The companies backing G.hn—the ITU standard for home networks that rely on a home’s existing powerline, telephone line, and coaxial cable—have for years been touting the technology’s speed, versatility, and general suitability for high-bandwidth applications; particularly streaming media and online games. Up to now, we haven’t been able to test any of those claims since there have been no consumer products based on the standard.
There is now, but Comtrend’s PG-9172 Powerline ethernet Adapter is leading the G.hn charge in underwhelming fashion. While performing respectably in our Jperf tests, their average throughput of 265Mbps was well below the nearly 350 Mbps that D-Link’s DHP-701AV delivered using proprietary enhancements to the rival HomePlug AV2 MIMO standard. The PG-9172 also was slower than ZyXel’s PLA 5405. But it did manage to beat the stuffing out of Netgear’s PL1200. The ZyXel and the Netgear are also based on the HomePlug AV2 MIMO standard.
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