HomeLink Phoneline Network Card

HomeLink

Phoneline Network Card



A handy card to connect a small network
of PCs through a telephone line

Targeted at homes

and small offices, this network card allows you to connect your PCs

using your existing telephone line. It''s similar to a regular RJ45 UTP

cable network connection, the difference being that the connectivity

is through an ordinary RJ11 telephone cable. This card is handy for

a small network of, say, four to five computers and you don''t need to

spend extra on a hub. You can connect a maximum of 25 PCs by daisy-chaining

them. The HomeLink Phoneline can also be used when the PCs are located

in different parts of the house, as long as you have multiple points

for your telephone line.

When you install

the card, there are online instructions that guide you to connectivity.

The package consists of two network cards with two RJ11 and one RJ45

jack. All you have to do is plug one end of the telephone cable into

the phone jack on the wall and the other into the RJ11 slot for all

the computers that you want to connect.

We tested the card

by setting up a network in PCQ Labs. Setting up a network was quite

simple with instructions from the manual. We installed the cards on

two machines and then plugged the RJ11phone cables from both the machines

to ports on a same phone line. After that we connected the phone to

another empty RJ11 slot on the card. This enables you to use the telephone

and transfer data over the phone line simultaneously. We then tried

transferring data from one computer to another and also using the phone

at the same time. It worked fine with good data transfer rates and absolutely

no disturbance in the phone line.The card uses FDM

(Frequency Division Multiplexing), which divides data traveling on the

phone line into different frequencies. This allows you to transfer data,

as well as use the telephone line for a conversation simultaneously.

However, this scenario won''t work if you use the telephone line to connect

to the Internet.

The package also

comes with a proxy server called Wingate Home, so you can share your

Internet connection by setting it up on one of your PCs. But you''ll

need a separate telephone line for doing this. If you don''t have one,

you could daisy chain the PCs and use the telephone line for sharing

the Net connection. For this, you need to connect one PC to the telephone

line and daisy chain the rest with it.

The card has a rated

transfer rate of 1 Mbps over the telephone line, which is good enough

for file and print sharing, e-mail, Web surfing, etc, over a small network.

As the PC also has an RJ45 cable, you can always upgrade your network

to a 10 Mbps Ethernet Network. Both RJ11 and RJ45 connections can''t

be used at the same time.

The package ships

with two sets of network cards and cables, a manual, and an installation

disk. The card is a good buy given its features and performance.