Digital Home Thoughts: Netgear Saves You From Laying Cable

Even as the IEEE P1901 working group was set to meet this week to recommend its draft standard for broadband over powerline networks for official status, Netgear announced its line of Powerline AV 500 adapters that incorporate the HomePlug-compatible flavor of the standard. The new devices theoretically promise up to gigabit Ethernet speeds over home electrical wiring, and are the first to incorporate the newest standard.

Wireless networking is great. It offers freedom and is fairly easy to use. Unfortunately, WiFi often offers less than ideal bandwidth for large file transfers for video playback. Cable? Sure, if you have money to pay someone or are willing to drill holes and feed Cat 6 wires everywhere. Enter HomePlug. While not a perfect solution, HomePlug has been an option for those who want more reliable speeds without having to run cable everywhere. The speeds were not great at first, but with its latest iteration, streaming HD video can be a reality. While setting up a home network may get complicated with all these options, I think it is great that we have these options to fit each of our different needs and environments.