Rosewill RPLC-200PKIT Powerline Adapter Kit Review

By Hank Tolman

Manufacturer: Rosewill, Inc.
Product Name: RPLC 200P Powerline Adapater Kit
Model Number: RPLC-200PKIT
UPC: 0898745063349
Price As Tested: $54.99 (Newegg / Amazon)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Rosewill.

WiFi is everyone these days; coffee shops, super markets, retail stores. If you are like most people, you also have WiFi at home. I think you would hard pressed to find an ISP that doesn’t provide a wireless router with their services. WiFi is great. Right up until you need it to do something very important and it just doesn’t quite cut it. Well, there is a solution. A device that will turn the power lines already run in your house into veritable network cables, ensuring that you always have a connection when and where you need it. In this article, Benchmark Reviews is testing the Rosewill RPLC-200PKIT Powerline Adapter Kit.

Believe it or not, I live in a home with more than one room. I actually live in a house with more than one floor. My Verizon provided router is upstairs in my office. My HTPC is downstairs in the living room. I also usually use a laptop for working when I’m downstairs. Everything runs great, until it doesn’t. Try explaining to a four year old why Dora the Explorer stops to buffer every few seconds. It isn’t a fun experience. Alternatively, imagine you boss calls and asks you to email him a file while you are enjoying dinner. He needs it immediately. You grab your laptop to send the file and, of course, your WiFi chooses that moment to be finicky.

I’ve been frustrated by WiFi in my own home enough times that I have considered trying to wire the whole house with Cat-5e. That is, however, a costly and time-consuming effort that I don’t really want to try. What it did, though, was get me interested in powerline adapters. I’m sure you heard of them by now. Powerline adapters, at the most basic level, turn the wiring in your home into network cables, with each outlet becoming a potential connection point. I’ve been very impressed with this technology so far, and I’m excited to test out the Rosewill RPLC-200PKIT against the Trendnet powerline adapters I’ve been using so far.

Features

– Outlet Current: 220VAC 16A Maximum, 110VAC 20A Maximum
– Extended Range: Up to 984ft (300m) via power line
– Power Consumption:
– <2.7W Operation
– 1.6W Idle
– 0.34W Standby (enters standby mode after 30 mins without data transmit detected, and automatically back to operation mode when detecting data transmit)
– Extra Outlet with Pass-Through Outlet Design for more convenient use
– Supports IPv6/MLDv2
– Maximum PLC support:
-Capable of extending up to total of 8 Powerline adapters in one environment
– Build-in Fixed Quality of Service (QoS) enhances VoIP, media, and Data streaming quality:
– ToS, Support up to 4-level type QoS, Support up to 8-level VLAN priority field
– IGMP snooping for multicast to multiple unicast mapping
– QoS Priority: (Fixed)
– 1st: Network Management Frames and Voice
– 2nd: HD Video and Music Streaming
– 3rd: Data Streaming
– Buttons:
-Reset: Restore the factory default settings
-Security: Set the network password automatically
– Plug-and-play connection for any Ethernet device (Computers, game consoles, printers)
– Built-in Noise filter to reduce power interference and enhance data transmission quality.
– Easy security setup

Specifications