Page 1 of 1

Homeplugs

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 10:37 pm
by tallorder
Just bought a set of homeplugs... wonderful things you know. Driven to it I'm afraid - Victorian Era walls vs cheapo wireless kit... 'twas no contest. Just though I'd mention... :D

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:16 pm
by macfadyan
er....quite.,....bored, are you?

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 8:16 am
by Adam J Purcell
Didn't know what you meant by 'HomePlug' for a second there - it was either something rude or perhaps those odd bolt type things I had to use when I mounted my TV on the rubbish plasterboard walls!

Anyway, what sort of speed do you get out of those things? I've got three Wireless Access Points in my place (two in the computer room and one in the living room) and could have saved myself considerable hassle with network over power cables. Too late for me now (plus I've got wireless only devices, such as my Squeezeboxes, Wii, Zaurus PDA (and, arguabably, my laptops - could plug them in if I had to, though)). Nonetheless, an interesting idea. Do you have to worry about getting them on the same ring?

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 2:26 pm
by macfadyan
gibberish! Your just making it up now, aren't you?

Homeplug, buttplug, whatever

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 4:48 pm
by tallorder
I'd never heard of them until I went snooping on PCworld's website to see what was available to beef up the reception upstairs. Then I went on a jolly good 'multimedia over IP' course (ask me about subnet masking... go on) and the lecturer was extolling the virtues of them. Lo and behold I purchased a set via ebay for about 50 notes on the weekend. (I went for a brand called Solwise, though there's 2 or 3 out there 'Devolo' is the other big one). Looks like it's mainly X-box online gamers using them or at least driving the growth in the market. Madness really - the principle is the same as that of the non-RF baby listener sets and people have been using them for years!

According to the software I'm achieving approx 70 Mbps - the spec is up to 85 and I've bought the cheap ones. Dead simple to install and purely reliant on the quality of one's wiring,,, I wondered with the age of this property but it hasn't been an issue, 200's are on the market but I'm not sure if the standards have settled there.

It runs around the earthing ring, so there's no issue there and you can use mac addresses for security to avoid the unlikely chance that you neighbour within 200m is stealing bandwidth (plus he'd have to buy a homeplug too!). IIRC groups of houses up a street are on different phases with a common earth?

In your case there'd be plenty of scope for employing combi homplug/wireless systems - they do a plug with a wireless tx/rx on it rather than an ethernet connection - so you can make zones or floors wireless as required. I had plans to integrate the D-Link b/g set and use it to cover the ground floor, feeding it with the cable modem into it's WAN, and then use the homeplug link to go from the 1st port to the PC... couldn't seem to manage that in the end - I might have to coax you around for a looksee. Mind you, it's hardly urgent and I have no laptop or other wireless kit as yet.... (have just paid for new roof, laptop on the wish list for a while methinks!)

It's true Mcfadyen - all gibberish... and I think butt-plugs are something different :shock:

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 6:29 pm
by lordsummerisle
A friend has been recommending Homeplug to anyone who'll still listen, claiming a decent minimum of 80Mbps. I've been thinking of giving it a try myself but somehow a network isn't a network to me unless I'm tripping over cables in the middle of the night.