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.
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.





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