Home > Consumer Reviews > Linksys HPN200 HomeLink Phoneline 10M Network Card

4 computers networked over distances of up to 150 feet. Used existing phone lines. Easy setup, very fast, does not interfere with other phone uses. Drawback is no simple way (that I have found) to share a broadband connection. Linksys tech assistance quite limited. Internet sharing software included with system outdated and not upgradable and not supported by software publisher.

The first reviewer on this page suggests having someone look at your phone wire. Fuhgeddaboudit. 99.9% chance that it's just fine. The HomePNA 2.0 (www.homepna.org) technology used on this card and others like it is designed to deal with all kinds or normal and wierd phone wiring situations. Don't waste time or money having someone check out your phone wire... the technology developers already did that for you and made this stuff so that it would work.

To answer the reviewers other comment, an easy way to hook PC's and Printers by HPNA phoneline networking to a Cable/DSL connection is to use the Linksys HomePNA Cable/DSL router announced a month ago. Should be shipping in the late Feb timeframe. CHeck with Linksys on it... this is different than the bridge for sale in Amazon... the bridge makes you have to have a real IP address for each PC. The upcoming Router will allow you to share the one IP address you get from your cable/DSL company with all the stuff in the house. That's the deal you probably want.

I have a DSL modem, which I've been using for a while. I have another computer in another part of my house which, until recently, was used to access AOL via a dialup line.

I installed this phoneline network card on that computer, put PPPOE on it, modified the AOL access to go through a LAN, and bought the Linksys HomeLink Broadband Network Bridge. I connected the AOL computer to it via the this phoneline network card.

Now this computer access the internet via the DSL modem. It worked first time. No muss, no fuss. AOL access is now completely reliable, and it flies!

I was very impressed with how easy it was to make this work. I have some understanding of networking, but not a lot. If I can make this work, any literate person can.

I picked up a pair of these to run a simple network to another floor in our house. I already have a multi-tiered fast ethernet network, and this was just to put one computer in one room on the uppermost floor. I installed one in the computer to go upstairs and it worked like a charm with ethernet-like speeds (actually HPNA 10M cards can push 15-20 Mbps in good conditions, so I'm not suprised). The one I put in the ICS (internet connection sharing) computer to allow the upstairs computer to use the file server and print server downstairs would blue screen the ICS machine within five minuite of bootup, every time. Removing the card resolved the issue, even though the drivers were still installed.

Trying to isolate the issue, realizing that placing the card in a different machine would do the same thing, it was resolved by placing it in a different computer wired to the ethernet infrastructure, but it would bluescreen after every day or two (running Windows 2000). Rats, no dice, so I had to return the card.

Before returning it, however, I did call up Linksys technical support and after explaining that I am qualified on NT and 2000 Server operating systems, they sent me to the right person right away. As it turns out, there is an issue with this card running on i8xx series of chipsets with Windows NT, 2000 or XP. Since these are 80% of the computers with Celeron or Pentium III processors, it would get one star. For working as well as it did when it was working, however, it gets two.

To sum it up, be careful and check the return policy when you purchase these. While I would purchase them again if I needed them and I was pretty sure they would work with no issue, currently there are too buggy. Go purchase someone else's HPNA 10M cards, they all use the same Broadcom chipset and so the performance is exactly the same. Now excuse me while I purchase a 3com.

Hi, I have one card installed in a gateway machine, and another USB homelink phoneline connected to the laptop. I was able to get this working in an hour. After a few months, the card connected to the gateway stoped responding, and it seems it had a hardware problem. I called up the linksys customer service about 5 times now, and they were not able to issue me a RMI number to get this card replaced. I later got another card for a cheaper rate to use until I get this replaced if possible. If you buy this, you are on your own.. dont expect any customer support.