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Best phoneline networking kit?

M

Miraluka

Member
OK, this is whats going on. I have to help out a family friend with networking their HUGEASS house. The dumbass people that they called at first to do it wired their house with coax instead of Cat5, and the family doesn't want to pull out all the wiring and re-wire. They first wanted to go wireless, because they heard that i worked with wireless for a while. I said it sucked, and go with something else.

Each room has a phone jack, so I just figured that phoneline networking would work like a charm. Basically they have 2 computers they need to connect, and I'm looking for the best kit to use.

What would be the easiest kit to set up? I don't know many phoneline networking kits, only HomeFree because my friend has that in his house. I'd like something that runs over 10mbps. Cost really isn't an issue.

**One big problem. I'm not going to be the one setting up the network. It'll be the two kids of the family setting it up, and they are basically more clueless than a dead trout when it comes to networking. So ease of use is a BIGGIE.
 
Very simple.

Cable/DSL modem ---ethernet---> home router ---ethernet---> Netgear Ethernet to HomePNA bridge ----> phone lines

As long as you get the router configured correctly it's all very easy. The HomePNA bridge is completely invisible, and it runs at 10 Mbps. Just put a 10 Mbps HomePNA PCI card (or a USB connector) on each computer and you're done.

I'm running this setup right now. Essentially every phone jack in the house becomes a network jack. You can run DSL and telephone, fax, home security, etc. all simultaneously with no bandwidth loss.

EDIT Hmmm... I didn't realize you're only networking two computers. For that, all you need is a cheap <$100 kit. Just look for 10 Mbps HomePNA 2.0 capability. However, the benefit of having the router &amp; bridge setup is you don't have to keep a computer on to share the connection, and you have a hardware firewall.
 
If they wired the house with right kind of coax, use it. The fastest Phoneline cards are 10mb/s just like the coax based lan will be.

I'm using the Netgear PNA 2 cards, they work and are cheap. Skip the kit and buy two cards, the sharing software is included with teh single cards. I bought mine from Insight for $34 each.

The intel kit looks cool because they bundle in Intercom software. So if that strikes their fancy, then the Intel kit is worth the extra $80 or so over the Netgear stuff. I'm guessing because I have tried this, but I think that the intel kit would be the easiest to setup. Intel just does a beter job with installs than nearly anybody else.
Lokk here for some PNA reviews:
PNA reviews


AFAIK, all the PNA 2.0 cards use the broadcom chip and they run at the same real speed. The web sit above shows the Intel with a different chipset, but the Intel PNA2.0 card I tried had the Broadcom chip like eveybody else.

If a no-brainer install is needed then you should look at the USB phoneline kits, But from what i've read they have real world 2mb/s throughput instead of 10mb/s (i get ~7.5mb/s between two pentium 200 machines with the Netgear PA301 cards).
 
go for the intel anypoint phoneline network. it's more expensive than the homefree, but not by much. pcworld named it bestbuy.
 
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