HomePlug
 

I'm looking at getting some good quality homeplugs installed, as the wireless is giving me some issues. Now the house I live in, the electrical cabling is 15 years old. I had a pair of cheap homeplugs before, which worked, but not very well (I put this down to price, they were about £19.99 or something stupid). Now I am going to be putting a NAS into my network soon, and I want everyone to be able to use it at at leats 5MB/ sec. Can anyone shed some light onto some good homeplug sets and/or how well they will perform?

Thanks

Re: HomePlug
 

I've been using Solwise products for years (http://www.solwise.co.uk/), and my wiring is more than 15 years old.

Solwise have very good after sales support, which is a definite plus with this technology.

Re: HomePlug
 

http://www.solwise.co.uk/solwisemedi...HomePlugIntro3

*** Snap ***

Re: HomePlug
 

I think the only problem you may have is throughput. I have tried two 200mb homeplugs before now on the same 4 way strip with no surge protection and never achieved more than 4MB/s.
I use my 80mb pair to connect the attic to the router downstairs and I only normally get around 2MB/s. This is fine even for watching blu-rays etc but not so good for file transfers.

Re: HomePlug
 

Solwise ones seem alright, very amateur website though! I was looking at some Netgear XBE1004 or something like that.. any ideaS?

Re: HomePlug
 

Before using these, I suggest you check for any radio hams nearby:

http://www.icomuk.co.uk/categoryRend...508&cCID=16650
http://www.rsgb.org/emc/pdfs/plt/emcplc.pdf

Re: HomePlug
 

And radio hams are? I'm confused.. :)

Re: HomePlug
 

Amateur Radioists

Re: HomePlug
 

Good Grief! You'll be asking who Tony Hancock is next!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mEiM0DyVBI

Re: HomePlug
 

Radio Amatuers if you don't mind :) including Kymmy and myself.

The RSGB(Radio Society of Great Britain) are trying to raise the funds to force a judical review on the legality of these devices. They work as a radio transmitter, but instead of feeding their output into an aerial, they use your mains wiring as a balanced line transmission line, the same as your phone wiring minus the twists. The balance, meaning equal spacing, length and termination impedance of the tranmisson line helps to keep wanted signals in, and unwanted signals out.

This falls down when talking about electrical wiring, as there as never been a greater mis-noma, imbalances, no termination, changing impedance due to thing being plugged in, switched off/on. The result is signals being transmitted from your electrical wiring, it's not like transmitter directly plugged into an antenna, it is one.


Now some homeplugs are "notched" meaning they don't use the frequencies of certain users, however some are not.

The problem, at least from my point of view, is that they are unlicensed radio tranmitters, and should be dealt with in the same way as pirate radio stations, in addition to this, the type approval that they were tested to/against was a dodgy German standard that highly debatable.

Re: HomePlug
 

I use devolo home plugs - and find them faultless. Mainly using them for PS3 / Xbox and dont not suffer from any dropouts etc. They are not exactly cheap, but I would give them a big thumbs up :)

This is the main site: http://www.devolo.co.uk/

Re: HomePlug
 

Interesting - I never knew that! Is there an "approved list" of devices with minimal interference? The last thing I want to do is annoy a ham, especially during the holidays...

Re: HomePlug
 

Devolo seem to claim some sort or presence of "notching". From their "General FAQ",

Couldn't find an equivelent statement on Solwise's website.

Re: HomePlug
 

My sentiments too. £59 a pair from Maplin and are very good.

Re: HomePlug
 

Amazon have some at about £49 right now too.