HomePlug / PowerLine Guide & FAQ

What’s it all about?

HomePlug or PowerLine, depending on who you speak to, is a technology that can turn any electrical circuit into a local area network (LAN) this will enable you to connect devices together on the same network as well as share an internet connection.

At least two adapters are required to make the connection; one adapter plugs into an electrical socket near to your wired or wireless home broadband router and a network cable will run from the adapter to the router.

The second adapter plugs into an electrical socket in the location where an Internet or network connection is required, i.e. the room that your computer, games console or squeezebox is situated. The second adapter will also have a network cable coming out of it and connected to the device of your choice.

It’s often the case that the broadband and router are where ever it was easiest for the installer to fit it, unfortunately this is often away from the computer in the office upstairs and the games console in the front room.

You can even add multiple adapters to electrical sockets in your home and a connection will be made so you can keep expanding your network as you obtain more devices such as media players, web connected radios, laptops etc.

Who would use it?

Basically anyone wanting to share broadband around the home or add items to a network easily.

For example you have this nice fast (hopefully very fast) broadband connection you want to share around the home, Or you want to expand your network but have no easy way of running a network cable without taking up floors and drilling through walls.

These problems face UK home owners and business everyday luckily you have some options.

You could order a reel of cat5e cable and run it in some trunking but it will stand out. You could also take up the floor and run the cables through walls etc but what if you have laminate flooring? Or tiles? or you just don’t want to drill through your house?

Wireless is another option, but with wireless you could be fighting the infrastructure of your home. Solid walls can stop a wireless signal dead you also have the issue that most wifi networks are unsecure by default so unless you know what you are doing you could be at risk.

Anyone with a media player automatically comes up against the problem of how to get the content on the PC or NAS to the media player, homeplugs solve this issue. People wish to use networks for high definition video streaming, the need for a solid, stable signal to a media player is very important.

The answer to all of these woes are of course Homeplugs / powerline adaptors they really do make networking plug’n’play. They make a great alternative to WiFi, and outperforming them in most cases by providing a solid signal and at higher speeds than wireless can handle.

What’s the difference between the products?

It all comes down to network speed…

14Mpbs:
It all started with HomePlug 1.0 this only managed to offer a pathetic 14Mbps network speed. You would be hard pressed to find any of these still around.

HomePlug Turbo:
Next up you have HomePlug 1.0 Turbo, as the name suggests this is faster than the standard 1.0 and can obtain speeds of up to 85Mbps.

HomePlug AV:
We also have HomePlug AV, these are rated at 200Mbps and are designed for streaming audio and video content. They are a good choice if you plan to stream HD content (to a media player etc) on your network. The AV HomePlugs also have improved security and encryption to make sure everything is safe and secure.

(Remember you can use 14 Mbps and 85 Mbps HomePlugs together If they are the same HomePlug 1.0 standard, but you can’t connect to 200Mbps units to 14 or 85Mbps models.)

HomePlug Gigabit:
Not a standard yet but at the high end of the market we have 1000Mbps models from Belkin. Introduced in June 2009, Belkin’s Gigabit adapters allow you to quickly transfer large data files as well as stream multiple HD movies letting you create an ultrafast HD entertainment network through your home’s existing electrical wiring. Powered by Gigle Semiconductor’s mediaxtream™ chip, Belkin’s Gigabit Powerline provides a secure, stable networking signal anywhere in the home.

The Gigabit adapters are compatible with existing HomePlug AV equipment (and they’ll coexist with slower HomePlug 1.0 devices too).

Gigle takes HomePlug AV and enhances it with two clever technologies:
Mediaxtream – This basically uses higher frequency carriers that HomePlug AV doesn’t use. This allows Gigle to achieve higher maximum throughput.
xtendnet – This  uses mesh / AdHoc techniques to improve the throughput vs. “coverage” characteristics of an installation, basically when an adapter is added to the network, the master node decides whether throughput can be improved by forming a new network path through the added adapter.

We expect other manufacturers to follow soon with their own gigabit option. While the gigabit adapters look the best early reports show that speeds are far from the expected 1000Mbps but we hope firmware changes to correct this.

Wireless Extenders:
You can even get homeplugs that have wireless antennas on them to create a new wifi zone in your house, very handy if you have a laptop but the Wireless from the router does not reach all over the home. These wireless extenders are sold in pairs and look like a normal adapter device with one of them having an Ethernet port and the other one has a wireless antenna. The antenna takes a signal from the wireless router and sends it through the electrics in the home to increase the wireless range.

Audio Extenders:
Along with the wireless extender you can also get an audio extender. Let’s say you’re a music lover and you want to listen to your favourite tracks anywhere in the house? Then the Audio extender is for you. This device distributes music from your PC throughout your house via the power circuit. Naturally, you aren’t restricted to just music—you can enjoy your audio collection anywhere in the house at top CD quality—in your living room, kitchen, bathroom, or even out on the patio.

What now?
Now armed with all this info you can make an informed purchase from our store – or contact us for more info and we can advice what product is best for you.

For more info please visit our HomePlug FAQ