 Works for me on different circuits |
| Review Date: September 28, 2004 |
| Reviewer: R. Blauvelt, Los Angeles, CA USA |
| I tested these between the two units in a duplex apartment building. Each apartment has its own electrical meter and main panel, although they share the same 240Volt service from the street. Result: Works great! The speeds varied slightly depending on the outlets into which these were plugged, but were always much faster than my 3 Mb/s cable modem connection, and were also consistently faster than 802.11b wireless. Supposedly, the connection quality is not limited by distance, and the signal travels just fine across circuit breakers, fuses, and even between the two 120V legs of a 240V service connection, as I confirmed. In a big building, or one with many obstructions, wireless is a hit-or-miss solution, whereas this seems to be rock-solid. |
Good for mixed environments and getting broadband out of the basement
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| Review Date: October 24, 2005 |
| Reviewer: J. F. Herlocker Jr., |
Overall I am very happy with the Netgear XE102. I have two Macs (running OS X 10.2 and 10.3) and an old laptop running Win95. The Macs are in my second floor home office, the laptop is in the family room, the cable modem and router are in the basement. (The cable company offered "free installation" of broadband service; this turned out to mean "we'll hook up a cable modem at the point where our cable enters your house, and if that turns out to be the basement and you happen to not have your computer there, well, you can schedule further installation for an additional charge.") The Macs and a network printer are attached to a hub which connects to the XE102 in the office.
With three XE102 units (basement, office, family room) I have all my PCs hooked up to the Internet and functional. No additional configuration was needed, although I could have used VirtualPC on one of my Macs to set up security if I wanted to (we live in a standalone house, so no one else taps into our electrical system; if we lived in an apartment, I would definitely have activated the security setup, which involves putting all three units on the same password). Speeds are consistently over 10Mbps (faster than the cable modem) and, once the units were set up, we have needed no additional fussing with them. The Macs can see the Windows laptop and vice versa, and file transfers work fine (well, as well as file transfers work in a Mac/Windows environment). The laptop can even print to the network printer upstairs.
Note of caution: when first plugging in the XE102s, be patient. It took at least half an hour before the first two units found each other. The third unit also did not jump into the network immediately (and pulling it out of the wall socket and plugging it in repeatedly only slowed down the process). After all three found each other, however, I could take any one, disconnect it from the wall, plug it in at another spot (my wife likes to take the laptop onto our back deck, which has an outdoor power plug), and have immediate connectivity, anywhere in the house.
The units get a little warm, but not alarmingly so. The three indicator lights are excellent for indicating status, so long as you do not want to know anything more than, "Yes, it's working."
I recommend the XE102 for anyone who wants to connect network points within the house without running cables or fussing with WLANs, and certainly for anyone trying to connect devices in a mixed environment.
FOOTNOTE: The XE102 units also work well with XE103 and XE104 85mbps units. You can have a mixed network of the 11mbps and 85mbps units, and speeds from point-to-point will be the speed of the slower unit, but with no impact on the speeds between two fast units. |
Painless Networking
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| Review Date: February 24, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Richard Drdul, Vancouver, BC |
I us three XE102's to network a primary computer to a second computer downstairs and to a media server (Squeezebox) in the living room. Installation and setup of all three took 10 minutes, and they work flawlessly.
The Netgear software utility to set the passwords is easy to use, and is also useful in verifying the transmission rates (my XE102's vary between 12.8 and 14.0 Mbps depending on what other devices in the house are drawing power).
I was surprised at how well the XE102's work, given that the circuit which the main computer's XE102 is plugged into has a ton of computer equipment plugged into it via a big Tripplite power conditioner/surge protector. Ditto for the XE102 in the living room, which is plugged into the same circuit that all my A/V equipment is plugged into.
The bottom line is that I am one very happy guy, as the XE102's have enabled me to avoid the cost/hassle of running Cat5 cable, as well as the aggravation of wireless networking (which wasn't working very well for the living room connection prior to getting the XE102's). |
This thing simply works!
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| Review Date: June 4, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Scn64, Illinois |
I am very satisfied with my purchase of the Netgear Ethernet Powerline Adapter. I received a new laptop as a college graduation present and wanted to use it in the living room, away from all the other computer stuff. This created a slight problem since I didn't have a wireless router and wanted to connect the laptop to the internet. Well, Netgear solved that problem very easily. All you have to do is plug one of these units into a wall socket near your router and another into a socket by your computer. Connect the router and computer to their respective units using the provided 6ft of Ethernet cable and you're set to go. That's all there is to it, no configuring, no headaches.
Even though the instructions say the units won't work with an extension cord, I tried it and I still had a very stable connection. As far as speeds go I did notice lower speeds than I get on my desktop PC. However, the connection was still plenty fast for me (~3.5Mb/sec instead of the normal 4.8) and this speed decrease might even be resolved by avoiding the use of an extension cord as the instructions suggest.
The instructions also say not to use a power strip. I have not tried this myself so I don't know if it will work with a strip but I'm guessing it would, seeing as how it worked with the extension cord.
The units also come with a CD containing documentation and encryption software. I have not done anything with this CD myself so I will hold off on rating that part.
I would like to make you aware of two things before you buy this item. First, make sure you have enough Ethernet cable. As I said earlier, the units come with 6ft of cable but if this isn't enough for you, you'll want to order longer cable. Second, Make sure you buy at least 2 units. I was a little confused when I made my purchase thinking that everything I needed would come in one box. Luckily, after a little reading, I realized that each box only comes with 1 unit and you'll need at least 2 for everything to connect.
In conclusion, if you need a means of connecting objects in different rooms to the same network, you can't go wrong with the Netgear Powerline Ethernet Adapter. They are easily worth the $46. |
Works as Advertised, a Few Points to Consider
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| Review Date: September 18, 2006 |
| Reviewer: R. Williams, Los Angeles, CA United States |
After making a music room in my house that had no windows and sound baffling insulation, it was impossible to get a wireless signal in. Got these and was up and running in no time. Connection is fantastic, always full strength, top speed.
However, on a couple of occasions, the adapter on the server side got unplugged and getting the network back up was a hassle. Sure it has to do with getting it to request IPs from the router. Next time it is offline I will have to document a surefire way to simple resolution, rather than just unplugging and connecting and disconnecting until I am seeing IPs that are not in the 69.x range.
BTW, I am using this w/an all mac network, and hooking it up to a 2Wire. |
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NETGEAR XE102 Wall-Plugged Ethernet Bridge
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im sure Netgear and lInksys both see sales of these devices picking up and now just want to capitalize and put out a more expensive device that does exactly what the others did.