Powerline

I believe wireless has its place, but it is being way over-used. That's because there's powerline. When a person lives in their own home, powerline does not have the security vulnerabilities, interference from wireless phones and other wireless networks, etc. If there is interference issues, Corinex sells noise filters.

Now I use wireless. For me, it works great, and I don't have to drag a powerline adapter with me. But I also have my network secured with SSID broadcast disabled, WPA2 passphrase, and MAC filtering.

What really bothers me is that there are so many open wireless networks, and there are many "secured" wireless networks that can be broken into easily. If people would just know that there is powerline, we would not be having any issues.

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Comments

dynamik

Until someone plugs into one of the outlets on the outside of your house

There is also no significant advantage to disabling SSID broadcasting and MAC address filtering since both can easily be sniffed. WPA/WPA2 is where wireless security currently lies.

tiersten

I wouldn't call powerline networking a particularly easy or elegant solution. There are plenty of issues with it as well.

You need to fit a filter to the incoming power of your house. Firstly to filter out any incoming signal and secondly to stop your signals going out. This is in addition to any filters needed for equipment which generates powerline interference.

If you're sufficiently determined, you can sniff a powerline communication signal without actually tapping into the wiring directly. Your house wiring acts like a giant antenna and will broadcast the signal. The level of encryption in most powerline devices seems to be ye olde 56 bit DES which isn't secure if again, you're determined enough.

It doesn't really seem to be much of a problem here in the UK but from what I can tell, the US can have multiple phases wired into houses. You need special bridges if you want it to jump between phases.

Throughput between circuits even on the same phase is usually pretty bad for powerline networking.

The powerline adapters usually require you to actually plug them directly into a wall socket so you can get the best signal. Plugging them into a powerstrip will work but the signal is degraded.

Powerline networking won't like X10 or any other powerline based system.

I use wireless networking here and I've not had any problems with it. It uses WPA2 and the backhaul between 802.11g APs is running 802.11a so there is significantly less interference. There are a few unsecured APs or WEP APs nearby though.