D-Link DHP-301 review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 15 Aug 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: David Ludlow

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

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Review
Specs

D-Link is the latest company to offer powerline network adaptors with its DHP-301 networking kit.

While the other kits we've seen use HomePlug AV, D-Link's adaptors use the alternative UPA DHC standard. While this is incompatible with HomePlug products, the standard is backwards compatible, so you can run slower 100Mbit/s adaptors on the same network.

The adaptors come unconfigured and can talk to any other UPA DHC adaptors that haven't had encryption turned on. D-Link ships some simple configuration software on a CD, which allows you to assign a password to your kit and encrypt the network traffic.

We ran our usual throughput tests and were impressed with the high speed. While not as quick as wired Ethernet, the results were similar to high-performance Draft-N wireless networking kit. There's enough bandwidth for file sharing and streaming HD video.

The price is also really good, and the DHP-301 costs a little less than our previous favourite kit, Devolo's HomePlug AV dLAN 200 AVdesk Starter Kit. As long as you're not looking to add to your existing HomePlug network, this kit is a great choice.

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