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Turn on, plug in and drop out: of wireless security hassles

by Mary Ford on September 6th, 2006

Netgear Wall-Plug XE104 delivers powerline web connectivity!

Wireless connections are such a hassle these days, especially with new security alerts arriving with alarming headlines about wireless vulnerabilities. Wireless is so convenient that it’s tempting to throw caution to the wind and just do it. Well, now you don’t have to go wireless; you can achieve almost the same convenience and also achieve blazing speeds with a new device, which enables web access over powerlines. The August 16, 2006, Wall Street Journal featured an encouraging review about the Netgear 85mbps Wall-Plugged Ethernet Switch’s ability to transport web access seamlessly and securely via powerline (ie, the electrical outlets in your house).

I wanted to see for myself if the Netgear 85Mbps Wall-Plugged Ethernet Switch is everything it’s touted as: secure, simple, fast, and eliminating the need for ethernet cable strung throughout a house. Our cat6 ethernet cables are all frayed and crimped; it’s time to discard them. First stop: CompUSA: the tech guys didn’t know what I was talking about.

Eventually, I located where the Wall-Plug should have been, in, but wasn’t. In its place sat the XE102 Wall-Plug, which runs at a slower speed. While I examined the XE102, CompUSA’s speaker system blared on about how they have the latest technology. So, I and my hubby left and we drove to more local stores. We found none of our local stores carried the XE104: Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, Office Depot, etc. Undaunted, I searched online and soon found out that it was sold out, at least those wall plugs priced at $85; however, you can find the wall-plug for $100 via mail and available from RadioShack or other vendors. I eventually located a RadioShack and got to examine the XE104.

It’s so simple to set up that even I could do it:. You have to buy a pair: 2, not 1, but 2 wall-plugs. You can buy them as a kit, or separately. Each plug simply plugs directly into a wall. Netgear provides a 3 foot ethernet cable with each wall-plug. Plug one plug into your wall next to your router, power it up and run one cable from that wallplug to your router which is connected to your cable modem or your FiOS (lucky us, we have Verizon FiOS). You are half done! Take the other wall-plug and plug it into an electrical outlet where you’d like to put your laptop or desktop; connect the power supply, connect the cable from the plug to your computer. You are done.

That’s it! There is absolutely no software or fiddling with your network, unless you have hardcoded your mac addresses to ip addresses,; usually I do that, but eventually I got lazy; just let dhcp assign network addresses for my devices. I limit the number of devices permitted to connect to our router, however, by restricting the range of ip addresses available to connect to the router.

On the down side: the indicator lights are so bright: electric blue and new grass green. I’d plan to tape over them. I don’t like blinding my eyes just to prove I’m connected. More worriesome, NetGear advises connecting the wall-plug directly into the wall. What if you have continual powerline fluctuations, sags and surges, like we’ve had all some summer long, in Maryland. That expensive plug will burn out quickly, I think. But who cares: after all, it’s fast, it’s secure. It’s even encrypted and you can assign a password to your wallplug if you have no need to share your network with your apartment neighbor.

Note: I have yet to find out if the wall plug could fail and allow 120 Volts house current to enter the router or the ethernet card in a computer and potentially overload them and/or destroy them, should they fail. I will phone Netgear to find out if this concern is unfounded and how they addressed it with this Wall-Plug.

I’m looking forward to removing the cables snaked around our house, under the carpets, under the bed (for that laptop peek at the web), into the office and even the TV room, so we could surf our TV.

Our set up browser is primitive and without the benefit of spanky new operating systems, the TV runs on an outdated Mobile OS). However, the inability to set cookies and popups basically wrecks the TV web surfing experience. Yet, there is something oddly satisfying about surfing the web on a humongous 61″ TV! However, you soon realize that surfing the web on a billboard TV is stupid and inconvenient. On the other hand, TV web surfing large image sites, especially NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day archive, is a total blast! I don’t intend to risk sacrificing our TV’s electronics to a wall-plug ethernet switch, however. Guess I’ll leave that big TV’s ethernet cable in place, after all.
Sources:

While you surf the Web, who’s surfing you? [source: International Herald Tribune, France - Aug 22, 2006]

To Your Entire Home [Wall Street Journal , NY - Aug 16, 2006] more info: Google Search for XE104

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POSTED IN: Articles, Beginner, Hardware, How-To, Network Connectivity, Wifi