Powerline ethernet

It’s not amazingly new technology, but the price of Powerline networking equipment has recently come down and so the other week I bought three adaptors for use on our home network to replace a couple of creaky wireless connections which were really starting to annoy me. The trouble is that in my apartment building we are surrounded by 40 odd wireless networks, and even with careful channel selection the local wireless spectrum can get very congested very easily, which leads to problems, particularly when streaming music to the AirTunes in the bedroom.

The powerline adaptors really are plug and play – not a single bit of setting up is required. You just plug them in and they work, very impressive. So now I’ve got the MacMini and the bedroom AirTunes on what is effectively wired ethernet and they both perform very reliably. The speed’s nothing amazing, but I’m not fussed about that, as long as the devices remain available and have reasonable speed then that’s all I’m worried about. The technology boasts up to 85Mb/s, but I don’t know how close to that I’m getting. It’ll work with 4 gangs but apparently the speed is reduced if you try to use it with surge protectors.

I detest wireless more and more these days, it really isn’t the convenience utopia that everyone makes it out to be. I hate setting it up, I hate troubleshooting it and I hate it when it craps out on you when it’s lease convenient, so the ability to eliminate wireless connections without having to take a chisel to the wall is very welcome! Very highly recommended if your wireless is up and down more often than Tower Bridge.