Customer Reviews

NETGEAR HDXB101 Powerline HD Ethernet Kit

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I bought a pair of HDXB101 boxes in the hope that they might offer a reliable replacement for the 802.11g boxes I'm currently using. Boy was I disappointed.


I live in a recently refurbished apartment, with all new electrical wiring. In principle, this should offer an optimal environment for powerline networking.

While setup was as easy as the box claimed - it was literally a matter of plugging the two boxes into the wall, and everything worked immediately - it quickly became clear that the performance was not going to work out.

A quick word of caution before I continue: please read most of the positive reviews of this device, and notice that they are doing very unchallenging things, like streaming music. Music streaming is extremely tolerant of both poor bandwidth (bytes per second) and high latency (time it takes data to get from A to B). If all you want to do is stream MP3s and browse the web, this hardware is perfectly decent.

However, for even the most slightly challenging application, the performance is horrifying. I measured the latency between my two HDXB101 boxes, and it was consistently atrocious, even when the two were plugged into two sockets of a paired wallmount.

To give you an idea of "atrocious", my 802.11g network consistently gives a latency of 1.2 milliseconds. My gigabit ethernet network is more like 0.1 milliseconds. The *best* number I got out of the Netgear hardware was 3.5 milliseconds, and the *average* was 55 milliseconds. Holy cow! That means my bedroom and living room are as far apart, in terms of latency, as California and Germany! This is an amazingly bad number.

But what's much worse is that the number is extremely jittery. There were constant stalls of up to one second in duration, with delays of 150 milliseconds or more happening several times a second. This is the sort of thing you won't notice at all if you're playing music or viewing web pages, but it makes gaming incredibly frustrating.

The unpredictable latency has a strong negative effect on bandwidth, too. The box advertises 200 megabits per second. At no time have I measured more than 3.3 megabits per second, slightly over 1.5% of the advertised peak performance. This isn't even enough to saturate my DSL line, and is perhaps 50% slower than my wireless network. Needless to say, there's no way you're going to stream anything more than Youtube-quality video (i.e. really cheesy low bitrate) over a link like this.

In case you're interested in tinkering with configuration options to improve performance, forget about it: there are no tunable options to tweak.

In summary, the bandwidth and latency on this hardware are just shockingly bad. Unless you live in a house with lead-lined rooms and have literally no other option for getting a network signal from one place to another, you should avoid this hardware like the plague.

I wanted to bridge two apartments on opposite sides and different floors of a building for the purpose of internet access, telephone extension over voip, and live tv streaming via xp mediacenter. There were too many walls and floors for wireless to even dream of working (tested with 2.4GHz, 5.8GHz, and 900MHz phones and only the 900MHz signals got through). I couldn't run cat5 so all my bets were on this technology working.

And they work. The two apartments are on different meters in the basement and it still works. For the best performance, I put each adapter on its own circuit in each apartment (just use the air conditioning outlets) to minimize interference from other local electrical devices. It may also help to use surge-protectors on everything else. I did have to lower the bitrate of my TV recordings to hide the delays that occasionally occur, but I may try bumping it back up since newer firmwares and other settings tweaks seem to have improved things (see the netgear forums).

HomeplugAV came out way too late for me to try, but I hear that it's performance is close if not slightly less. I think HomeplugAV does not network bridge to their older standards much like Netgear's DS2-based technology, so no benefits there.

Granted, the highest speed the Netgear utility gave me for the connection is 25Mbps, which is probably much lower if I actually measured it, but it gives me a solution that no other technology can. 802.11n runs on 2.4Ghz as well so I doubt that will do anything for me with all these walls and floors. If you're looking at these to drastically improve your existing connection speed, then you may be disappointed. But if you're deciding between no connection and a connection, then you may be pleasantly surprised.

Update: as of 4/2007, there has been two firmware/software updates, so Netgear is still providing support, with the latest adding vista compatibility. I have no experience contacting Netgear for support, but I always have low expectations of that from most companies.

I too am trying to solve the Xbox 360/laptop up in top floor of the house problem and this solution from Netgear was my latest attempt. The layout of my home is such that the finished basement is our office and home theater, which is where the router resides, and I am trying to push the network up two flights of stairs into the spare bedroom.

These two little boxes only managed a sporadic connection of sub-4mbs (vs the advertised 200) and completely lost track of each other four or five times in the 30 minutes I worked on them. The configuration utility unfortunately offers very little help and it too lost the remote box after a few minutes.

I have used and enjoyed many Netgear products but this one failed to perform as the Xbox nor my laptop could even pull an IP from my router. Furthermore, I needed another drop out to my garage (detached) and the connection was again spotty.

It seems that if you are jumping from room to adjoining room which are on the same breaker, you are good to go with these boxes. However, most houses have multiple breakers for reason of function and safety which do not seem to produce the results needed for an even semi-decent connection.

I'm going for the wireless N bridges that are coming out and see if that will carry the load.

I will start by saying I am sure results with this product vary from install to install due to the interaction with the powerline. My home is about 50 years old. I was running from one room to another - about 60 feet away, but the power lines were being feed from the main circuit breaker box, so the signal had to go through there first. The nodes were NOT on the same circuit.

