Wireless communication may be the best way to connect your consoles/Sky box or Blu-ray player to the internet if you don’t want stacks of cables lying around all over the place, but the problem with wireless communication is that it’s limited on range and your connection can be a little temperamental at times. The latter is caused by interference from other wireless devices (i.e. telephones, microwaves, smartphones) and objects in the way (such as walls).
Granted the technology is improving, but if you are getting sick of your connection dropping out during a game of Gears of War 3 or COD MW3, then another solution – apart from wired communication – is to use Powerline technology.
Not only is it useful to own a pair of these boxes for devices that don’t have wireless capabilities as standard, in our minds Powerline provides the best compromise between the convenience of a wireless environment and the stability of a wired infrastructure because as long as you have two mains points you can rig up your Powerline adapters so they can communicate over your homes electricity supply and deliver data to each of your connected devices.
Setup
Within the box you get two Powerline adapters, each one is pretty small it has to be said and thus can be slotted next to existing plugs a little easier than previous Powerline boxes we have used in the past.
You also get two 1m RJ45 cables which are used to link the Powerline adapters to the Ethernet port on your device.
Additionally you have a small CD that contains the Powerline configuration utility, but you only need to use this if you want to run diagnostics, rename the devices, see how fast your connection is or add security.
For most purposes if you are running the boxes in your own home you can simply plug one Powerline adapter into the mains and connect the lead to your router and then plug another adapter into the mains next to the recipient device and then attach the cable to say your console. Now all you have to do is press the small sync button on each adapter for a number of seconds until the lights indicate a pairing and away you go!
It sounds simple and it is. I think we got the boxes communicating within a matter of seconds.
The manual does state that you can’t plug the unit into a four-way adapter or equivalent, but this is only because it has more chance of getting interference from the other electric devices next to the adapter. In practice we have tried one Powerline adapter plugged directly into the mains and one into a six-way adapter and we have also tried plugging them both into 4/6 way adapters. We have not had a single problem in the past month – touch wood – with the latter configuration.
However according to the PC software that ships with the device the transfer rate when connected using the latter setup was a lot lower than its stated 200Mbps. We were getting something like 45-59Mbps, but this was with another PC connected to the same router and the connection was still rock solid and was perfectly adequate for streaming films or when playing games online.
You can improve matters by switching each Powerline adapter to its own main point and also switching the Application mode that the Powerline uses from Online Gaming/Internet to Audio/Video (via the supplied software) to boost the performance for the type of content you are streaming.
The software that comes with the device is pretty basic from a graphical point of view, but it is easy to use and you can quickly setup your Powerline Network with more security (128-bit AES Encryption) or to adjust the options we mentioned above.
Power Consumption
Of course one of things that would be on most peoples minds is how much Electricity does the unit drain when in use (from a cost point of view). While we can't tell you an exact figure we have read that the adapters can cost around 10p a week, but the adapters are energy efficient in that when they are not in use they can save power by up to 65%.
The TP-Link PA211 Kit is certainly a great piece of tech that is on sale at just under £37, so if you want a more stable connection than your existing wireless connection provides you could do worse than try out these simple, but effective, Powerline adapters.
