Digging into Phoneline Networking and HomePNA 2.0

Linksys HPN 200 & PCM 200HA

Linksys is a well-known name in home-networking equipment. Long known as one of the less expensive manufacturers of home networking equipment, they also have one of the broadest product lineups we have seen. Amongst their numerous entries into the market are the HPN-200 PCI adapter and the PCM-200HA PC Card adapter.

Specifications

The PCM-200HA is a 32-bit cardbus adapter, designed for Plug-and-play operation in a laptop or other device with a PCMCIA Type-II slot, it allows virtually any computer to connect to a HPNA network. It is somewhat large in comparison to many PC Cards because of its inclusion of dual RJ-11 phone jacks without the use of a “dongle” or something similar to 3com’s “x-jack” technology. The second jack provides a connection for a phone, analog modem or a chain of other HPNA devices to the phone system and is an easily overlooked feature that we really like to see.

The HPN-200 is based on the extremely popular Broadcom chipset. It uses a standard 32-bit PCI interface and also sports dual RJ-11 phone jacks. As you may have noticed, these are the two devices used in our previous performance comparison when pitted against 802.11b wireless.

Also, we noted in last spring’s reviews, most products containing the Broadcom chipset perform nearly identically and because of their simplicity, it may be difficult for one manufactuer to gain much of an advantage performance.

Software

Because of the uniformity of the Broadcom devices, Linksys tries to make up the ground by including some very powerful software. The HPN-200 ships with Sygate, perhaps the most well known NAT-based connection sharing software on the market. This will allow you to share a single Internet connection over the HPNA LAN without a router. However, this also means that the computer maintaining the Internet connection must remain on for the routing features to function.

Linksys also submitted a broadband HPNA router, the HPRO-200, which we will look at in detail in a few pages.

Cost

The Broadcom-based cards are some of the least expensive, but also highest quality available. The HPN-200 can be purchased at a variety of online retailers for as little as $32. The PCM-200HA is a bit more expensive and should cost around $65.