4. Basic Features

Both products come in white plastic boxes that are slightly larger than a deck of playing cards. Indicators on the top front of each box include Power, Link / Activity for each of the two 10/100 Ethernet ports and Link / Activity for the single HPNA or "HCNA" port plus a SyncMode indicator that's applicable to the CableLAN product only.

The back of each box has a 5V power socket, two 10/100 switched Ethernet ports, and either two RJ-11 phone or two F-type coax connectors. A look at the boards reveals that you need to pay attention to the "HPNA" and "Phone" markings on the AV Phoneline's two sockets when hooking it up, since there is filtering on the "Phone" jack. But it looks like the two coax connectors on the AV CableLAN board connect via a simple passive splitter.

The AV CableLAN product also has two dipswitches on its rear panel, with one of them used to set the adapter to either "master" or "slave" mode. According to Corinex, the "master" device controls how bandwidth is allocated to "slave" devices and should be enabled on only one of the devices on a network. Both the AV CableLAN adapters I received were set to "slave" mode and actually did work that way when I first fired them up. But a Troubleshooting note in the User Guide tipped me to the "master" and "slave" setting. This setting was confirmed by Corinex, who said that shipping product has a documentation insert clarifying this setup step.

Both devices act as bridges, so can support traffic to multiple Ethernet devices. As I've noted already, the two 10/100 Ethernet ports are connected to an internal switch, which supports auto MDI / MDI / X and will connect to any Ethernet device without needing a crossover cable. Both products say they support "prioritized Queues based on IEEE802.1p and Type of Service Tag, VLAN Pass Through Priority and Mapping based on IEEE802.1p". But they must do this automatically since neither product has a user interface to allow tweaking of any of these features.

Corinex includes a power adapter (100 - 120V only on my samples), printed User Guide in multiple languages, short Ethernet cable and either a short RG6 coax or telephone cable in each box.

Setup & Administration

Since neither product has a user interface - heck, they don't even have IP addresses - all you need to do is plug them in, make sure you have the proper Link lights lit and then ping a valid IP address to test your connection. The only exception to this plug-and-go setup is if you use the AV CableLAN with a DOCSIS cable modem.

Figure 4: CableLAN with DOCSIS Cable Modem
(from Corinex documentation)

Figure 4 shows that you'll need to split the incoming cable modem line and put a high-pass filter in the line that is connected to the AV CableLAN boxes. According to a Corinex FAQ for the CableLAN product (that also applies to the CableLAN AV) "Any filter that effectively attenuates frequencies in the range 4-21 MHz would suffice with the AHP-50 filter from ARCOM Labs being a good candidate". Corinex supplied me with an Arcom AHP-50S filter, which has double the stop band attenutation of the AHP-50, but I didn't try it out since I don't have cable modem.