Phoneline Networks?

styxlord asks: "Has anyone set up a Phone Line Network at home (or the office for that matter)? Do they work? How do they compare to 10Mbps ethernet networks? Are there Linux drivers for any of the major ones? Does it interfere with DSL or voice on phone lines? I've seen offerings from Netgear, 3Com,LinkSys, Intel and Diamond to name a few. One of these in the Linux box which is then connected to a cable/DSL modem would make a very nice gateway. "

No drivers that I know of

[randombit]

I've actually been looking at this today, for a DSL line to share between myself and some other people I'm sharing a house with.

According the the people I've asked, and web sites I've looked at, no Linux drivers exist for these cards. Hopefully I'm wrong.

The older cards are 1 mbit/sec, which is pretty pitiful. The new version (I think it's called HomePNA 2) theoretically runs at 10 mbit/sec, but I don't know about real-world performance. You might want to check homepna.org and/or homepna.com for more info. Good luck!

Well we did it the cheap way

[Pilchie]

We wired a lan using phone lines, but we did it the hard way. We cut the ends off, and soldered on ethernet ends. It performed very well, although I am sure that this is not quite what you wanted.
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"soldered"?

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Were you just using shorthand or is this a troll?
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Farallon

[jruschme]

IIRC, Farallon makes an Ethernet to phoneline adapter (HOMELine Ethernet). I would think that that would work our of the box with Linux.

Not that great...

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried the LinkSys Homelink 2mb kit (PC Card and the 'Broadband' bridge) and was disappointed. It wasn't really the speed, but the restrictions imposed by the physical aspects of the system.

Know going in that...

1) The homelink and other Home PNA devices cannot be connected to the phone jack using a splitter. If you try it, you will not even be able to get them talking (and it's not documented anywhere). If you have alot of available outlets (located where you want to use the computer) that's not a big deal.

2) The 10mb spec has been formalized, but only a few PCI cards support it. If you buy a bridge or PCMCIA card today, you'll be pissed in a couple months.

3) 2MB is slow. It works well for web and most internet access, but I wouldn't want to use it to mount remote drives.

I believe that Linux support for Home PNA has been in the kernel for a while.

Check out www.homepna.org for the manufacturers' view and www.homepna.com for reviews (no idea how independant).

I ended up exchanging it for a pair of Aviator cards. It's better for me than the phoneline stuff, but it too has a bunch of problems. I wanted to hook a laptop to my existing lan without having to run cat5. When I look at this again in the fall, I'll probably get a 10Mb WaveLan card and 'access point'.

Intel Version

[foo22]

I got the intel Anypoint version (1 mbps), it was very slow had no linux drivers and was unstable (more than Windows normally). It was a bad buy in all respects. If at all possible I would recomend drilling holes in your house and ethernetting it. If that is not an option than you could try (for a lot more money) to go wireless, they're really cool but not really worth the investment if you can just stick to ethernet.