NETGEAR XAVB5001 Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit

Manufacturer : Netgear Model : XAVB5001-100NAS ASIN : B004DVEW8I Price : 138.65$ See Special Offers Product Description Netgear XAVB5001 Powerline Network Adapter XAVB5001-100NAS Powerline Network Adapters Most Helpful Customer Reviews 60 of 64 people found the following review helpful: Not as fast as advertised, but very good This review is from: NETGEAR XAVB5001 Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit (Personal Computers) Testing was performed in a ~3-year old house and the 2 adapters were several rooms apart from one another on the same floor. With these adapters, performance can typically vary significantly based on wiring within the house, so YMMV. As a preview of the results, while they didn't achieve anywhere near the advertised 250 mbps (~31 MB/s) in each direction, they did perform much better than older generation powerline adapters I've used. When I plugged in the adapters, the Netgear software reported that I was getting ~220 Mbps in each direction, which was encouraging, but ultimately not even close to accurate. In addition to testing the adapters, I also wanted to test the efficiencies of different network protocols to see what would work best for streaming HD content to my XBMC / MythTV box. Below are the results. Testing was done using commands like the following on a Ubuntu Linux machine that tests reads and write speeds to network-mounted disk. Write: time dd if = /dev/zero of = /mnt/storagesmb/testfilesmb1 bs=16k count=16384 Read: time dd if = /mnt/storagesmb/testfilesmb1 of= /dev /null bs=16k (some extra spaces were added in the above lines to prevent Amazon's URL filtering from editing those lines out) Since the focus of my testing was primarily to verify read speeds from a media frontend to a backend storage server, I did not do significant write testing. Disk Read/Write Test Results: Protocol Test Type File Size Rsize (nfs) Throughput SMB Write 256MB na 03.8 MB/s SMB Read 256MB na 03.9 MB/s NFS v3 Write 256MB na 05.4 MB/s NFS v3 Read 256MB 16,384 09.3 MB/s NFS v3 Read 256MB 32,768 10.8 MB/s *** Amazon mangles any sort of tabular data when included in a review, so if you prefer to see the review in its original format, it is also available on my blog: [...] (Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't allow URLs in reviews, so copy/paste that into your browser and remove the spaces in the URL to find it) Next, a separate set of tests was done using iperf between two Ubuntu Linux machines. The server resides on a large RAID array capable of reads and writes upwards of 500 MB/s, so disk speeds were not a limitation in this testing. In theory, the iperf test should remove most inefficiencies related to network protocol and show raw throughput. As it turns out, the results are very similar to the NFS testing above, which speaks well of the NFS protocol. iperf results: ***ONE DIRECTIONAL TEST ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 192.168.1.111, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 192.168.1.182 port 42245 connected with 192.168.1.111 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 90.8 MBytes 75.9 Mbits/sec (9.49 MB/s) ***BIDIRECTIONAL (SIMULTAENOUS) TEST ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 192.168.1.111, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 55.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 5] local 192.168.1.182 port 60753 connected with 192.168.1.111 port 5001 [ 4] local 192.168.1.182 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.111 port 59780 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 5] 0.0-10.0 sec 57.4 MBytes 48.0 Mbits/sec (6.00 MB/s) [ 4] 0.0-10.1 sec 43.0 MBytes 35.7 Mbits/sec (4.46 MB/s) Combined => ~83.7 Mbits/sec (10.46 MB/s) SMB vs. NFS Conclusion: While this is probably no surprise to many, NFS is vastly more efficient. Using the same commands and testing read speeds with a 32k rsize, nfs outperforms smb by ~280%. The difference was noticeable on XBMC performance as well. When my network shares were mounted using SMB, I was unable to smoothly stream high bitrate uncompressed 1080p bluray rips (i.e. Avatar). However, when using NFS, it played absolutely everything I could throw at it. Netgear XAVB5001 Conclusion: Bottom line, if your wiring is fairly modern and free of interference, while these adapters fall far short of their advertised 500 Mbps speeds, they should be more than capable of streaming your uncompressed HD content if you can serve your files via NFS. Even if you are stuck using SMB (Windows network file sharing), most of your content will work without issue, but high bitrate uncompressed bluray will likely not play 100% smoothly. 