ActionTec ActionLink Home Networking Kit

Performance

Performance was exactly as advertised on the side of the box - approximately 1Mbps of bandwidth is available for any purpose. That may not seem like much, but it is enough for basic network purposes - playing games, sharing printers, sharing small files, internet sharing (once again, unless you have over 1Mbps bandwidth), etc. It handled an intense Quake 3 deathmatch without any problems or noticeable lag.

Unfortunately, for large file transfers, 1Mbps is pretty slow - that 175MB transfer took about 26 minutes to complete. Remember, that 1 Megabit/s translates to 125 kilobytes/s since there are 8 bits in a byte. Not completely unreasonable, but a standard 10Base-T ethernet solution would take as little as one tenth the time. Fast ethernet (100Base-T ethernet) could cut that down by a factor of a hundred (in theory anyway).

To make matters even worse, there is only 1Mbps bandwidth available across the whole network. So two full speed file transfers will half the transfer rate. Of course three transfers would cut the transfer rate by a factor of three and so on and so forth. As such, the network begins to quickly bog down as soon as multiple users start using the network heavily. So don't expect to transfer files and still have seamless network gaming. This is more a limitation of the HomePNA standard than the ActionLink Home Network Kit.

The AMD PCnet-Home chip used on these cards is a busmastering device that promises low CPU utilization, and comes through in the real world with under 1% CPU utilization during a 175MB file transfer.

Other Notes

Unlike many other products in this market segment, the ActionLink is fully compatible with Windows NT 4.0, as is the included internet sharing software, DynaNAT. Windows 2000 drivers are already functional and will be available upon the release of Windows 2000 from Microsoft.

There are rumors of a hack to get cards based on the AMD PCnet-Home chipset, such as the ActionLink, to work under Linux. If there is a hack out there now, it probably means it will be official soon enough. This comes as no surprise since network cards based on AMD chipsets have generally enjoyed good support under Linux.

The manual recommends against having another NIC in the system with the ActionLink card, going as far as to tell you not to do such a thing. Well, it is possible, and is even required for most xDSL, cable, or satellite services. However, if you simply want to connect your HomePNA network to an existing ethernet, you are pretty much out of luck. A machine with a 10Base-T NIC and a HomePNA NIC will see both parts of the network, but each network will otherwise remain isolated.

Conclusion

When it's simply not possible to run new wiring for ethernet, the ActionLink Home Networking Kit is an excellent solution for basic networking at home. Everything works as promised and the manual should serve as a model for other manufacturers. However, 1Mbps of bandwidth is somewhat slow. So if ethernet is a possibility, go for it and up to 100 times faster performance - it's about the same price too. Later this year, the second generation of HomePNA products should arrive with a target of 10Mbps bandwidth. For now however, HomePNA is an incredibly easy setup and fast enough for most applications. ActionTec's ActionLink package appears to be one of the best executed HomePNA products available right now.