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.