NETGEAR Powerline adapter Kit, 2000 Mbps Wall-plug, 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports with Passthrough + Extra Outlet (PLP2000-100PAS), White

The Problem: I live in a Victorian row home, not designed for the internet era. Walls are plaster and lathe and, basically, the worst for wifi reception. Our main cable modem and router is on the 2nd floor, in the corner of the house where it's connected to various backup drives, a "smart" television, Apple TV, etc. We get 150Mbps peak internet speeds on the 2nd floor, both wired and wireless thanks to an Airport Extreme 802.11n/ac router. Wifi reception on the 1st floor of the home is pathetic - in the range of 5Mbps (!), despite using an Apple Airport Express 802.11n router in "extend network" mode. I also use the Airport Express to stream music to a small amp and bookshelf speaker setup. Before purchasing the Netgear PLP1200, I would routinely have dropouts and stuttering in my streaming music and nearly unusable wifi reception on the 1st floor.I've been wanting to fix our 1st floor wireless reception for the past few years. I considered many options: running CAT5 cable to the 1st floor, moving the router to our master bathroom, to moving the Airport Express to our kitchen. None of these were particularly appealing options. Recently, I ran across this device and a blog post describing the virtues of Powerline ethernet extenders.Pros: Powerline extenders use existing power wiring in your house to transmit signal. No muss, no fuss. Powerline is full duplex, so potentially much faster than a wireless extender, which is half-duplex and which - by definition - drops the speed of the internet connection by 50%. The newest generation of these devices are basically plug-and-play. The PLP1200 has one-click configuration (not including reconfiguration of my Airport Express to make it a wireless access point, which took another 20 minutes). This particular device uses the new 1200Mbps "Homeplug AV2" standard, which is much faster than the prior generations. This device also has a pass-through plug, so you won't use up an empty plug which could be used for another powered device (I use it for the Airport Express mentioned above).Cons: The signal on a Powerline extender is degraded by length of cabling (strike one) and anything that can drop the signal in between the two outlets (strike two). In my case, the two plugs on two different floors of the house pass through 2 circuit breakers in our basement (each one incurs a 20-40dB drop in signal). If they're on the same circuit, that's the best case scenario. In reality, you will never achieve the peak speeds of 1200Mbps that are advertised. Not even close. Fancy surge protectors often have circuitry that can make these unusable - recall that these transmit signal over the powerline, so things that filter out noise. So the manufacturers recommend plugging directly into the wall, not via a surge protector. The PLP1200 is among the larger Powerline extenders, partly because it has the passthrough plug. It looks tiny in the pics, but it's about the dimensions of a 12oz can of soda in height and width.My Real Life Experience: Overall, I'm very pleased with this and may play around with placement of the plug. I'm currently seeing the "Pick A Plug" LED indicator that tells you how good the signal is (VERY nice feature, by the way) go back and forth between green (link rate > 80Mbps) and red (link rate < 50 Mbps), so I might improve this by finding an outlet that's has less signal drop across the circuit breakers.Here's my internet signal speed testing, using various online speed tests in my browser:1) 2nd floor, in the same room as the wireless router: 90-150Mbps, depending on how generous my ISP is feeling that day2) 1st floor, before PLP1200 and without Airport Express: essentially zero - I can't reliably connect to wifi from here3) 1st floor, before PLP1200 and using only Airport Express in "extend network" mode: 5Mbps.4) 1st floor, after PLP1200 and using Airport Express, router mode "off" (aka "Bridge Mode"), to basically act as a wireless access point for my ethernet signal: 35 MbpsSo that's a consistent 6-fold increase in signal strength. Fast enough that I can stream 4K YouTube videos, stream music via Spotify to the Airport Express speakers without stuttering or drops. You might argue "but that's nowhere close to 150Mbps - that's still a third or fifth of your peak internet speed", and you're right, and I don't care because I avoided all kinds of hassle trying to run CAT5 cable in a 110 year old home through plaster and lathe walls. For me, that's completely worth what I paid for this device and the ease of setup.

Extending a network has never been easier than with this package that includes WiFi. The prior extender had limited coverage, yet WiFi assisted by powerline networking has given secure access to the bandwidth needed. Easy installation and well worth the cost. Almost like you’re plugged into the router.

I've used the Powerline adapters in several situations where running regular Ethernet UTP wire just wasn't an option for various reasons. The basics are simple, both copper and (god help us) aluminum wiring can be used as a medium for Ethernet(ish) signals. And, households have a lot of wiring already in place as AC service to just about every room. But, that's where the similarities end. Household wiring can be, and often is, an utter mess of decades old patch jobs and 'cheats'.If you've a newer household with good copper wiring according to local code and installed by a competent electrician, these should work quite well and get a decent throughput of 200+ Mbs between outlets. (No, not 2000 Mbs, more like 200). This is perfectly fine for many applications and truth be told is just fine for most homeowners.However, if you've an older home with a mixture of wiring, oxidized outlets, bizarre AC panels, etc. The performance of these adapters will be a VERY mixed bag of performance and reliability. I use the 2000 series adapters for my own home which has had it's electrical work updated a decade ago and I get VERY nice performance of around 400Mbs. My In-Laws home howerver...well it's a hodge-podge of mixed wiring done mostly by my Father-In-Law and finding two good outlets was like playing a roulette wheel. In testing, I was lucky to get 20Mbs and the connections were unstable at best. For my in-laws who just want to watch Netflix far away from their 5G Router, this was okay.So, these should provide a quick, easy, decent alternative to running UTP cabling. But keep your expectations in check and consider the situation in which the adapters are being used.

I plugged the base unit into a power outlet off my home breaker panel and connected the unit to my router. I placed the receiver unit in a detached garage that is connected to the house via 130 feet of underground power cable. The unit booted and came up great, no problems at all. Wireless speed in garage was zero, now its a clean 50 to 60 mbs, not super fast, but its enough to stream movies and music.