3. Setup and Administration

Since the 2521 has only a HomePlug LAN interface on its "wired" side, you'll need to use either a router with integrated HomePlug interface or a powerline to Ethernet bridge to connect it to your Ethernet LAN. Since the first choice isn't yet available (although Siemens may change that by the time CES 2003 rolls around next month), I pressed one of the 2502's that Siemens supplied into service to get my router talking to the 2521.

Since Siemens ships all its HomePlug products with the same default key for its built-in 56bit DES encryption (also known as the Network Password), it's possible to just connect up the adapters and have a working network.

NOTE! It's possible for HomePlug signals to travel relatively long distances and be picked up by adjacent homes or apartments. This means that your next-door neighbor could connect to your HomePlug LAN if they had a HomePlug compatible network adapter. The good news is that HomePlug products protect all data with 56 bit DES encryption. The bad news is that the encryption doesn't do you any good if you don't change the default password or encryption key that the products come set to.

All you need to do to keep your data safe is to pick a strong password and enter it as the Network Password on each of your HomePlug adapters . Check this short article or this longer one more on strong passwords and how to generate them.

But since most people will need to fire up the Windows-based utility that comes with each product at some point, that's what I did. I first tried the Powerline Configuration Utility that came with the 2502, which is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Configuration Utility - Device screen

This first screen shows only devices (with the same Network password) found on the Ethernet side of the bridge. Since you need only one Ethernet-powerline bridge per network, the utility will show only one device, even if you happen to plug in more than one (Hey, someone has to check these things!).

TIP: If for some reason, the Utility can't make connection to the 2502, you'll get an error pop-up and the Utility won't open.

If you want to see if your powerline devices are talking to each other, then you need to use the Network Tab shown in Figure 2, which shows only devices (with the same Network password) found on the powerline side of the bridge.

Figure 2: Configuration Utility - Network screen

As the screenshot shows, you get the MAC address (which is also printed on the adapter) of each device found and the raw data rate that the device is using. (Usable data rate (throughput) will be less than half this number, as we'll see later in the Performance section.)

The Network Password (or encryption key) is set on the Security Tab, shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Configuration Utility - Security screen

The tab is pretty simple, allowing you to enter a case-sensitive 4 to 24 alpha-numeric character "Network Password" for the local device, i.e. the one shown on the Device tab.

The Advanced Tab is used to set the Network Password for other devices on the powerline network. To use this feature, you need to enter the sixteen character Device password code - which is also printed on each HomePlug device (it looks something like ADGF-4GFD-FH7B-XVTH) - for each device you want to change.

TIP: This feature is used to easily get HomePlug devices from different manufacturers set to the same encryption key. See this FAQ for more info.