zyxel homeplug any good

[shakerist]

i saw on scan for 33 pounds zyxel 85mbps homeplug are they any good, do they run hot and does anyone get their full speeds as if its plugged into the router?

[burble]

They're ok, a friend has them and he's not had any problems with them. Does he get full speed? No, nowhere near, he gets around 20Mbit but how much of that is down to the homeplug and how much is down to the wiring in his house I don't know.

For the price though they have to be worth a shot.

[Woodchuck2000]

I bought 4 of the '200Mbps' Zyxel homeplugs and I've been very disappointed. Even in adjacent sockets on the same ring-main, I don't get more than 30-40Mbps. Once they're in different parts of the house this drops even further. I also find that they sometimes lose the connection and need rebooting before they'll work again.

Due to some initial problems getting all four to work, I tried to use the tool from Zyxel's website to update the firmware. This improved performance for three of the units, but the fourth is now inoperable. Zyxel haven't responded even though I've sent them several e-mails.

Overall, performance and reliability are significantly lower than Wireless-N networks and I'd avoid Zyxel in particular as the software and support are awful.

[shakerist]

i got a 10mb line so would i experience problems if i get 5 mbs im happy

[Bitemarks666]

what will you be doing with the network ie streaming media (if so SD or HD), transfering files between computers or web browsing, if the first 2 I would recomend wired wether it be 100Mbps or 1Gbps if just browsing and youtube then wireless G would be good enough and probably better than the homeplug

[shakerist]

bitemark i currently use wireless g on my old laptop which i use like a home pc so it never moves from my table i get very poor signal and youtube lags so much and i plan to build a pc and i dnt want to go wireless

[Bitemarks666]

ah cool I would still recomend wired if you could as you get a consistant speed and quality but if not I think that homeplug would be OK

[Woodchuck2000]

ah cool I would still recomend wired if you could as you get a consistant speed and quality but if not I think that homeplug would be OK

I'd second that - go for wired if you possibly can. In my experience, the Zyxel 200Mbps units are slower than Wireless G (Intel card + Belkin router), so if G is causing you problems homeplug probably won't solve them. That said, I've been hearing good things about the Belkin gigabit homeplug kit so that might be worth a look.