Today, I'm going to post a quick review of the TP-Link TL-PA2010KIT AV 200Mbps Nano Powerline Adapter Starter Kit. A video review I made follows and it includes some setup instructions and other details not in this review, so its worth watching.
Pros: In the box are the two adapters and two 2-meter cables.
Take each adapter, plug it into the wall, plug the cable into it and the
computer or router and you're done. A lot of devices say "get started
in seconds", but for this one, it's really true. There are no
configuration settings to play with. The units are glossy white, fairly
small, and they don't block the other plug. The pins are unpolarized, so
you can plug it in upside-down - this lets you plug both units into the
same outlet (but there's no practical reason to do this, other than for
testing). The front of the unit has a synchronization button, if the
units ever become unpaired. There are three blue lights on the front to
help you diagnose a problem, if you ever have one.
It works
flawlessly with Windows and Linux and the computers see the cable as
they would any other Ethernet cable - the computer has no idea that its
using powerline adapters.
Cons: This device will not work on an outlet with a surge protector. I tried that initially and I was getting around 80% packet loss.
Other Thoughts: The advertised speed on these is
200Mbps, which is 25MBps. Ethernet uses 5/4 encoding, which cuts the
practical speed to 20MBps. But that's duplex and in most cases you'll
only be transferring a file one direction at a time, so you really
should expect to see 10MBps max. With me so far? If I have both units
plugged into the same outlet, I get a file transfer rate of about
9.2MBps, pretty close to the theoretical max. With the units plugged
into outlets on the opposite ends of my house, then I get 3.6MBps, which
is still fairly fast. Pings were comparable to wireless pings, hovering
around 1.5ms from computer to router across the house.
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