Brian's Brain

A week ago, I told you about my recent-past inability to keep a reliable connection active between my Linksys router and my two D-Link 802.11b network webcams. Last night (or, if you prefer, earlier this morning) when I rolled into the weekend home at 1AM after staying to record the Disco Biscuits set at the High Sierra Music Festival, both webcams were predictably incommunicado again. Before hitting the sack, I power-cycled both webcams and unplugged the Black and Decker EX410-2P-TP1 ultrasonic pest repellers. When I woke up this morning, the DCS-5300W was once again showing the 'blinking red light of connectivity death'. As I suspected all along, the EX410-2P-TP1s aren't the culprit.

I give up. ;-) I've set up a four-node HomePlug 1.0 Turbo powerline network, based on Aztech HL105E adapters. I initially paired them in close-proximity AC outlets, then moved them to their final locations; one direct-connected to the Linksys router, two others connected to the webcams, and the fourth connected to a D-Link 5-port switch which also tethers to a Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player and a ReplayTV 4040. As you can see, from the graphic below, the powerline spurs are stable, although the furnace (whose fan motor is a potential source of injected noise) isn't currently running thanks to balmy temperatures and our geodesic dome's energy efficiency:

Don't get too excited about the speeds reported by the PowerPacket utility. As you'll see in my upcoming August 2 hands-on cover story on networking benchmarks, real-life UDP and (especially) TCP transfer speeds are a fraction of the PHY rates reported by vendors' tools (whether they be for conventional wired, powerline or wireless adapters). When I get a chance, I'll run Iperf on this powerline network and let you know how it really performs.

With that said, after four hours the webcams are still working fine (I'll report back via a followup to this post if they fail in the future), and the Aztechs deliver sufficient bandwidth for smooth video frame rates. I've only found one glitch; the DCS-5300W's Installation Wizard utility is no longer able to 'see' the webcam, whereas it was formerly able to do so over the Wi-Fi connection. Although the HomePlug 1.0 Turbo adapters are running v1.6 firmware, this may be a lingering network incompatibility in light of problems I've mentioned before. I'll forward the issue to Intellon and report back to you when I hear back from them. The ReplayTV's receiving network updates, and I was surprised to find a v2.3 firmware upgrade available for the HD-A1 (considering v2.2 was just released less than two weeks ago), which I successfully downloaded and installed. Consider me pretty pleased so far!

While I'm discussing the network up here, I'll mention one other piece of equipment I recently added to it. I've written several times before about Hawking's HBB1 QoS processor, which is tethered to the DSL connection at our primary home; a similar device from Linksys (the OGV200) now handles VoIP prioritization for the weekend home network. Both units are based on Ubicom's StreamEngine processors. The OGV200 was a breeze to set up; I inserted it in-between the DSL modem and router and, after a few minutes' worth of network parameter interrogation, it was up and running. It even had the latest firmware version already installed.

Followup: It's 8:30PM PST, and the DCS-5300W is still up and running. The DCS-1000W, however, is not. I'm now beginning to suspect heat-related operational issues with the unit (which is over five years old, although it's been rarely used during that time). The front room that this particular webcam is installed in (looking outside) gets pretty warm in the summertime, although the webcam is itself not directly exposed to the sun. I'll swap it out for a DCS-5300G next time I'm up there.

*In case you don't recognize the reference