Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)UPDATE 1/2011
Both replacement units have failed in their HomePlugAV modules, so I have no HomePlug connectivity. In fact, scanning for Homeplug devices from the managment UI causes both units to crash. Downgrade to one star.
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UPDATE 7/2010
My 2nd unit has failed as well; it began spontaneously rebooting and wouldn't stay working for more than a few minutes at a time. However, I got pretty good service from ZyXel: they replaced BOTH units under warranty. Still working 11/2010.
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UPDATE 5/2010 :
I reduced the rating to 2 stars after one of my two units quit working after about a year. The Powerline connectivity evaporated after about 9 months and the wifi connectivity started to get intermittent after a year or so. Now the unit will only boot sporadically.
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I bought this unit to set up a Homeplug network connection to a home entertainment system that's poorly located for Wifi access, and after some fiddling I'm getting very good performance out of it, nearly 40Mb/sec in real-world circumstances.
When I ordered this router for thirty-nine bucks, it was much cheaper and more capable than the ZyXEL PLA-401 200 Mbps Powerline HomePlug AV Wall-plug Adapter that it's intended to be used with- so I bought two NBG-318S's instead, and configured the 2nd one as an access point. That gave me the benefit of having a 4-port switch as well as a Wifi extender in the access point - why buy the PLA-401? (It's still listed a comparable price.)
Wireless strength was comparable with the D-Link WBR-3210 that it replaced. The router's in the basement and I still have decent signal quality two floors up in our wood-framed house. Plus having the 2nd router configured as a Wifi access point using Zyxel's "roaming" mode (Wifi clients are seamlessly handed off between the two radios as they migrate around the house) has effectively extended our Wifi coverage.
Be forewarned: it takes some arcane BPL voodoo to achieve maximum Homeplug network bandwidth across your A/C circuits, even if it is brand-new shiny code-compliant wiring like at our house. I spent an afternoon juggling the topology of outlets and power strips amongst my appliances while running iperf() between my client and server to monitor the network throughput. I don't think there's any way around the trial and error approach if you want to get good performance out of these things. By some simple, free (but time-consuming) rearrangements of the router, access point and appliance connections the bandwidth at my desired location went from 1Mb/S to 40Mb/S. Here are some tips:
* Homeplug AV performance can be good, but don't believe the 200Mb numbers the vendors throw around; I couldn't even get that bandwidth when the router and access point were plugged into the same outlet next to each other and connected to gigabit Ethernet clients.
* New adopters should be aware that the router and its access points can be on different circuits but pretty much need to be on the same 110V leg of your 220V house service to work. You'll have to check your circuit breaker panel to figure this out for sure.
* The Homeplug network's signal quality (and hence the achievable bandwidth) is extremely sensitive to noisy appliances plugged into the same circuit. For instance, at one point my bandwidth went from 25Mb to 8Mb when I plugged Apple's spiky Powerbook A/C adapter into the same outlet as the access point, and I still take a 5Mb/S hit if someone turns on the dimmable incandescents in our office. I may try putting ferrite chokes on the supply lines of some flourescent fixtures that are still on the common circuits.
* Having the access point plugged into an outlet wired closer to the breaker panel didn't necessarily help. I'm getting the best performance with the access point plugged into a different outlet than the home entertainment appliances, but further in wiring distance from the router - go figure.
* I thought that using surge-protected RF/EMI-filtered power strips on my appliances would help keep noise off the power lines carrying the network signal, but if the noise-filtering power strips were plugged in too close to the access point they actually seemed to filter out the network signal and my bandwidth dropped. Also, some power strip's LED indicators actually put more noisy spikes BACK INTO the line and made the throughput worse; after I quieted them down by clipping out the LEDs, the noise filtering seemed to have some positive effect.
* The Homeplug modems appear to use adaptive signal processing to operate in noisy home environments - the bandwidth can take a big hit when noisy appliances are initially introduced onto the circuit, but then you will see it slowly improve over 30 sec to a minute. (In my experience it was best to reboot the access point in the presence of the noisiest possible signals.) So let your bandwidth measurements settle down before making an evaluation of the benefits of a change to your topology.
* Find a software utility that will allow you to accurately measure data throughput on your network while you are making changes. You'll be chasing your tail if you try to use subjective evaluations of, for instance, how long it seems to take to load a web page. (You'll typically be looking for better LAN performance than your WAN's internet bandwidth anyway.) I used the the iperf utility (Google for it) available for MacOS, Windows and Unix-type systems.
I got good - if not super-prompt - feedback from a customer service technician in response to my prepurchase questions when sent through ZyXel's web site, but haven't heard back from my latest query by regular email. I'm also giving only 4 out of 5 stars because the latest manual available from ZyXel STILL doesn't mention features that are clearly available in the router's standard web-based configuration interface (their Windoze-based configuration "wizard" never functioned properly for me under Parallels) and it took me an hour to figure out how to enable simple WEP wireless security (hint: make sure WPS is turned OFF.)
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ZyXEL NBG-318S 200 Mbps Powerline HomePlug AV 802.11g Wireless Router
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