Article discussion: NETGEAR PL1200 Powerline 1200

[zakoh]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32717-netgear-pl1200-powerline-1200-reviewed

I thought it might be nice to have a thread dedicated to this line of products. I myself just received a pair of Netgear PLP1200 Powerline adapters, which I believe are the same thing as PL1200 but with a power outlet on top. The setup was easy. So far I tested it from a couple of locations: same floor but different room, 25-30 ft away, and second floor in the farthest room. In both locations, I got a reliable transfer speed of about 5.5MB/second for large file transfers over http. I think that the same-floor Powerline speed can be beat by wireless AC networking, but that second floor location is getting a fairly spotty 5GHz signal (need to confirm this again) and 2.4GHz signal that won't rival that data transfer rate even with 40MHz wire channel, which I don't use.

Right now I am thinking of getting another one of these to plug my PS3 system into (which only has a wireless-g support and a gigabit E port).

One question that I have about these units is how to I know that the encryption is active? I setup encryption, as directed by the setup guide, but as far as I know there is no visual light indication of any sort for confirming this.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the report.

Encryption is always active in HomePlug devices. All you do when pressing the button is to change the password from the default.

 

[zakoh]

I am seeing some weird stability issues with my pair of PLP1200s. The network works flawlessly for a week or two, then my connection to the internet disappears for like five minutes. I can't ping my Uverse router. If this was my router problem, which is not uncommon, then I would have seen in the logs that the router crashed and rebooted (or perhaps AT&T was messing with it). But I often see that the router did not reboot, so the problem must have been the PLP1200 pair that links the router to my AP. Today I again saw the network go down. It was down for like 10 minutes. I lost the patience, and unplugged one of the PLP1200 units, and plugged it back in. Then I was able to ping my router again. Honestly, I don't like this instability because I am looking for a "plug and forget" kind of solution to recommend to my parents. Such a headache. In the end nothing still beats the old fashioned plug and forget cat5e cable. I am might need to investigate how I can run one to that location.

 

[Meharis]

I had some issues with this powerline and updated the firmware to version 2.2.2:
http://www.filedropper.com/netgearpl1200fw2-2-2
Connect with cable and use the updatetooling inside the file.
Try at your own risk. Not official supported bij Netgear.