Great product, 26 April 2008

By 

C. Johnston (UK) – See all my reviews

  

These were out of the box and working within a couple of minutes. One plug was patched into a broadband switch/router courtesy of the auto-uplink feature, and the other was connected straight into a PC’s Ethernet port. This connected fine at 100Mbit/s, which was the speed of the PC’s network card. Because it’s using the standard network port, no extra drivers are required on the PC, and worked just as well with a Linux based Eee PC as a Windows based box.

There are some restrictions on how you can connect these Homeplugs. According to the accompanying leaflet, they must be connected directly to a wall socket, not through a power-extension strip. They must also be on the same mains ring, which shouldn’t be a problem for most homes but might be an issue in the workplace.

These dLAN 200 plugs are not cheap at around £60 per connection, but are a bargain compared to the cost of getting network cabling & sockets properly installed, and much tidier than running ethernet cables on the floor. If you’re not planning to stream HD media, consider the cheaper 85Mbit/s Devolo Homeplug , which isn’t going to be much slower for most purposes, or Wireless LAN (54Mbit/s). Both of these would be fine for typical web-surfing, gaming or occasional file transfers. But if you want to stream HD media around your home and don’t want the expense and effort of laying Ethernet cables everywhere, then these are what you need.

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Very easy to install, 21 Jun 2008

By 

David Roberts (Leeds) – See all my reviews

  

The dLAN 200 was very easy to install. I connected one to my router and the other one to my PC upstairs. The documentation says that they should be plugged directly into the mains socket however I plugged one into a 6 way extension and it works fine. Both of these were not on the same ring main (although they are connected at the distribution board) but this did not cause any problem.

Each plug has it’s own ID no. and MAC address. The software on the supplied CD was easy to use – it automatically detected the one that my PC was plugged into. I just had to enter the ID no. of the one my router was plugged into and everything was connected.

I searched around on the internet and on ebay and found Amazon to be the cheapest and with free delivery ! I would recommend these for anyone who is experiencing poor wireless coverage or who wants to stream video around their home.

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Am I just really unlucky?, 18 Jan 2009

By 

Peter Maher (Isle of Man) – See all my reviews

  

I went for the Devolo AV Easy devices because of all the positive ‘up and running in a few minutes’ style reviews. My PC can recognisxe when the device is plugged in directly to it but I can’t do anything with it – the DLan configuration Wizard claims ‘no DLan adapter is found’. Tried plugging into my modem/router (Netgear DG824M) and the Netgear management software does not even see the device.

Later edit: I tried contact Devolo support via email. Expect a 2 day response to any email – including any followups. Had explained that I thought it was a hardware fault but responses I got were along the lines of ‘upgrade the firmware’ which is very poor since I explained in the email that the computer could not see one of the devices – making a firmware upgrade impossible. After a week of unsuccessful emailing I phoned their support line and immediately had it confirmed that I had a hardware problem.

Explained to Amazon who sent a new pair out immediately and these worked fine. My rating now would be – the hardware 4 stars, Devolo email support 1 star and the Devolo phone support 5 stars.

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