TRENDnet TPL-302E 200Mbps Powerline AV Fast Ethernet Adapter

First look at the TPL-302E 200Mbps Powerline AV Fast Ethernet Adapter you’ll kind of feel the unit is slightly on the bulky side. Being a gadget freak I like my devices small. Nevertheless considering this device is plugged into a power socket most likely it’ll be hidden away from view generally.

Setting up the TPL-302E 200Mbps Powerline AV Fast Ethernet Adapter is very easy. Thanks to Trendnet they sent us two of the above model for our testing. One device will be the remote adapter and the other will be local. If you don’t want to setup any encryption or QOS, plugging the two devices to their respective power sockets would do without any further configuration.

Installation:

First step is to install the provided Powerline AV Utility on one of your PC’s. Next select one of the TPL-302E’s as your remote adapter and connect it to a power socket closest to your network device (eg: Router). Note that any one of the TPL-302E adapters can be used as the remote & local device.

Make sure you note down the 12 digit password that’s written on the back of the remote adapter before plugging it into the power socket.

Connect the local adapter to the power socket where you would want to connect either a PC or any other interfacing device.

Your setup should now look something similar to below.

Next start the Powerline AV Utility and you’ll be offered with a screen as shown below. The remote adapter might not show up immediately, give it a few seconds.

The screen will show you the mac address of the device along with the firmware version installed.

Pressing the Network information button will show the current Transmission and receiving rates between the two devices. Note the 200Mbps rating given by Trendnet is theoretical rates based on ideal conditions. In our environment we were able to achieve upto 120Mbps during normal operation which is pretty good and certainly surpasses wireless network performance.

You can also setup QOS if you wish and assign higher priorities for traffic as you desire on your network. The included user manual gives a goodexplanation on this topic if you wish to use it.

Furthermore to ensure secure communication between the two devices you need to go into the “Network ID” interface. The DAK password is the password that we mentioned you had to write down initially before setup for the remote adapter. Network ID can be anything you wish to give. The TPL-302E supports Advanced AES encryption, ensuring secure communication between devices.