If your Time Capsule or Airport just won’t blanket your entire house with sweet, invisible WiFi, Western Digital has a new, easy to use solution to extend your network to the basement, the attic or the back yard: the Livewire Powerline AV Network Kit.
The kit includes two Livewire network adapter boxes, each with four ethernet ports. All you do is plug one Livewire adapter into your router or Time Capsule as well as a wall socket. Then plug the other adapter into a wall socket in any room in your house where you don’t have networking. As long as those two outlets are on the same power grid, which most newer homes are, your internet connection will be shot through your electrical socket to the Livewire in the other room.
A practical use for this would be to extend your network to a room that is too far away to get WiFi. For example, if you wanted to set your basement up as an office, you could just set the Livewire adapters up and plug your iMac into the second one. Easy networking, without extending your WiFi network with repeaters or wiring up the room for Ethernet.
According to Western Digital, the Livewire Powerline AV Network Kit can provide data transfer speeds of up to 200 megabits per second, which should, theoretically, be enough to stream even 1080p video. At $140 for a pair of adapters, this is a solution to consider if you’ve got any dead spots in your home network you’re feeling an itch to fill.
