I've been playing around with various powerline, phone-line, and Coax networking for years. But I always give up in frustration eventually. My main concern always comes down to a basic lack of useful information about what is happening on my network. With my ethernet network, I can use a half-decent managed switch (and they're not even that expensive any more) to collect a pile of performance information about the behaviour of the network. I can monitor traffic patters with mrtg and - heck, even basic things like being able to ping the switch to see if it is alive using nagios really helps.
But with the alternative networking technologies, there is an appalling absense of any such info. Where can I find a basic managed homeplug switch? I'd be happy enough to even be able to ping the thing! Even better - snmp monitoring and management. Next step - vlan management. If I have 8 homeplug adapters in my network, why can't I use a couple vlans to manage the traffic between them instead of having them all on one big "just trust us. you don't need to see what's happening in there" network?
We read other threads on this forum about people's homeplug devices losing their config and then inadvertantly dropping them onto a neighbor's network. Wow! And the solution is to press a few buttons and watch for flashing lights and "just trust us. It's now secure. Thumbs up. Carry on."?
Please.
I want to know (for example) that my network is potentially exposed to two different neighbor networks, and that they are not interfering too badly because their SNR is quite a bit lower than my own network - I should be able to find all of this out by using readily available software to monitor my network. I can do all of this kind of thing with WiFi and with ethernet. Why not with Powerline?
Very frustrating. It shouldn't be such a mystery.
But with the alternative networking technologies, there is an appalling absense of any such info. Where can I find a basic managed homeplug switch? I'd be happy enough to even be able to ping the thing! Even better - snmp monitoring and management. Next step - vlan management. If I have 8 homeplug adapters in my network, why can't I use a couple vlans to manage the traffic between them instead of having them all on one big "just trust us. you don't need to see what's happening in there" network?
We read other threads on this forum about people's homeplug devices losing their config and then inadvertantly dropping them onto a neighbor's network. Wow! And the solution is to press a few buttons and watch for flashing lights and "just trust us. It's now secure. Thumbs up. Carry on."?
Please.
I want to know (for example) that my network is potentially exposed to two different neighbor networks, and that they are not interfering too badly because their SNR is quite a bit lower than my own network - I should be able to find all of this out by using readily available software to monitor my network. I can do all of this kind of thing with WiFi and with ethernet. Why not with Powerline?
Very frustrating. It shouldn't be such a mystery.