Product Reviews

Wireless networking can be a pain to get working and, in some houses, plain impossible. Powerline networking, where you use your house's mains power cables for a network, is an attractive option.

Previous kit we've reviewed has run at a paltry 14Mbit/s. Devolo's new Highspeed Kit brings this up to a maximum 85Mbit/s. The Starter Kit, reviewed here, comes with two Powerline network adaptors, which connect to a standard three-pin mains plug; you just connect your PC and ADSL modem, for example, to the adaptors' Ethernet ports.

We tested the kit using

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the test we employ for wireless networks. The quoted network speed is more a theoretical limit than a real transfer speed. Even so, the 19.8Mbit/s transfer rate we recorded was the equal of most wireless products and fine for streaming music and compressed video. The quality of your home's wiring and the number of sockets will affect performance and range, though.

You can add additional adaptors into the network for extra computers; these are £61 each. The Highspeed Kit is backwards-compatible with the old 14Mbit/s standard, so you needn't throw away any existing Devolo network adaptors.

The Highspeed adaptors work out of the box. The easy-to-use bundled software, with a clean graphical interface, takes care of security. Once you've entered the supplied security information you can group your adaptors into one network, which is encrypted. Devolo's file-sharing application is also included; Windows has this functionality built in, though, so we see little need for this utility.

This kit is a good alternative for homes where wireless won't work, but you will still need a broadband router to share an internet connection.