Customer Reviews

Cisco-Linksys HPN200 HomeLink Phoneline 10M Network Card

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

4 computers networked over distances of up to 150 feet. Used existing phone lines. Easy setup, very fast, does not interfere with other phone uses. Drawback is no simple way (that I have found) to share a broadband connection. Linksys tech assistance quite limited. Internet sharing software included with system outdated and not upgradable and not supported by software publisher.

The first reviewer on this page suggests having someone look at your phone wire. Fuhgeddaboudit. 99.9% chance that it's just fine. The HomePNA 2.0 (www.homepna.org) technology used on this card and others like it is designed to deal with all kinds or normal and wierd phone wiring situations. Don't waste time or money having someone check out your phone wire... the technology developers already did that for you and made this stuff so that it would work.

To answer the reviewers other comment, an easy way to hook PC's and Printers by HPNA phoneline networking to a Cable/DSL connection is to use the Linksys HomePNA Cable/DSL router announced a month ago. Should be shipping in the late Feb timeframe. CHeck with Linksys on it... this is different than the bridge for sale in Amazon... the bridge makes you have to have a real IP address for each PC. The upcoming Router will allow you to share the one IP address you get from your cable/DSL company with all the stuff in the house. That's the deal you probably want.

I have a DSL modem, which I've been using for a while. I have another computer in another part of my house which, until recently, was used to access AOL via a dialup line.

I installed this phoneline network card on that computer, put PPPOE on it, modified the AOL access to go through a LAN, and bought the Linksys HomeLink Broadband Network Bridge. I connected the AOL computer to it via the this phoneline network card.

Now this computer access the internet via the DSL modem. It worked first time. No muss, no fuss. AOL access is now completely reliable, and it flies!

I was very impressed with how easy it was to make this work. I have some understanding of networking, but not a lot. If I can make this work, any literate person can.

I picked up a pair of these to run a simple network to another floor in our house. I already have a multi-tiered fast ethernet network, and this was just to put one computer in one room on the uppermost floor. I installed one in the computer to go upstairs and it worked like a charm with ethernet-like speeds (actually HPNA 10M cards can push 15-20 Mbps in good conditions, so I'm not suprised). The one I put in the ICS (internet connection sharing) computer to allow the upstairs computer to use the file server and print server downstairs would blue screen the ICS machine within five minuite of bootup, every time. Removing the card resolved the issue, even though the drivers were still installed.

Trying to isolate the issue, realizing that placing the card in a different machine would do the same thing, it was resolved by placing it in a different computer wired to the ethernet infrastructure, but it would bluescreen after every day or two (running Windows 2000). Rats, no dice, so I had to return the card.

Before returning it, however, I did call up Linksys technical support and after explaining that I am qualified on NT and 2000 Server operating systems, they sent me to the right person right away. As it turns out, there is an issue with this card running on i8xx series of chipsets with Windows NT, 2000 or XP. Since these are 80% of the computers with Celeron or Pentium III processors, it would get one star. For working as well as it did when it was working, however, it gets two.

To sum it up, be careful and check the return policy when you purchase these. While I would purchase them again if I needed them and I was pretty sure they would work with no issue, currently there are too buggy. Go purchase someone else's HPNA 10M cards, they all use the same Broadcom chipset and so the performance is exactly the same. Now excuse me while I purchase a 3com.

Hi, I have one card installed in a gateway machine, and another USB homelink phoneline connected to the laptop. I was able to get this working in an hour. After a few months, the card connected to the gateway stoped responding, and it seems it had a hardware problem. I called up the linksys customer service about 5 times now, and they were not able to issue me a RMI number to get this card replaced. I later got another card for a cheaper rate to use until I get this replaced if possible. If you buy this, you are on your own.. dont expect any customer support.

Easy install, very reliable. Most of the wireless networks I've encountered are absolutely insecure. They don't have to be, but the users stop short of implementing encryption and MAC address filtering. For those people, this is a safer alternative. Almost as convenient as wireless but without the risk. Phoneline networking doesn't suffer from interference of walls, ceilings, wiring, etc. either. I've used both wireless and phoneline. If I can't have Cat-5 cabling, give me a phoneline network. You can use these cards with the Linksys HPNA router, which serves the HPNA network as well as conventional 10/100 Ethernet concurrently.

This product looks pretty useful to me. As far as sharing a broadband or xDSL connection I think that you would need to purchase the Linksys HomeLink Broadband Network Bridge (HPES03). That should get the job done. However, there are several problems that I have heard or read about. First, regular phone lines are fairly susceptible to static interference. If your house has a lot of phone wiring, or if the wiring is fairly old, or if the lines have relatively heavy interference the homelink network will not work. Also, I have heard that the included internet sharing software is not very reliable and that the software developer does not support the software. The multitudes of Linksys products that work with this line (the Homelink networking line) have a lot of potential, though, and I would use this system in my house if I knew that it would work. My advice would be to have your local phone service provider stop by your house and examine the phone wiring. They should be able to tell you (for free) the amount of phone wiring in your house and how clear the connections are. Then I would ask around on the internet and maybe even the local home electronics store to see if the phone wiring in your house would be good enough to use the Homelink system. Even then, I'd definitely keep the receipts of the stuff you purchase in case you can't get the network running due to unacceptable phone line connections. I guess if your phone lines won't work for networking you can always go with ethernet category 5 cabling. But if you can satisfy your needs using regular phone line I'd stick with that. Hope this helps.

The Linksys HPN200 uses a newer protocol of a technology that has been
around since at least 1980 called Data Over Voice, or DOV. Only a couple
of manufacturers made these products, and Black Box might still carry it
in their private label version.
There never was a bridge to broadband until now. It was and still is a
way to create a network using twisted-pair wiring between computers to
share files and resources like printers, modems, etc. You can be on the
phone and access the modem on another PC connected to a different phone
line, giving you access to your desktop while talking. That was a typical
application with 286/386 machines before Windows.
For best results, use CAT8 installed in newer houses like mine, or even
go to twisted pair network cable like Belden 88778. You might exceed 1mb
per second if you maintain the shielding right to the HPN200 bracket by
attaching the drain wire to it with a screw, or screwing the bracket in
the case slot holder with the drain wire. The RJ-11C jack side must have
a ground connection for the drain wire on the phone jack. Using a surge
protector with telco protection can provide a good grounding point also,
and is recommended, as you WILL BE connected to the PSTN even though not
using its facilities (like dial-up).

This card is really great...if you know what it can and can't do.

I used to be pretty (...)at these, but then fiddled with the phone wires and (for reasons that continue to elude my comprehension) all of a sudden they're basically 100% reliable.

My beef with these things is no longer reliability (which was horrible until the fiddling mentioned above), but compatability. I haven't done any definitive research on this particular subject, but these use the same technology as DSL, so it could either not work or have to share bandwidth with the connection. That's one thing (I'm sure they've got some sort of compromise), but my real issue is with lack of OS support. I'm screwed with Linux, and that's something I hope to get more involved in the house-hold. (it's really great, search for Red Hat Linux 9, (...))

In summary, for a Windows-only network without DSL (do your research if you've got it, I guess) it's ok, but check out PowerLine networking instead. Linksys has got some PowerLine stuff, and, other than the issues with this particular product, I think Linksys is a really good company.

Small office, 3 machines linked on one phone line (which is also fax line), 2 Win98s, 1 Win95. Hardest to set up with Win95. For some reason driver did not seem to want to load. I had to completely uninstall network components and reinstall, then install driver manually. Worked after that. Think it was a comflict with a Bios setting but never confirmed it.