Phonex Neverwire USB

Reviews: Networking

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Richard Poelling
Kurtis
Phonex
Apr. 17, 2004

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Introduction

Networking. This word has been known to strike fear and terror into the hearts of many. Words with similar effect are TCP/IP, router, and Bob Hope Christmas Special. With many homes having multiple machines and very few with built-in Cat5 cabling, there becomes a need for either running your own cable, paying someone else to do it, or to find another solution. What I have in front of me now is the latter of these choices. Phonex makes products using a standard known as Homeplug. This standard uses your existing wiring as a stand-in for the Cat5 cable which is normally used. What this means is that there is no extra wiring, unless you are dying to throw another wall plug in.

We have already reviewed the Neverwire 14 from Phonex here, but what we have now is an offshoot of that product. It is the Neverwire USB. It required the standard Neverwire 14, but instead of using a second Neverwire 14 like before, you can now use a small USB plug. It is this USB device that I will be testing.

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Page 1 of 4

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Opening the Box, Initial Setup & Network Setup
Page 3: Testing
Page 4: Final Analysis & Conclusion

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3 User Comments

1 - Posted by A Person on April 17, 2004 - 11:51 pm

I decided to try this technology out back in December so I bought the Gigafast Homeplug products. Well, after I bought the stuff I realized that the software doesn't support windoze 98, and considering that I have 2 win98 boxes this was a big disapointment. After setting up the rest of the computers I was informed by the Gigafast software that my power lines were poor quality and I was only going to be able to get 1Mb/s max. So I returned the stuff and went with 802.11g.

I have a feeling, based on my experience with Gigafast in the past, that my house (built in the 80's) does not have that bad of power lines. Hopefully anyone who uses Phonex has a better experience with them than I did with Gigafast.

Eventhough I sound bitter, am really happy I ended up going with wireless; the bandwidth is higher than my ISP can ever provide me and my few wireless devices work everywhere in my house.

2 - Posted by Kurtis on April 18, 2004 - 12:24 am

i have an 802.11b wireless network in my house and i love it. no regrets. i'd upgrade to 802.11g, but i don't really need to so I'll save myself the $ for now heh

3 - Posted by Rich on April 18, 2004 - 4:33 pm

I was worried that I might have problems with the wiring in my house. The house (and wiring) is circa 1968. I have fuses, not the circuit breakers that are found in most modern construction, and only 100 Amp service instead of 200 Amp. Why I haven't blown more fuses than I have is still beyond me. Amazingly, when you look at the graphs in the review, you can see that entire house has no problems. I am still looking at implementing a wireless solution in my home, yet have not settled on one yet. The biggest problem with the Phonex was finding a free plug to plug into. For some reason most of my wall outlets are full already. :P

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