Powerline Ethernet - A Description
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Powerline ethernet is a technology which allows you the move data through your house's electric power lines, and provides a great substitute for wireless, or having ethernet cables strung about your home. The setup is pretty simple, and most of the time, you only need to plug the adapters directly into your home outlets after which you can connect your computer and router to these adapters. There are two specifications for powerline ethernet, Homeplug and UPA. Major manufacturers of powerline ethernet products include Linksys, Netgear, Western Digital, Zyxel, Plaster Networks, and Belkin. The speeds achievable for top adapters usually are between 40 and 80 Mbps but we will get into specifics. Here are some examples of adapters you can expect to come across.
The D-Link DHP-303 PowerLine HD is a two hundred Mbps powerline kit, and comes with two DHP-302 adapters. This setup is compatible the Universal Powerline Association (UPA) standard, consequently only adapters supporting UPA can be added to the installation. Various other popular adapters make use of Homeline AV, nevertheless because it is advised to stay with the same manufacturer, this limitation might not be too concerning. Performance-wise, this gives speeds of somewhere between seventy-five to ninety Mbps which is superior to Homeplug AV adapters.
A nice feature is the powersave technology. Whenever no data is being transferred, the powerline adapters can power down conserving electricity. The port, there is only one, supports 10/100 ethernet. Both IEEE 802.3 and IEEE 802.3u are supported. The encryption available is Triple-DES. This is a robust mechanism, however it is a less efficient algorithm than AES. Triple-DES need to do encryption in 3 passes, while AES needs only a single pass to encrypt data. The kit does come with a 1 year limited warranty.
The WD Livewire Powerline AV Network Kit has a model #WDBABY0000NBK
and is a 200Mbps powerline AV system. It includes a couple of 4-port HomePlug AV adapters, and also two electrical power cables. As the name says, this is HomePlug AV compatible, and comes as a small box of about 4.7 x 3.4 x 1.3 inches. The great thing about these kinds of box styles is the fact that they don't use up the whole outlet. Instead, you plug them in with a small plug, and they sit as a separate box. WD has a nice claim that setting the equipment up is as easy as plugging in a table lamp. Of course, it is a lamp with ethernet cables, as well as 128 bit AES encryption, but I like the imagery which is a good thing to aspire to with every technical solution.
I think the best selling point is that each adapter incorporates four ethernet jacks. This really gives versatility in the network architecture, and allows room to grow. At the moment this data rate is adequate for most home purposes.
Article Source: Articlelogy.com
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