D-Link DHP-303 Powerline HD Starter Kit

Rather than having to run new cables through your home or fiddle with a wireless network, the easiest way to set up a network at home is through the mains electrical wiring.

You can buy the adaptors individually, but you need at least two to create a network. The two-piece D-Link DHP-303 kit is a good way to get started.

Using the adaptors was easy. We connected one of them to the home router in our front room and the other to a PC in another room (each time using the supplied network cable), then just plugged each of them into a nearby power socket.

It took about 15 seconds for the two adaptors to connect to each other, and in no time at all we were watching the BBC iPlayer on the test PC. You do not need to install any software to use the adaptors, but there is a security button on each adaptor that allows you to prevent any additional ones from connecting without your permission.

As the name implies, the Starter Kit uses the latest Powerline HD adaptors, which have data transfer speeds just over twice as fast as the previous generation of similar devices. That makes them ideal for tasks such as streaming high-definition video which require a fast network.

These adaptors use a networking standard called Universal Powerline Association (UPA). This means that D-Link’s adaptors will only work with devices from other manufacturers that also use the UPA standard.

They will not work with devices that use the Homeplug networking standard, so there is a potential problem if you are already using Homeplug adaptors.

Our only real complaint is that these high-speed adaptors are more expensive than the standard versions, which are still widely available and perfectly adequate for video services such as the iPlayer.

However, the D-Link DHP-303 Starter Kit is still worth considering if you have house full of people who are clogging up the home network with music and video streaming and downloads.