I was surprised to see the number of companies launch power line networking products so quickly after the HomePlug standard was approved. If you haven't been following the power line networking saga, the short story is that after a few years of attempts by different companies with various technologies, Intellon's PowerPacket technology was blessed by the HomePlug consortium as the standard for power line networking. I saw products demonstrated by Netgear, SMC, and Linksys, all of which use the same Intellon chipset. Here's the rundown:

SMC will be shipping three PowerLine products starting in late December. All prices below are estimated "street".

EZ Connect PowerLine Ethernet Adapter (SMC2930E) - $129 (Other manufacturers refer to this flavor as a HomePlug/Ethernet "bridge".)

EZ Connect PowerLine USB Adapter (SMC2920USB) - $129

EZ Card PowerLine PCI Adapter (SMC2910PCI) - $119

There are a few more details in

The Powerline bridge and USB adapters are the first to sport a new rounded-look plastic enclosure, instead of Netgear's traditional blue metal box. This new enclosure will eventually be used for all product in Netgear's consumer product line. The blue boxes will still be around, but reserved for the "business"/"Enterprise" products.

Linksys was the only company who

Instant PowerLine EtherFast 10/100 Router (PLERT10) - $179.99
This looks like the standard "Linky" router engine on a hardware platform supporting one WAN port, one 10/100 Ethernet LAN port and one LAN powerline interface. This will allow it to Internet-share both Ethernet and PowerLine connected LAN clients.

No Powerline products have been announced by D-Link, and although Phonex was one of the first to announce a PowerPlug compliant product, they were not at the show, and it looks like shipment of their QX201PowerLine/Ethernet bridge has been delayed into Feb 2002.