[Tech] By the power of Greyskull...I have a network!!!

I was very pleased this week when this bad boy landed on my desk.

What is it? It's gypsy magic that will change my life forever.

Since we bought our house two years ago I’ve had a quandary…at first my ADSL internet connection was far removed from my lounge and Xbox resulting in a fall back to lack lustre Wi-Fi experiences to access the interwebs on my console.

Then I decided to move onto Cable which kinda reversed the scenario, as now my internet was prime time in my lounge but now my PC was relegated to a dodgy unreliable Wi-Fi USB dongle which still caused issues on the Xbox with streaming media re-buffering and generally being kind of ordinary (to the point where often we just loaded the media onto a USB and plugged it into the 360).

Of course the obvious solution was get a long length of Cat 5 and spend some quality time in my rafters putting in patch points and getting rid of the Wi-Fi…this is easier said than done and after more than 2 years having not gotten around to it yet things were not looking good.

Enter some gypsy magic in the form of the Belkin Surf Powerline HD Dual Pack. I’d heard of this ‘power line networking’ for some years now, but never taken the plunge and given it a go. It of course sounded like the obvious solution to all my problems – no need to run any cables, no more Wi-Fi, just ‘plug n play’ as it were.

Surely it is too good to be true though, how can my network packets reliably be transmitted along the same wires pushing 240V into my house. I’m pleased to say it is NOT too good to be true.

Last night I plugged the devices into my wall sockets at opposite ends of the house, plugged in my ethernet patch leads and that is all. It truly is plug and play, no configuration, no nonsense and best of all IT JUST WORKS!

Now if you are paranoid of someone coming into your house with their own Belkin Surf Powerline HD adapter and trying to steal your precious interwebs then there are 2 things you should know

A) Get over yourself and stop being a moron, seek some professional help

B) You can setup encryption between the units preventing an errant device accessing your power line network.

C) Perhaps in a multi-tenant building you are not actually a moron and its valid to link the units with encryption

D) I know I said two things, but thought of C well after writing A & B, and then required D as a disclaimer..my name after all is not Douglas Adams

With products such as this often the concept is good, the product itself works, but the execution is just a little off – one of my concerns in moving to this solution was the shear bulk of the units in my wall sockets making it difficult to plug anything in beside it (BTW – it is recommended for best performance to attach directly to the wall and not via a powerboard). Belkin in their amazing foresight (or years of product refinement) have allowed for this by providing two power adapter accessories. One is a direct set of pins for plugging directly into the wall, and one is a plate attached to a short extension lead with a simple two pin plug on it.

It is such a simple accessory to include, but it truly is a subtle piece of genius. I’m not sure I could have plugged them in last night without the extension lead adapter, not without disabling the rest of my lounge room AV setup.

The end result is full speed internet for my PC and near instant load times when streaming media to my Xbox, so it looks like everybody has kicked a goal.

If you are in a similar situation to myself, with poor Wi-Fi connectivity or blue cables draped across your door frames and strewn across the floor because you don’t have the time, skills or money run proper cabling (or for that matter happen to be renting) then perhaps you ought to try some Belkin gypsy magic.

Where can I buy some gypsy magic? Perhaps start with shopbot

Amendment: Since going to press Belkin have notified me the unit I reviewed was the Powerline AV Dual Pack (F5D4074au) and not the Powerline HD (F5d4077au) and apparently the extension lead option has been removed from the newer model. The end result remains that the Belkin Powerline equipment is top grade and an excellent solution to an inconvenient problem