29 of 31 people found the following review helpful: The non uber tech review for those who have used PLAs before    This review is from: NETGEAR XAVB5001 Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit (Personal Computers) I approach this review in the hopes of helping fellow home techies who were looking for a quick run down and potential benefit over older Powerline Adapter kits/units. Some good reviews in here detail the outputs of the units here in super fine detail. I'm sure many will find that helpful. I myself was looking for quick info on whether the AV500's were better than AV200's in general, or at least, better than my Netgear XAV2001 kit (AV200 "rated"). Most people know that the supposed throughput of a powerline adapter is pretty much BS. Saying one of these is "Gigabit" is pretty misleading. Mind you this really isn't a complaint. This feeds into the "more must be better" mentality in the tech industry. If you haven't figured out that this isn't always true, then let this product type be a key example. BUT...for me the question always has boiled down, for these types of products, is it in fact fast? Fast for what? Faster than the previous line? (I'm a habitual upgrader and am willing to pay to play if in fact the product offers a substantial benefit over my current gear.) So as I said I own the Netgear AV200/"200 Mbit" kit (XAV2001 I believe). I have previously used Linksys 85Mbit adapters to effect, and we have wireless in the house, but the AV200's were good performers and worth the ~$100 I spent on them, and adequately replaced wireless where I had some serious dead spots in my house. I dropped into Staples last night and lo and behold, they had the Netgear AV500 kit in their pretty red box for $139. I decided to give it a go, figuring if my network performance was significantly better, I'd keep them. If not, I'd return them, having kept the packaging perfect, and ensuring Staples would take them back if Netgear had BS'd the numbers. My overall setup is rather nightmarish to describle so I'll detail just the following: 1.) The AV500's went exactly in the place of the two AV200's. They are on separate ends of the house laterally , source on main floor, destination on second floor 2.) Same exact Cat 5 and Cat 6 cables in the same exact place 3.) While I seriously doubt this had any impact, I substituted an 8 port Cisco 10/100 switch for an 8 port Netgear ProSage Gigabit switch. (In theory I'm not touching the upper end capability of the Cisco switch so that's why I say it should not make a difference, but I point it out to not mislead.) 4.) Use: The AV500s link an AV Closet in a "black hole" of my house (the master bedroom) to a DLINK dual band Gigabit N-Router. The overall feed is, from Source to Destination, [FiOS Modem > NetGear 24 port Gigabit Switch > DLINK Gigabit Router > Netgear AV500 Unit 1 (Source) > Netgear AV500 Unit 2 (AV Closet) > Netgear ProSafe Gigabit Switch > Components). 5.) Components a.) Windows 7 PC / media server with 4 TB of stored lossless music and MKV/MP4 videos b.) Tivo Series 3 (x2) c.) Xbox 360 d.) BR Player e.) DLink Boxee (love this, 5 stars) 6.) AV200 vs AV500 - the beef Prior to installing the AV200's 9 months ago, my network performance in the destination area of the house was dismal. Averaging a series of speedtest.net runs where the only thing in the "component" list above that was using the network was the PC, I was getting avg 400Kbit/sec on a system that had previosuly scored 40Mbit Down 35Mbit Up in "wireless hot spots". The ~40Mb down speed was proven on several Speedtest.net runs and I'd proven it out when I downloaded a 1.7 GB file in under 7 minutes via a swarm, over wireless (in a much better location in the house). Download rates sustained for minutes at a time touched 4.3MegaByte per second. I was thrilled. Needless to say, when I saw the 90% drop in wireless performance in a critical area of the house, I knew I needed something better. I had built an AV closet in a bad spot of the house (well, bad for network, else great for my purposes). Installing the original Netgear AV200's, I saw speeds come back up to 2.2MegaByte per second. Speedtest.net showed similar Mb numbers (16-20MBit Down, 10-13MBit Up.) AV200's would have been ok but I was running into several problems. Beyond the closet, there are Tivos downstairs which require that the Powerline adapters be the medium between my PC/Server upstairs. PyTivo being the encoder, I saw a significant difference between "local" xfers in the bedroom, and xfers from upstairs to the downstairs area. Generally PyTivo could playback in realtime (initiate xfer, no wait, watch) on movies upto 720p. 1080 MKV containers took a little bit to get running, but overall, not bad. 1080 files xferred downstairs were a joke. I had to initiate the xter WELL in advance of watching it. SO...what do the AV500's do? Get this. Last night, first test - shut down all components except the PC. Begin download of a very popular show which should present the full challenge to the AV500's. Sustained speed download? 