I could bearly get Internet surfing speeds. Even regular DVD's where jerky and unwatchable. My main reason for getting these was to stream DVD's on a server in one room to my media server in the home theater room without running CAT5 cables through the attic.

So these totally were unacceptable for my situation. I did have a Zwave lighting system in the home theater room, but I unplugged all the controllers and that did not appear to help, so the slow ethenet speed was not a result of the Zwave traffic on the power line.

My suggestion is buy them and try them, send them back if they don't work for you.

I'm using these for connecting my XBOX360 in a room where my wireless signal was too weak. Even using a brand new 802.11n router, I could not get a reliable connection there.

These netgear adapters really solved my problem. The connection between my XBOX360 and my Media Center PC at the other side of my home is perfect. I can even use the XBOX to watch TV shows that I have recorded in the Media Center PC.

The netgear utility reports 175 Mbps, but my tests with "iperf" report between 80 and 90 Mbps of real throughput (much better than with older powerline adapters, that never got more than 3-4 Mbps).

Highly recommended!

The performance of this in my 1925 "stucco four-square" house with some original wireing and some 1980's wiring was unacceptable. At times the latenacy was as low as 4 or 5 ms but most of the time is was bouncing into the 4 to 35 second range.

I returned it and have replaced it with two NetGear RangeMax Next Wireless-N Routers configured in a bridge. This seems to have done the trick and I get 1.2 ms to 35 ms latency pretty consistently.

I have been in IT for a few years now, just so people here don't think I am venting out without knowing what the hell is going on!

So to begin with, I needed something in my house, particularly for my HD streaming. My server room is upstairs, and wanted my media center in my living room (on wireless currently) to stream back and forth HD content without the choppiness. So I began reading forums and what not, and with the help of a friend of mine, who is an IT genius (if I may say so), we nailed down on this "supposedly" 200 Mbps powerline adapter. I had that or go wireless with a still-not-completely-stabilized 802.11N product. I figured that rather than going with an "advertised" 108 Mpbs (who knows what the CIR might be), why not go with an advertised 200 Mbps. Even if I get 110 Mbps or there abouts, it would still be way better than the "N" wireless routers.

So I bought this kit. The instruction says plug it and in seconds you will get connection. Umm, not really true. Anyways, I install the software that come with it, and found that while the "local" device showed 200 Mbps, the "remote" one that I had plugged downstairs showed 4 Mpbs. So I digress!

After hours of messing around with QoS prioritization and moving around the ethernet plug on different electrical outlets in my living room, I got the best speed: RX-45 Mbps, TX-20Mbps. That too if I plugged it at such a place that I needed an ethernet cable going across the room from one end to the other end where my media server lay, right next to my TV. This was no good. Not only did I not want people to see a cable across the floor, but I also didn't want to invite people to trip over and sue me!

Calling Netgear, I found out (which they failed somehow to mention on their box) that Netgear supports the kit if they are plugged in the same electrical circuit. Now I don't know about you guys, but I don't have just ONE SINGLE circuit that goes from my basement to my first floor. So if the safety procedures are followed by the builders (and legally they all HAVE to), that would mean that EVERY house would have separate electrical circuits, and by that logic, you would NOT get 200 Mbps unless plugged in the same room or same floor (best case scenario)!!!
I have a 4 yr old house, so it's not like the electrical system in my house is old school or that there is something wrong with it.

I am sorry, but as far as I am concerned, this product just sucks. I do NOT want to spend over $120 to get 40 Mbps. I can spend less and buy the 802.11N instead. I know at least that works!

I am very curious to find out all those who puts in their review here saying this is AWESOME, where they plugged the two adapters in.

I bought this to stream HD video to an XBox 360. I had been using a G router with a bridge only going about 20 feet. This works ok, but I occasionally get some network congestion (if I run a cable it is perfect). Based on the reviews I thought that powerline would be better. Unfortunately for me Powerline was significantly slower than Wireless G. I only got about 10MB. My house is about 7 years old, so I though it would work perfectly. Apparently others have had really good luck with the system. For me, it's just not fast enough. When N bridges start showing up I'll give that a shot.

I have a D-Link DSM 320 media player. For over a year I have been trying to use it wirelessly. It never worked consistently. I purchased the HDXB101 about a month ago and it has been working great since. Uninterupted video streaming with no dropped connections.
Although I have not seen a transmission speed above 80 mbs (200 is advertised), it does what I need it to.

I've been looking for a way to avoid running network cabling around my entire home. I tried the wireless route, and did not find the technology quite there yet for VoIP, Online Gaming and HD Streaming. When I stumbled upon the new PowerLine HD products. While this technology has been around for a while, this was the first time it looked mature enough to be "acceptable" in my network. After a little research I settled on the NetGear HDX101's.

This product has performed marvelously. I am using them to bridge various local LANs (PC/Gaming, 360/Entertainment Center)I have in my home to the broadband router. At each HDX101 I am getting at least 100Mbs tx and rx. I then use a switch for each local network to connect all of the networked devices at that location. VoIP, online gaming and normal web surfing all going on at the same time worked great. Streaming media to the 360 from the PC, flawless.

I heartily recommend this product to anyone who wants a fast network and doesn't want to bother running cable through the house.