Product Reviews

Devolo's HomePlug devices have let people use mains power sockets to connect their computers together for a number of years now. In buildings where it's inconvenient to run network cables, HomePlugs let you take advantage of the power lines to transmit data between any sockets in the same building.

The new Wireless Extender Starter Kit adds WiFi to the mix, in effect allowing you to extend the range of your wireless router to places that were previously out of range. This could be far-flung rooms in a house with thick brick walls, or a shed at the bottom of the garden. Alternatively, you can use the kit to create a wireless network if your router doesn't already have WiFi.

In this starter kit you'll find two plugs: a standard dLAN HomePlug adaptor capable of 85Mbit/s and a Wireless 802.11g (54Mbit/s) HomePlug adaptor. This adaptor also has a standard Ethernet port

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should you want to connect a device that doesn't have WiFi - you can use the network socket and the wireless capabilities at the same time.

Setup is as simple as finding two free power sockets: one in the room where your router is, and the other in the room where you want the wireless network to be. Devolo recommends that you don't use sockets in power strips as this can reduce transfer speeds. You can encrypt the data sent between the two plugs by keying the unique codes printed on each of them into Devolo's configuration wizard. This stops people in adjoining houses being able to join your network. The plugs will automatically locate each other and establish a connection. The setup wizard also launches a browser window to show the access point's management interface. Here you can set passwords, restrict access by MAC address and set WEP or WPA/WPA2 passwords. You can also switch from access point mode to WiFi client mode, in order to make it log on to a wireless router to gain wireless internet access, for example.

In our tests, the speed varied according to which sockets we used, and you may find that speeds are faster or slower depending on your wiring. Using a standard Centrino WiFi laptop, we recorded a speed of 10Mbit/s at 1m, while at 10m it dropped to 6Mbit/s.

£109 is a lot to pay for this kind of performance, but if a long Ethernet cable isn't an option, the Wireless extender could be the answer to your network problems.