Linksys PLSK400 Powerline Kit With Integrated Hub Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
697 words · ~3 min read
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I love power line. I cannot emphasize that enough. This is the Lynxys PLSK
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400. This is a power line kit that not
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only communicates but also acts as a
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well yeah okay communicates. So, this is a 200 megabit per second power line kit,
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which is adequate for, you know, probably a single HD stream and then
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some additional, you know, surfing traffic and whatnot. So, what's most
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interesting about this particular kit is what you're going to see on the bottoms
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of on the bottom of one of the adapters. So, we've got the one adapter here. This
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is a pretty normal looking power line adapter. What I do like about it is that
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it plugs directly into the wall. Um, some of them are more for positioning
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away from the wall. And, uh, while that's good from a heat dissipation
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perspective, it's not necessarily great from a convenience and, um, sightliness.
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I don't know. I don't know if sightly is something you can say. You could say unsightly, but yeah, I'm not really
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sure. Um, sorry, from that perspective.
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Yeah. So, it plugs in directly into the wall. Okay. You've got your uh standby
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reset button right here. On the other side, you've got your link button so you
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can get it to communicate and link up with everything all the other power line
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devices in your house that are compatible. We've got one network port
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here. We've got ventilation holes. Looks like a standard power line adapter. Now,
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look at this one. Aha. This one's actually a little bit bigger. Oh, look
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at that. It's significantly bigger. Okay. We've got all of our indicators
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here, including the computer activity LED, the home activity LED, as well as
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the power uh LED. Same buttons except on
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the side this time instead of one of them being on the bottom. And on the bottom, ha 1 2 3 4. So, what is this
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good for? What is special about the PLSK400?
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What's special about it is you take this guy, you plug it in next to your router,
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you plug your router into it. Now, your power lines in your house are networking
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enabled. And then you take this guy and you put it somewhere where you have a
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whole bunch of devices. So what this does is it this these are all 10100
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ports and it acts as a as a switch. So
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what that means is if you throw one of these in your media center, you plug in
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your PS3 and your Xbox and your media PC
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and your Okay, let's say you only have one console. Sorry, sorry. Back up. Back
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up. Okay, so you plug in your Xbox, you plug in your media PC, you plug in your
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TV to deliver firmware updates and whatnots or whatever else. And then you
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got one more and you plug in Oh, I had another thing I wanted to plug in, but now I've forgotten. Oh, your network
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media player there. There. So, you put all of these guys in here. Now, they're
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all able to communicate via power line with your router, and you don't have to
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have an actual switch plugged in behind your media center. So, it's just a
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cleaner way to set up the network in your household with power line, uh,
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rather than breaking this out into a switch and then running everything all over the place. That's pretty much it.
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So, thank you for checking out my unboxing
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at the PLSK 400. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
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unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And don't forget, Power Line is
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awesome. If you're not using Power Line in your house, you should use Power Line in your house because it's really easy
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to set up. It's much faster and more reliable than wireless. And unlike
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wireless, it is really good. Get these
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or other power line or these. Power line is awesome. You should have it.