The toman diaries

Go home plug!

søndag, oktober 19, 2003

I just found out about this new and brilliant system called homeplug. (OK, so it's old news, but living in Norway where noone sells these goods, it's hard to get a hold of new ideas before you need them)
It's a networking standard using the existing electrical wiring in your house for communication. Some has reported as much as 12Mbps throughput, while testing shows that 5-10 is more common. Here in Norway there are no such tests I know about, probably because of the lack of retailers...

We are stepping up our internet-connection soon, from two v.90 modems to one always on ADSL, so hey, we need either

1. A router
2. Meters of cable
3. Yes, another ethernet-card

Update 26.09: Thats it then. A Billion BIPAC-640AE 4+1 port router/SPI-firewall/VPN gateway, a Sunsway PCI-LAN8139D-4 Ethernet card and a mere 10+5meters of cable is on the way. A Speedstream 5100 DSL-modem dumped in our box friday. Homeplug will have to wait...

So I'm contemplating, what will be the best solution? I know this package with 5 meters of cable(which should be adequate), two cards and a hub retailing for NOK700,-. But I can't compare that to anything, because noone I know of sells homeplug devices in Norway! Imagine!

Well, thats not really true... I'm confering with one very-well hidden retailer calling himself homeplug.no. What a genious. Not only is he the only one selling this stuff, he also has the domain right. So why arn't I able to compare the prices? Have a look at the site and you'll understand. It's seems to be nothing but an advertising-space for Gigafast. Yes, it's a Norwegian site, but all info is in English. Not a single pricetag anywhere. Oh well, perhaps it's really just engros..

What I do know is that such adapters retail for about 6-700 Danish kroner. So how does that translate into Norwegian kroner? 650DKK = 721NOK.
Thats one unit. The other stuff costs 700 combined. So we're looking at 721 x 3 = 2163,- vs 700,-

I'm still drooling at homeplug though. They come in many variants too, among them equipped with WiFi. I have yet to see any with bluetooth, which would've been superb: A potential bluetooth-link anywhere in the house! Internet in your bed with no (cables or) other equipment running etc.

Check them out if you haven't, I'm sure you'll re-recognize the plain coolness of your wires. IOGear Gigafast and Siemens were the ones I found the most interesting.