Devolo Powerline network kit hands-on - bye bye wifi

[mitchelln]

My wifi has been driving me nuts. My wireless router is downstairs and my PC upstairs. Constantly dropping, constant router resets. Anyone walking in front of the router even caused connection drop outs to a laptop in the same room! Wifi is so flaky. This is with the latest Netgear kit, which turned out to be no better than my older kit. Diversity and multi-antennas are a load of bollocks.

Upshot is I bought a Devolo powerline kit.
http://www.devolo.co.uk/consumer/7_dlan ... .html?l=en

Only £79 from Dabs when I bought it. I chose Devolo because unlike a lot of powerline devices, it is all done in hardware. A lot of these type of units use the old winmodem model where the work is done in software. I'm a Linux guy, so such devices are useless to me. No such problem with Devolo.

Installation couldn't have been simpler. Plug one unit into a socket next to the router. Then plug into the router with supplied ethernet cable. Next, plug in second unit into a socket near the PC and connect with supplied ethernet cable. A few seconds later you have a working network. I get 186Mb all day, every day. Latency is also much better. What you need for RTP apps. Skype video has definitely improved.

The latest Devolo's have built in encryption. You simply press a button on each unit and jobs done. Again, no software required to do this, although you can do it that way if you prefer (Devolo even has a Linux version for the supporting software - yay!).

The downside is that you need a plug per device. You can't use a hub to connect multiple devices to one plug. Think of each plug as an ethernet card with it's own MAC. Additional plugs are around £58.

Devolo also do a wireless unit to let you boost your coverage round the house if you really want it. Simply plug one in upstairs and it is integrated into your network.

Frankly, this was the best gadget I've bought in ages. It just worked out the box with no fuss. I wish I had shares in this lot. UK building regs are now calling for aluminium foil insulation in internal wall cavities. Bang goes your wifi!

[CBers]

I've been using homeplugs for over a year, but recently went and installed a Gb network in the house !!

Still might use them in the future in hard to "wire-up" locations in the home !!