as long as there aren't power transformers in the way. You can only put 16 devices on the network; I assume that's 16 devices per 56-bit-DES security key, but I could be wrong. That does mean that you're not going to wire everybody in your neighborhood together in the same LAN. Nothing I saw talked about the throughput effects of having your neighbors sharing the network, only the security effects.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Moving into a new house and the builder wants to charge me $1500 to wire the house for internet. I refused and planned to sneak in and wire it up myself. To my surprise I found they are using cat5 for the telephone wiring. Is it possible just to use the existing cat5 and split it for internet?
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.
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