News

• The Good: The simplest networking product on the market
• The Bad: Depending on your home setup, it can monopolize an AC outlet
• The Verdict: Wireless, though not technically (it uses AC power lines), and it operates at 85 megabits per second (Mbps): A treat
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Broadband over power line, which uses existing AC power lines in your home as a computer network, is not a new technology, but it is just beginning to reach the North American home-user market. Bell calls their service HomePlug, and they're promoting it as a consumer product, which is underselling it — this technology would be perfect for small businesses.

The main reason devices using this technology, sometimes called "powerline adapters" or "bridges," are being sold as residential systems is because they're unbelievably easy to set up, and they really work. But that shouldn't limit their use to consumers.

Made by Asoka USA Corp., it looks like two black "bricks" like the ones at the end of the power cord for some high-tech appliances. But while the appliance bricks contain power transformers, these bricks are basically compact modems, with an Ethernet port in the back.

The idea is that you plug one of the adapters into a standard electrical outlet near your broadband router, and connect it to the router with an included Ethernet cable. Next, you plug an identical adapter into an electrical outlet in another place in the home or office, and connect it to another computer with a second included cable. No software, no setup procedures, no drivers. How sweet.

For all intents and purposes, it's a wired home network, except it has a couple of these small black devices in between. And the dog can't chew the wires.

The building's electrical lines do the rest — they carry the computers' high-frequency data on top of the low-frequency waves on the electrical transmission lines, and the two can cohabit quite happily without interference.

And you can buy individual powerline adapters as you need them, up to 16 of them before the speed begins to degrade.

What's more important is that this system works far better than a home wireless (WiFi) network, which often can't reach all the corners of the house or office — especially if there's a microwave oven working nearby — and is much slower.

When it was first introduced, the HomePlug technology ran at 1o megabits per second; today, now promises up to 85 mbps, which is fast enough for game consoles, transfers of large files from PC to PC and to storage appliances, remote TV devices such as Slingbox, downloading pictures from networked cameras, and even movies streaming from one PC to another.

The HomePlug standard also supports multiple streams of high-definition TV, making it useful to connect personal video recorders, set-top boxes and Internet protocol TV (IPTV), which will soon become the Next Big Thing. And it works with Macintosh computers too, and even with wireless access points — meaning you can attach the PlugLink to a WiFi system in another part of the house.

I asked Bell about security, and the company says there far too many configurations within homes and small offices to formulate a general rule; the signal is not likely to carry much beyond your electricity meter, if it's a newer one, and out into the street. But if you aren't certain, you can set your own network login and password using the built-in 56-bit DES encryption and the accompanying software disc.

All this makes PlugLink especially useful for small offices, which are often in rented spaces where running your own cables through walls tends to make the building superintendent grumpy. And since the PlugLink system can piggyback many different devices, it's possible to connect not only computers, but other devices, such as printers, faxes and digital cameras. Then you can put your networked components in convenient corners of the office, as opposed to only those places where Ethernet cables can reach.

The HomePlug technology has been successful in Europe, it is better adapted to 220-volt lines. As a result, it has taken some time for North America, with its 110 volt lines, to catch on.

There are now quite a few similar products on the market — among them Netgear Xe104-4 Port Ethernet, Niroda EasyLAN Ethernet; BeWAN Ethernet; Sagem Fastplug Ethernet; Devolo dlan HighSpeed Ethernet, SMC Ethernet and Zyxel Ethernet. The only one in Canada seems to be HomePlug from Bell, which is claiming to be the first retailer to offer the technology.

Installation is unbelievably simple. I didn't realize there was installation software in the box until after I had hooked up an HP Tablet PC and it was running smoothly. The moment I fired it up, Windows XP found the connection and immediately got it going.

It had been several days since I'd fired up the Tablet PC, so when I connected to the network via the powerline system, I was suddenly inundated by all sorts of housekeeping duties: Update the antivirus software, update the virus definitions, install the inevitable fistful of Microsoft patches and so on. Aside from the annoyance of having to download so much at once, I was amazed that the whole thing took as little time as it did. Downloading the 48 MB Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's new browser, took a scant 28 seconds, while the computer was also updating Symantec's security suite.

This works so well that I can happily urge small businesses to consider Asoka's PlugLink product, or go one step further: Asoka has a corporate version, called PlugLAN, described as a system for multi-unit dwellings and multi-tenant commercial properties, where it can use the existing electrical lines within a commercial building to deliver data, voice, video and Internet applications to every power outlet. I haven't tried that, but if it's as good as the "home" version, it could revolutionize office networking.

I recall my first bumbling efforts some years ago at setting up a home network, and can't believe that its complexity has been simplified so much that anyone who has plugged a lamp into an outlet can handle it.

It's almost annoying.