Digging into Phoneline Networking and HomePNA 2.0

The Brands

When HomePNA 2.0 devices first hit the market last spring, AnandTech’s Greg Hanna took at look at several HPNA kits from three manufacturers. At the time, all three were priced similarly and featured nearly identical performance and all three were simple PCI cards. With an ever-increasing number of homes having multiple PCs that must access a single broadband Internet connection, the focus has expanded to include home gateways and Ethernet to HPNA bridges. Also, with manufacturers constantly seeking an edge in the market, we are seeing a greater diversity of features and pricing amongst the devices.

A quick excerpt from his conclusion:

The smallest margin Intel has over the competition is a dead tie with the PA301 in the Direct Connection test. So, at best, the Intel cards are 0.41% faster than the other cards in the round-up. The margin of error in these tests is almost certainly higher than 0.41%, so we may say that the cards are all virtually the same speed. That isn't earth-shattering news considering that all the cards are using the same Broadcom chipset.

This time around, we have a wider variety of brands represented and a variety of different form factors including USB, PCI, PCMCIA and Ethernet. There are several devices that combine one or more of these features. With the variations in both performance and onboard features, as well as a very wide range of costs, our conclusions will be a lot more complex.