A few years ago we read a news story about someone who had figured out how to provide homes with a broadband internet connection through their mains power supply. Trials continue, apparently, but services may never be possible because of interference caused by the huge voltages that run through the national grid cable.

At a domestic level, however, data can run through wires in harmony with electricity, giving home users a simple way to connect PCs and devices around the home. This is particularly helpful if you have had problems setting up Wifi connections, although some power socket network devices have Wifi options too, removing the need for trailing wires between the socket and the device.

The Homeplug standard
The official name for this type of networking is Homeplug, and it’s actually an internationally recognised standard, just like the Wifi standard for wireless networking equipment.

It’s very easy to set up a Homeplug network. You’ll need an existing broadband internet connection, and for most people this means either a cable connection or an ADSL phone line which feeds from your telephone wall socket into a router or modem (which is generally supplied by your ISP when you sign up for an internet account).

The router will have one or more network connectors built into it; the most straightforward way of creating a home network is to connect one computer to each of the router’s ports with a standard network cable.

The drawback here is that your computer(s) may not be in the same room as your router or telephone line, in which case you can end up with long cables trailing from room to room. The obvious solution to this problem is to set up a wireless network instead.

However, wireless networking can have problems too. The wireless reception can be blocked by thick walls, or by electrical devices, such as microwave ovens, leaving dead spots where signals are unobtainable. There is one such area in the Computeractive office.

Homeplug and play
This is where Homeplug products can be really useful. For example, let us suppose you have a router in the front room connected to the cable or telephone line, but you would prefer to put the PC upstairs in the bedroom. Two Homeplug adapters are required to build the simplest network, giving the PC upstairs a link to the internet.

The adapters look like ordinary three-pronged electrical plugs, although they will be a bit fatter than a normal plug if they have extra electronics built into them (some use ordinary plugs and an adapter box).

They also have a network connection built into them, so you just plug the first Homeplug into a mains power socket close to your router in the front room, and then use a short network cable to connect the HomePlug to one of the network connections on the router.