LAN & WAN Reviews

Admin-more

Figure 19 shows the main screen of TRENDnet's utility.

Figure 19: TRENDnet utility - main screen

And Figure 20 its Privacy screen, which can be used to change the network password.

Figure 20: TRENDnet utility - Privacy screen

Plaster Networks

As mentioned earlier, Plaster Networks' focus is on providing powerline networking to service providers and other customers who would find value in remote monitoring and administration of a powerline-based network.

You don't however, need to use Plaster's service to use its adapters. You can access the web admin interface on the PLN3 by entering plnXXXXXX.local into your browser, where XXXXXX is the Plaster Networks ID printed on the sides and top of the PLN3 adapter. Figure 21 shows the web admin landing page.

Figure 21: Plaster Networks admin - local home

The web interface isn't much to look at and probably could have been condensed into two or three pages. Figure 22 shows that the Network Performance page shows link rate information similar to the other adapters' Windows-based utilities. Note that the PLN3 picked up the NETGEAR adapter that was plugged in when I took the screenshot just fine.

Figure 22: Plaster Networks admin - local network performance

Once you establish an account with the Plaster Networks mothership, you get a fancier Dashboard display upon login (Figure 23). But this is essentially the same information you get in the Windows utilities bundled with the other products.

Figure 23: Plaster Networks admin - web service dashboard

The key value-add that Plaster provides is the ability to view and manage multiple networks at different sites, like a hotel or campus might have. Plaster also provides performance (link rate) vs. time reports (Figure 24), which can be quite handy for tracking down troublesome adapters or links.

Figure 24: Plaster Networks admin - web service performance report

Plaster's support site also has some good general information on powerline networks including white papers on network isolators (line filtering) and cross-phase coupling.