5.2MegaByte a second. I was very surprised. I would have kept these units if they'd come within 80% of my original wireless 4.2-4.4MB/sec. But to exceed their performance, simply floored me. I had pretty modest expectations that AV500s would defeat the AV200s. I was wrong. And I do love when I'm wrong and it benefits me. My 0.02 are that if my review hits on your , and you simply want to know if in the same exact setting these AV500's will improve your AV85/AV100/AV200 Netgear pair (or trio...), go for it. If you change nothing else, I am pretty confident you'll see quite a nice bump in performance. 15 of 17 people found the following review helpful: Works but your milage may vary. This review is from: NETGEAR XAVB5001 Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit (Personal Computers) Put these in my home which was built in 1979. One on the first floor and one on the second floor. I believe the adapters are on different circuits. When I installed them out of the box the adapter software was reporting 90 megabit one way and 70 megabit the other way. At night when more electronics and lights are running the throughput would sometimes drop drastically. At one point I was only getting 60 megabit one way and 25 megabit the other way. Latency times were also ridiculously bad. A ping to my router was showing 15-30MS which is insane for a device that is in the other room. Because I'm an avid gamer this was completely ruining gaming and players reported to see me "warping" in quake. I then flashed the newest firmware on the adapters and saw a substantial improvement. Now the adapters show 110 x 100 megabit during the day and at night it drops to maybe 100 x 90 megabit. Your millage will vary because it seems various appliances or perhaps even the noise from the grid at night is going to affect your throughput in different ways throughout the day. The latency problem also seems much better as I now average 2-3MS pings to my router. Not sure why I can't get <1 MS pings but perhaps it's the nature of the beast. Most Recent Customer Reviews Convenient, but not blazing fast The Netgear Powerline Adapters seemed like the perfect solution for hooking up an internet-capable Blu-Ray player with no wireless card. by skrishna Perfect for Apartments I bought this set for my apartment because the wireless wouldn't cover the entire thing, and I didn't want to run a network cable the entire length of my apartment. by JS Outperforms wireless connections This is a great product when your wireless network won't reach all areas of your home. In my case I could not get a good wireless internet connection at the opposite end of my... by Jay Paul McDonald happy customer! This does exactly what it says. We now have internet on third floor without needing wifi or rewiring our house. by Kirsten Lechner Excellent product, works as advertised... Be wary of distances though... As I said, this product works exactly as advertised. I am very pleased with the performance. Even though the unit indicates I have a poor quality connection (red status light,... by Eric C. Thinking of running Cat 5 through your House?, STOP On the main floor of my home in the office sits my netgear wndr 3700, if you go out the door down the stairs you enter where my Xbox sits and I play it, the wifi was vary spotty,... by StylezNMA Truly Plug & Play Not much to say other than it fully served my needs. Open the box, plug them in, and off you go. Period. Perfect. by RedBarron1 Worst Product Netgear powerlink AV500 is the worst product networks have had the opportunity to use and I'm a network engineer with 25 years of experience, and decide to use this product in my... by Jose Netgear xav5001 powerline av 500 super item easy set up , no muss no fuss plug it in and go, how simple is that and it gets the job done by robeas Great for net connection points, wifi Wifi broadcasting around the house, even with repeaters, was slow, so I thought I'd give this a shot. Installation was simple. by Peter N. Deweese

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