Panasonic BL-PA100KTA Ethernet Adaptor Starter Pack Includes two HD-PLC (High Definition Power Communication)

by Panasonic

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 2.5 x 10.5 x 6.5 inches ; 1.9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000FZXHGO
• Item model number: BL-PA100KTA
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 18, 2006

Product Description

The HD-PLC (High Definition Power Line Communication) ethernet adaptor makes it possible for your home electrical wiring to serve as a link between your PC and modem. Getting online access is as easy as plugging into a power outlet. You can move your PC and connect to the internet anywhere there is a power outlet in your home!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy Setup & LED's Display Signal Quality, January 2, 2007

By 

Glenn R. Huebschmann (Monte Rio, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Panasonic BL-PA100KTA Ethernet Adaptor Starter Pack Includes two HD-PLC (High Definition Power Communication) (Personal Computers)

I researched competing products from DLink and NetGear online and read numerous reviews. Any of the HD-PLC products should perform similarly in the same situation. Before deciding on a powerline Ethernet product be sure to understand that the quality of your home wiring and the distance the signal must travel all can affect the performance of the product. Poor quality wiring or very long electrical runs may limit performance.

What I liked most about the Panasonic product is that the kit which includes two units is preconfigured, so it works right out of the box without any special configuration. I didn't have to install ANY software to get my network running. I plugged in one unit to my Internet router, and the other unit into a power outlet in a nearby office. Once I connected the Ethernet cable, I was up and running. It was really that easy.

One nice thing with this unit is that you can run a speed test from the unit itself, with the front LED's displaying the estimated network performance. This was handy as I tried different outlet combinations to acheive the best performance. As a side note, I found that plugging the "Master" unit into an outlet as close as possible to the breaker box yeilded the best results. By putting the master as close to the break box as possible (electrica wiring distance) I was able to get a much better signal. I have the master unit in a downtairs room that is about 40' from the breaker box, and the secondary unit in an upstairs office that is about 65' feet from the breaker box.

Note that any powerline Ethernet product is susceptible to interference from other devices. Pay attention to the manual regarding the types of devies that can cause interference, and avoid ever pluggint the device into a surge protector, since that will greatly limit performance.

An additional nice feature of the Panasonic unit compared with DLink and NetGear is that the unit has a power cable. This allows me to plug it into "hidden" outlets, and then place the box in an easy to reach location. Both the NetGear and DLink products are a box that plugs directly into the outlet. This makes them more difficult to access, especially if you want to look at the box to see what it is doing. I like that the Panasonic can sit nicely on the corner of my desk and I can see the lights. I also suspect that the Panasonic will operate cooler since it can be placed in locations where there is air flow all around the unit.

Performance will vary by house and situation. I have a gigabit network switch that connects my machine directly to a server. When I copy a 50 megabyte file to my server using Windows XP, it takes 8 to 9 seconds to copy a 50 megabyte file. Running the same 50 megabyte file copy to a machine on the HD-PLC network connection took about 27 seconds. This seems to be pretty good performance overall. Note that "speed test" is only as good as what is being tested. My test was a real world test under Windows XP copying a 50 megabyte ZIP file.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome performance for price!, April 9, 2008

By 

S. brown "Krad Dude" (ATL, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Panasonic BL-PA100KTA Ethernet Adaptor Starter Pack Includes two HD-PLC (High Definition Power Communication) (Personal Computers)

While this device uses its own standard, called HD-PLC, it works great! the price on amazon was amazing $46 for two! i have 9 terminals and 1 master in the house and can stream DVD (not hd!) on all floors of the house. While it may not peak faster than 54mbps wifi at 10ft; it is consistent in speed and has low ping times. The best part is the ability for the unit to adjust to signal noise without dropped connections or long ping timeouts if intereference is present. A problem with all wifi products. Also there is no configuration of wireless. The best setup is to simply use a router (say a wrt45GL with DD-WRT firmware) hooked up to the switch port. This will allow you to have wifi and power ethernet at the same time. I have tried many of these "powerline AV" units which cost $40-75 per unit and they do not perform any better. Panasonic units are very nice looking and the cord allows you to hide each terminal rather than hang it off the wall plug which is sightly.

A great unit; discounted deeply due to its non-standard format. But honestly i have a old homeplug setup (14mbps) and a wireless phone line device on the same power socket and i still am able to stream dvd bitrate without any stuttering using Samba. FTP and NFS are supremely faster than XP's SMB so you will see even faster transmission rates that with windows sharing.

My biggest gain is that i can use windows copy over a share to copy a 1GB file without ever getting the dreaded fail. This might take several hours to copy with the unit but with wifi it was a guarantee fail at somewhere during the transfer which is most frustrating. That pain is gone now!

Remember these are not surge supressors and almost every powerstrip that offers decent surge suppresion will render this type of network device useless including powerline and homeplug. The manufacturers will acknowledge that if you get hit by lightning you will probably fry anything connected directly by ethernet. The only solution is to have a UPS that has a network surge suppression system. Highly recommended to protect your pc's and switches. Remember all ethernet over power have this problem so its not just this product. Something to think about.

5 stars for performance; ease of use; scalability; and amazing amazon price.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars HDTV Yes, HD-DVD No, 120-240v, October 11, 2007

By 

Robert Salita "Software Developer" (CHI PAR PHX SYD PDX CLD NKC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Panasonic BL-PA100KTA Ethernet Adaptor Starter Pack Includes two HD-PLC (High Definition Power Communication) (Personal Computers)

Awesome in that every outlet in my house measures full speed. Fast enough to play flawless HDTV (via HDHomeRun device). Rated for operation using 120 and 240 volts. Most people can stop reading here.

Unfortunately, continuous stutter playing back HD-DVDs so still needs to be faster for this application. I've solved this need by using a D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router which provides great coverage (latest firmware) and speed.

Update 13-Oct-2007: Beware noisy devices. They can reduced bandwidth and greatly increase latency. Found a DC adapter that apparently throws off electrical noise. I unplugged it from the same socket as the Panasonic device and, as the manual seems to suggest, put it into a surge protector. That seemed to help throughput. I then cascaded another surge protector in series and that seemed to help more.