D-Link Powerline AV Network Adapter Kit (DHP-307AV)

I know this product already has good reviews and I wanted to just share my story/2 cents on it as well. I've been using Wifi in my house for years now. I have been running my desktop PC's off our Wifi since the start. My last PC was only running Wireless G but performed great. I was even playing games like CoD MF 1 & 2 along with other editions and never had real lag issues.I built a newer PC and have tried Wireless N usb and PCI adapters. I was getting fair signal and my speeds were fine, but I built this PC to run Battlefield 3 which it did without issue. However in the online multiplayer, even on servers with 18ms ping times, I would often experience some lag multiple times each match. It was driving me up a wall because I knew my Wifi strength was good and even purchased a signal boosting antenna. All my efforts couldn't help with the lag but everything else was fine on the PC.Then I read in some forums how WiFi typically operates in a half-duplex mode where it essentially can't send and receive packets at the same time. I thought maybe that had something to do with things and that my new game just requires more packets to be sent and received than previous online shooters. I purchased the D-Link powerline unit and couldn't be happier. I don't recall if it's my PC NIC or cables that are limiting my connection to 100MBps, but I know the product says it does up to 200MBps.Either way, even at half the max speed everything works great. No more lag in the game and this product was so easy to setup as most others should be too. I've ditched the WiFi hassle on my new desktop and would recommend this product or others if you ever come across serious issues. I should also mention that my speedtest.net bandwidth performance didn't change between WiFi and this portline unit. That's why I'm left to believe it wasn't my connection causing lag issues.I'm not the homeowner in my house and our modem is across the house and I wouldn't have any easy way to run a LAN cable to my PC location. I was really just stuck with doing LAN over Power or trying to move my modem. Since the cable company installed a phone/internet modem and had some special wiring into our phone port, I didn't want to risk trying to relocate the modem to a closer room which I could then run a LAN cable to. It may not be the most practical reason to buy one of these units, but it sure helped my cause and I figure I can always use this unit or expand off the 2 adapters I have in the future.

Background: I recently built a detached shop (metal sided) which is about 70 feet from the main house. Wireless reception for both cell phones and wireless router was OK when the garage doors were open but once they closed, dropped off. I purchased the DHP-307 AV thinking i could bring internet to my detached shop but achieved marginal success. It seemed to work fine inside the house, but the shop got intermittent connectivity with a lot of drop outs. Bottom line, seems like a good product to use in a single building, size probably matters.My experience with the On Sale however was not so good.I purchased the DHP 307 AV and got the a good price and the product arrived on time. Thinking maybe i had a bad unit, i decided to exchange the product for another one, that's when things got annoying. I contacted On Sale for return instructions received instructions in "Ching-glish" . It took 2 more emails to finally understand them! All follow on communications were about the same. Once On Sale had received my return, they claimed that i returned a DHP 306 in the DHP 307 box and they wanted the DHP 307 back. I don't know if a DHP 306 even exist. After several cryptic mails from them, i decided to cancel the order. I will update this review if my account isn't credited in a day or two. Bottom line, be aware of possible communication issues if you have to deal directly with On Sale.

We bought an old brick house and have spent a year walking around the various floors looking for a good two bar signal. It got so bad I once found my 12 and 15 year old children in the same room willingly! The problem probably stems from the heavy construction of our house as no signal seems to pass through more than one wall.This d-link system seems to have done the trick. I rigged two pairs of these couplers with three $20 d-link routers around the house. Except for the basement, I think we are good to go.Installation is a little tricky. The units interfere with one another, so order of plugging in is important. However there is a good diagnostic program, and when you hook a laptop to one unit and see all the other units, you are likely done. I found that plugging in last the unit that actually connects to the internet, worked wonders. The speed between units seems directly related to distance and our longest run yielded a speed of about 13mbps. This is out of a maximum of 200mbps but still fine to run a computer. You probably couldn't use this speed for video. Most of the other unit to unit speeds were 60-100mbps. There are also some security settings for the network, just set them pairwise with units that are in close outlets and once they all have the same security settings, move the units to more distant locations. In retrospect, I wish I had not spent any time on this feature because I'm not sure what it really protects - stealing internet from an outside outlet?The last question will be longer term stability of the network. I'll update if noteworthy.