TP-Link AV600 Powerline Ethernet Adapter Kit - Gigabit Port, Plug Pair &Play, Power Saving, Nano Sized Powerline Network Adapter (TL-PA4010 KIT)

I've been a Network Engineer for over 10 years and ever since I've dealt with computers, cabling is one of the worst aspects of the job. I can't tell you how many times I've run/extended CAT3/CAT5/CAT5e/CAT6 cabling and ended up terminating both ends and testing them. Some situations are easier than others when you're allowed to run a cable across the floor or above ceiling tile... but in other situations like getting networking in a certain room in your house can be a total pain in the butt.For the average home user, the only way to get networking from point A to your house to point B is either wired with cabling or use WiFi & bridging if the WiFi didn't extend far enough. When Powerline technology came out it added convenience of using existing power cabling but still was a little flaky and troublesome. But since then, Powerline has jumped leaps and bounds since and is much more reliable & faster.When it came time to buy originally back in July 2012, I put a lot of research into looking into the latest powerline solution for my home. I wanted something with high performance and the current version of "high performance Powerline devices" allows 500Mbps transfer rate. Even still, I was having trouble selecting which manufacturer to go with (Belkin, Cisco, Netgear, etc). After my homework (and despite Netgear's horrible sales support), I ended up with the NETGEAR Powerline 500Mbps Nano Adapter - Starter Kit (XAVB5101).Despite the insane price point (currently $87.99 on Amazon - 12/13/2013; I bought these for $108 back in July 2012), the Netgear adapters worked wonderfully in my home. I was able to maintain faster throughput from device to device while on wired Ethernet while not saturating my WiFi network. However, over the course of a year and a half, the number of devices I had in my house grew considerably (especially over WiFi).In the past year, I added a few cell phones, a laptop, a tablet, a Roku 3, a Western Digital TV Live, 2 Chromecasts, and a new Smart TV. Because of that, my WiFi started to become degraded because every single one of those new devices was connecting to my network over WiFi. When multiple devices would start streaming things like Netflix and I was doing transfers from my media server to a PC, Netflix would stutter and my WiFi throughput would literally crawl slower than a snail on a salt bed. That's when I realized I needed to invest in more Powerline Adapters for certain rooms to speed up transfers as well as help reduce the load of my WiFi network.But you see, despite being pleased with my Netgear adapters, I didn't want to spend another $100. A friend of mine (who I told the Netgear adapters about) bought another brand of Powerline AV 500Mbit adapters from a company called TP-Link to save money. He said they worked pretty good. After finding out that they were $35 on Amazon, I immediately pulled the trigger. I mean after all, I had a word of mouth approval from a friend and you can't argue saving over $50 vs another set of my Netgear adapters... the result? Absolutely no difference in speeds.Just like the Netgear adapters, these are essentially Plug & Play. There were literally no problems connecting these in my house. I went to the living room where I needed wired connectivity and plugged these up to the wall. The TP-Link adapter immediately recognized my existing Netgear Powerline adapters and the 2nd LED (Powerline LED indicator) immediately lit up. I plugged in my small 10/100 switch to it and then my Roku & TV up to it and the 3rd LED (Ethernet indicator) lit up and the devices could not only talk to other devices on my LAN, but they had Internet access as well. I personally noticed NO DIFFERENCE in throughput speeds both within the LAN and the Internet.The *ONLY* difference between the TP-Link set and the Netgear is the that the TP-Link doesn't tell you the "current speed" of that adapter's Powerline network. The Netgear has multicolored LEDs that indicate the speed of your Powerline network. While this normally won't matter to a lot of people, it will tell you whether you are having degraded performance within your home's electrical wiring. It also aids in troubleshooting as well. But it's not a show stopper...Personally, I would recommend this product over the Netgear adapters I have.1. The price is a LOT cheaper.2. TP-Link has a TWO YEAR WARRANTY vs the Netgear's ONE YEAR WARRANTY. If you're really concerned on whether you're buying "a crap product", rest assured that this works just as good as the bigger name brands and you have an extra year of product care!Highly recommended.

So if you're unfamiliar with powerline adapters as I was before I encountered them just recently, then the product description may sound too good to be true. You can plug a small box into a wall outlet, hook it up to your modem, and use the second box anywhere in the house within 1,000ft to set up a router/internet connection by simply plugging it into the wall? YES. YES YOU CAN.The adapters are pretty small, they fit well on a wall outlet and leave plenty of room for other connections. I currently have one adapter set up about 4 feet away from my modem on the far end of one side of the house, hooked up via an ethernet cable (provided in the package), and the other adapter is set up in a room about 250ft away on the furthest wall on the opposite side of the house (upstairs above the garage, past several rooms, including the kitchen, living room, dining room, laundry room, and bedroom). I simply plugged the second adapter into the wall outlet into the far room, synced the two adapters by pressing the button on each one, and had internet access.On the second adapter (the one on the far end of the house where internet connection was needed), I have it hooked up to a Wireless-G Belkin router. Internet connection speeds via speedtest are roughly 20mpbs, upload speeds are about 10mbps.. ping usually sits between 12ms-45ms. It isn't terribly fast, but it'll definitely knock out the hassle of having a second modem added to the house.. extra wiring.. extra money.. time.. no thank you.I did notice a couple of strange things, though.When I synced the two adapters, I synced them in the same room so I could access them fairly quickly. I initially tested the adapter by hooking up my desktop to the receiving adapter. My speeds according to speedtest were 10mbps download speed, and about 6mbps upload speed. That's when my desktop is hooked directly to the receiving adapter in the SAME room as the adapter connected to the modem.I'm not sure why I receive better speeds on the far end of the house, people have mentioned it has something to do with the breaker.. but I have no idea. What I'm saying is, hopefully this won't be a hit and miss for you. You may be taking some chances with your download/upload speeds depending on the room you need internet access in. I just happened to get lucky I guess.Anyways, this works great and saved me a ton of time and money... and I now have internet access throughout the entire house thanks to both routers on each end. I'm very grateful.On that note, if anyone knows of a coax adapter that will do something similar to this, let me know. I'm trying to get Comcast cable set up in the room upstairs as well.. but I fear running a 150-200ft coax cable would be a pain.EDIT: I should mention that my speeds via speedtest when hooked directly to my modem (Comcast ISP) I get a ping of 10ms, Download speed of 121mbps, and upload speed of 23.42mbps. So there is a huge difference in the speed. When physically downloading something, my desktop peaks at about 17mbps when hooked directly to the modem, whereas with this powerline adapter it is about 1.8mb/s and typically ranges from 500kb/s-1mb/s