Powerline adapters

Robert Brockway robert-5LEc/6Zm6xCUd8a0hrldnti2O/JbrIOy at public.gmane.org
Wed Sep 12 08:13:19 UTC 2012


On Mon, 10 Sep 2012, Giles Orr wrote:

> On 10 September 2012 11:38, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Anyone here using "Powerline" adapters?
>
> They've always fascinated me, but the impression I've had is that
> performance doesn't exactly match the ads.

We're currently back in Australia and using Powerline.  We get 40Mb/s with 
4 units connected.  We currently have 3 and are getting about 60Mb/s. 
Oddly enough Powerline performance degrades the more adapters you connect 
even if they are not in use.

Really this is fine for our needs since almost all traffic passes over our 
DSL anyway and so it constrained well below 60Mb/s.  Using Powerline means 
I avoided the expense and trouble of dropping cat5e/cat6 in the walls.  I 
might do it one day but have no plans to now that Powerline has been so 
successful for us.

I played with Powerline in Canada but we got abyssmal performance with the 
Aluminum wiring in our old house.  I don't know for certain that the 
Aluminum was the culprit but it seems plausible.

> Another thing to keep in mind is that in a shared house or apartment
> building, your network traffic could be sniffed.  (Let me know if I'm

Depends on how the building is wired I understand.  Certain devices 
installed by the electricity provider can act as a barrier through which 
no Powerline signals can pass.  This could be a good thing or a bad thing 
depending on where you want the signal to go.

> wrong, but I don't think these systems have any encryption.)

Yes you can encrypt the connections.  Generally it works like this:

* Press a button on one of the units..
* Now you have two minutes to press the button on each other unit..
* They then (iirc) accept a symmetric key from the first unit activated.

It should be fairly clear that this method is suspectible to intrusion if 
an attacker had a unit that was listening to the signal and picked up the 
symmetric key.  I suspect this is a largely theoretical attack however.

Cheers,

Rob

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