Wireless is great, but when the signal drops or interference from neighbouring networks slows throughput to a crawl it loses its gloss somewhat. Installing Cat-5 cabling is an alternative, but hacking away the walls in your beloved home might not meet approval from the rest of your family.

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Powerline networking, however, offers both fast and reliable networking using your home's existing mains wiring. Plug a powerline adapter into your router and all wall sockets suddenly become potential network points: simply plug additional adapters in and then attach them to a network device (be it a laptop, desktop or media streamer) using an Ethernet cable.

Sadly this industry is at war with itself in terms of standards. There are three main powerline groups: HomePlug, UPA (as used here by the D-Link DHP-302) and HD-PLC. Although all devices are supposed to be able to coexist, they're not interoperable so you won't get a HomePlug device working with a UPA or HD-PLC one, for example.