Zyxel AV2000 Powerline Ethernet Adapter Starter Kit | Pass-Thru Power | Plug & Play | MIMO | HomePlug AV2 | 2 x Gigabit Ethernet | Ideal for Smart TVs, On-Line Games, 4K Streaming | PLA5456KIT

I have four computers in my personal studio, all connected to an Ethernet switch. I used to have my cable modem/router next to the switch but when I upgraded my home entertainment setup, I moved my cable modem/router to the living room so I could run Ethernet to my Xbox and smart TV.My attempts to run Ethernet from my living room to my studio were thwarted by the pitch of the roof of my house over the room in which my studio was located. I couldn’t get to the area where I needed to run the Ethernet cable down inside the wall, so I was stuck using WiFi. My connectivity was sporadic (to say the least) and my throughput was terrible. On a good day, I was getting 12-15 Mbps downstream (MAYBE), and “good days” were rare. I use Synergy (virtual KVM software) to work across six monitors on four PC’s and it was all but unusable over WiFi.Enter these powerline adapters. I plugged one into the outlet adjacent to my cable modem/router and connected it with one of the included Ethernet cables. I plugged the other one into an outlet in my studio and connected it to my Ethernet switch with the other included cable. Press and hold a button on the powerline adapter for two seconds, do the same thing on the other one, and you have a secure connection between the two.I am now getting consistent 70+ Mbps speeds in my studio. The plan I have with my ISP is capped at 75 Mbps. I haven’t checked the actual speed between the two powerline adapters, only the downstream/upstream speeds I’m getting from my internet connection through the powerline adapters. The indicator lights on the adapters themselves say I’m getting over 80 Mbps but again, I have yet to actually test it.These things are worth every penny if you need to extend your network with something more reliable than WiFi. They’re simple to install and there is essentially zero configuration. You take them out of the box, plug them in, and they work.The only negative criticism I can offer up is that the top of the adapter is a bit too large and renders the other outlet useless if you need to plug in a wall wart or something with a grounding prong. Other than that, these are great!

I waited a couple weeks after starting to use these before writing this review. They were simple to set up, had them going in less than 5 minutes.Ad caveats: Your experience may differ wildly depending on the quality and electrical noise on the wiring you are traversing. (fans, microwaves, other appliances, etc) This is about MY experience, which is all I can attest to.That being said, these are working absolutely flawlessly for me. I put them in between my router and my ISP handoff, so the only traffic going over them is internet traffic, never my internal network.My isp gives me 100 down, 100 up.Every single time I test connectivity to the internet from my internal network I get 100 down, 100 up.I can't say how fast it would go if it was bridging traffic inside my internal network, but these have made me stop worring about the hardwire (which runs under floors, beneath carpets and up walls) between my garage where the ISP handoff is to the room in my house where my networking is set up.I've tested it with all the usual suspects: microwave, vacuum cleaner, fans, a blender, evan a large UPS unit which backs up my main computers.100 down. 100 up.I couldn't possibly be happier.

Short Version: Don't bother with this one.Long Version: After researching for a powerline setup for several days and reading several reviews and articles like TheWireCutter and CNET, decided to pull the trigger with ZyXEL PLA5456. The reason why I wanted to go with a powerline setup is due to on-going problems with wifi. Apple Airport Extreme to be exact. After receiving the product from Amazon and testing it out, I immediately regret purchasing it. Setting it up was easy. Plug and play. Similar to majority of the powerline adapters out there. Once the 2 powerline adapters were plugged in and connected, I started to perform basic network tests. The two powerline adapters are plugged on the opposite side of the house. One being on the bottom floor and the other being on the second floor. House is 3000 sq/ft built in 2005. Quality of electricity wiring in the house, hopefully shouldn't cause any problems. With a background in networking for at least 8 years, the first test I performed was a ping test to my default gateway (router). The product failed miserably. Packet loss of close to 30% over 100 pings. Howver, latency to gateway was between 3ms - 8ms which was good. Compared to TP-Link TL-PA4010 kit in which I borrowed from a friend, it was able to perform ping tests with 0 packet loss over 1000 pings before and after testing out the ZyXEL PLA5456. Latency was between 3-5ms which was great as well. More consistent. Standard deviation of latency was very low. Tried several combination with the poperline setup. With and without anything plugged into the passthrough outlet. Same results. Performed speedtests with ISP's speedtest (Charter). Was able to download and upload at max speeds. However, I was able to see that the speeds would drop at certain periods of the tests which is most likely caused by the dropped in packets. At this price point and being that the product is new, I would expect it being able to perform better than a $30 unit (TP-Link TL-PA4010). Unfortunately it didn't. This is definitely going back in the box and shipped back to Amazon.Setup:Macbook Pro Retina 15"Fortigate 60D as Firewall/RouterZyXEL PLA5456TP-Link TL-PA4010 AV500 (borrowed from a friend)Update: Jan 16, 2016Decided to order a TP-LinkTL-PA8010P. Hopefully it works as great as the TP-Link TL-PA4010 AV500 or better.