A Great Way to Extend your Broadband Internet Access
Pros:
Solid adapter for sharing an Internet connection.
Cons:
Low throughput performance. Can't stream large media contents in local network. Pretty expensive.
The Bottom Line:
Although it's a bit expensive, the Netgear Powerline adapter is a great and easy way to get computers to share an Internet connection around the house.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
When I was at my old condo complex, I had a bunch of wireless users around in my area. I saw like 5 available wireless access points in my area and I was afraid if I purchased an wireless router, people near me would accidentally connect to my network, so a friend told me about powerline networking, which is the idea of connecting network devices through the wall's power outlets and he also recommended me to use this Netgear Wall-Pluged Ethernet bridge. So I bought a pair.
Installation was ridiculously simple. Just plug one adapter to the router with an Ethernet cable and plug the adapter itself directly to the wall outlet. Plug the other adapter to the computer that's in another room with an Ethernet cable and plug the adapter itself directly to the wall outlet. Magically, they're connected! I did a throughput testing and it turned out to be less than 5 Mbps, which is more than enough for casual Internet surfing and downloading from my old 1.5 Mbps DSL service. I also used their utility configuration to setup a password key for additional security and that was pretty straight-foward as well. Just had to configure both adapters to share a same unique password.
I tried playing media contents through my local network just to see if it's up for it, but I couldn't stream high bandwidth media contents like MPEG2, DIVX, and other intensive video file types in my local network, due to its low throughput performance. It chugs A LOT, so this isn't ideal for people who have networked Media Centers... but it does great with music files!
Overall though, I'm very satisfied with this product. I've used this setup for 6 months and it hadn't given me any issues during those times. I highly recommend this product for people who ONLY wants to share their Internet connection without the worries of having a low signal strength of wireless. It also works great with XBOX and Playstation 2 consoles for online gaming.
