Hardware ReviewsTut Systems HomeRun Adapters - HR1000T Tut Systems may sound familiar to many people. It is, in fact, the company that developed and licensed the technology that is behind many of the phoneline kits now on the market. However, as far as we know, the HR1000T adapters that we tested are unique. These are small external boxes that provide some very important advantages as we'll explain below. In fact, we think for many home networkers these adapters would create the absolute BEST phoneline system. Unfortunately, none of the companies that have "commercialized" other phoneline technologies -- primarily PCI cards -- have marketed these external adapters. Tut does sell them via phone orders (call 800-998-4888) but is not promoting direct sales. And the price, at $249 each, seems sure to prevent any considerable sales. In fact, Tut is probably selling them at that price primarily for developers to test. That's a shame, but we will keep on the look out for other companies marketing external adapters. Read on and we think many of you will agree that these are great adapters. If you see them for a reasonable price, please let us know. Overview The HR1000T adapters are small boxes a bit larger than a deck of cards. A power brick about half the size plugs into the back. Also on the back are a jack for a RJ45 plug from a normal network cable. The other end of the cable plugs into a network interface card already installed in the computer. Finally, the back also has two regular phone jacks. The first accepts a line from any normal wall outlet. The second provides a place to plug the phone that's been displaced from the wall outlet. The front has a power LED, as well as other LEDs to show a positive connection (LINK) and to show when data is being transmitted (ACTIVITY).
Since the adapters connect to an already installed Ethernet adapter, there are no software drivers to install. As long as the Ethernet card is working, you simply make all of the physical connections and you are ready to network. The kit we were provided included a 14-page and an extra phone cord. At first, it may seem strange that we would be excited about a phoneline adapter that ALSO requires a Ethernet adapter. But it is exactly this requirement that makes these adapters so useful. Let us explain. We believe many people will have two or more computers close together, probably in the same room. In that type of setup, Ethernet is the compelling way to go since you can run cable easily and Ethernet kits, even fast Ethernet, have dropped so significantly in price. The problem comes when you have to network yet another machine that happens to be in another room or even all the way across the house. Using the phone lines in your house is one neat way to do that (although there is obvious speed constraints at 1Mbps) but most phoneline kits require you to use ONLY phoneline PCI phoneline adapters. There may be a way to bridge across the two technologies, but our tests haven't found a way to do that and certainly not an easy way. BUT using these external adapters the problem becomes much easier to solve. In fact, we tested just such a set up. Our two test machines were connected via regular, fast Ethernet adapters and a hub. On the advanced test machine, we then installed a second network interface card to connect to the HomeRun external adapter. We installed Windows NT on this machine because NT allows you to easily use two adapters and to forward IP packets between the two adapters (there's a check box for Routing, or IP Forwarding, in the TCP/IP properties in NT). We then were able to network a third machine (anywhere in the house) via a phoneline with the two machines on the Ethernet network. VERY SLICK. If these adapters become more readily and more cheaply available, we'll develop a full blown "how to" to help home PC networkers with similar setups. Installation Obviously, installation was a breeze. Connect the Ethernet cables and phone lines and you're done. Of course, you have to have working Ethernet cards and the software for those cards configured properly. Performance Tut says the transmit speed is 1Mbps (megabit per second) and we found it to be nearly that fast in our real-world tests. To test performance, we used a 4 megabyte file and copied back and forth from our advanced and basic test machines. We copied the file from the basic to the advanced (Reads) twice and the other way (Writes) twice and averaged the time. Here's the full chart.
These external adapters were slightly faster than the Diamond HomeFree PCI card kit (45.7 second average), but you probably would not notice any difference in real-world use. Summary The Tut Systems HomeRun external adapters have a lot of potential. We think they provide an outstanding solution for those users who want the advantages and cost-effectiveness of Ethernet, but want to connect a computer across the house without running cables through walls. However, until someone decides to market and promote an external adapter, we doubt many people will choose to call Tut and buy one of these for a cool $249. And because of the high price, we have to mark off significantly in our grading of these adapters. Nevertheless, make no mistake. We like the technology in these adapters and think they may, someday, provide an effective home networking solution.
Grade = B Details
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