With the right (inexpensive) equipment, you can use the AC wires in your walls to transmit data along with electricity.<\/b><\/p>\n
by Joseph Moran<\/b><\/p>\n
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Few of us are fortunate enough to have homes wired for Ethernet, but unless you happen to live in an igloo or a thatch hut, you do have AC power wiring. With the right equipment, you can use those wires to transmit data along with electricity.<\/p>\n
Using AC wiring for data networking is called\u00a0powerline networking<\/a>, and there are several different flavors of the technology to choose from. Most of them are based on standards put forth by the\u00a0HomePlug<\/a>\u00a0Powerline Alliance, an industry certification group. There’s the original 14 Mbps HomePlug 1.0 standard, a follow-on specification dubbed “HomePlug with Turbo” that bumps throughput to 85 Mbps, and HomePlug AV, which promises enough performance (200 Mbps) to stream high-definition video. There’s also a competing 200 Mbps powerline specification from a group called the Universal Powerline Association (UPA) that’s popular outside North America, though Netgear sells a product based upon it here in the U.S.<\/p>\n Regardless of the specification used, powerline networking products are easy to install and pretty much all work the same way. You’ll need a minimum of two powerline adapters (which cost between $50-$100 depending on vendor and technology employed) \u2014 one for the device you want to network and another for your router. After you plug a powerline adapter into a wall outlet, you connect it to the Ethernet port of your router, computer, printer and so on.<\/p>\n Why Wired?<\/b> Powerline networking can be an especially good choice for Internet-connected devices like game consoles and digital video recorders, since entertainment centers tend to be enclosed and filled with lots of potential interference-generating equipment. Wireless adapters need altitude to get the best signal, so stuffing one on a low shelf behind the Xbox isn’t always the best approach \u2014 you may not even have enough clearance to make the antenna fully vertical.<\/p>\n
\nI know what you’re thinking “Wired networks are so 1990’s \u2014 we have\u00a0WLANs<\/a>\u00a0now. Why does anyone need powerline networking when WLAN equipment is so ubiquitous?” The most logical example is to extend your network to a back room, high\/low floor or any area where wireless signals just don’t reach. Today’s more advanced wireless networking protocols and antenna technologies make this less of a problem than it once was, but wireless reception problems are still common enough that powerline is a useful complement to a WLAN. You don’t necessarily need a palatial home to have wireless signal problems \u2014 a friend of mine became a candidate for a powerline network when we realized that a fully mirrored wall was wreaking havoc with wireless signals.<\/p>\n