NETGEAR XE102 Wall-Plugged Ethernet Bridge

Even though i had a friend who swore by this product , I could never get it to work. Netgear support staff said my house was too big and since I had three circuit panels that might be the problem. Ended up going with a d-link router and range extender.

I've had a pair of these for a long time and needed to expand my home network to the master bedroom (for a Roku box) and the other side of the den. The new - used, actually - units plugged in, synched up, and all done. My house is 30+ years old, but the wiring is good and has apparently never been added to, other than one new outlet in the family room. The result was a network extension that was up and running about five minutes after I walked into the house.A comment to the folks that are complaining that the technology is no good...powerline Ethernet is essentially the same as wired coax Ethernet, with all the reflectance, attenuation, and interference issues that coax has. And it's running over unconditioned cable with AC power on it. The AC can be coming into your house with noise on it, your house appliance motors create noise, and any strong source of RF can induce noise. Kinks, nicks and breaks in the wire (e.g., every outlet, splice, wire-nut, switch and breaker) cause reflections and attenuation. And power conditioners like the ones found in most surge protectors and UPS boxes, and in some breaker panels, block the signals altogether.If you're going to write a negative review, first plug two units back to back and test them. If that fails you've got a bad unit, otherwise you have bad wiring.

Overall I am very happy with the Netgear XE102. I have two Macs (running OS X 10.2 and 10.3) and an old laptop running Win95. The Macs are in my second floor home office, the laptop is in the family room, the cable modem and router are in the basement. (The cable company offered "free installation" of broadband service; this turned out to mean "we'll hook up a cable modem at the point where our cable enters your house, and if that turns out to be the basement and you happen to not have your computer there, well, you can schedule further installation for an additional charge.") The Macs and a network printer are attached to a hub which connects to the XE102 in the office.With three XE102 units (basement, office, family room) I have all my PCs hooked up to the Internet and functional. No additional configuration was needed, although I could have used VirtualPC on one of my Macs to set up security if I wanted to (we live in a standalone house, so no one else taps into our electrical system; if we lived in an apartment, I would definitely have activated the security setup, which involves putting all three units on the same password). Speeds are consistently over 10Mbps (faster than the cable modem) and, once the units were set up, we have needed no additional fussing with them. The Macs can see the Windows laptop and vice versa, and file transfers work fine (well, as well as file transfers work in a Mac/Windows environment). The laptop can even print to the network printer upstairs.Note of caution: when first plugging in the XE102s, be patient. It took at least half an hour before the first two units found each other. The third unit also did not jump into the network immediately (and pulling it out of the wall socket and plugging it in repeatedly only slowed down the process). After all three found each other, however, I could take any one, disconnect it from the wall, plug it in at another spot (my wife likes to take the laptop onto our back deck, which has an outdoor power plug), and have immediate connectivity, anywhere in the house.The units get a little warm, but not alarmingly so. The three indicator lights are excellent for indicating status, so long as you do not want to know anything more than, "Yes, it's working."I recommend the XE102 for anyone who wants to connect network points within the house without running cables or fussing with WLANs, and certainly for anyone trying to connect devices in a mixed environment.FOOTNOTE: The XE102 units also work well with XE103 and XE104 85mbps units. You can have a mixed network of the 11mbps and 85mbps units, and speeds from point-to-point will be the speed of the slower unit, but with no impact on the speeds between two fast units.

I already own the wireless version of this product that consists of a wired bridge and a wireless transmitter that works very well.I bought this to create an additional wired connection. What a mistake. I had the same experience that another reviewer had with Netgear tech support. I was told this would only work if all adapters were on the same electrical circuit. In order to give this the old college try I also contacted a local networking professional who came to the house to try and get this adapter linked up with the rest of my system.$100 later he came to the same conclusion as tech support, but he also reprogrammed my wireless router so that my signal is able to be picked up throughout the house. So technically speaking, I don't need the other Netgear stuff I own either.This is supposed to be plug and play. It's more like plug and curse.Returned this two weeks ago, still waiting for credit from Amazon.