Actiontec Ships Powerline Networking Gear

The new MegaPlus series reportedly allows consumers to get 85 Mbps of throughput speeds across their existing home electric lines.

Actiontec Electronics, a company which makes products related to broadband Internet connectivity, last week unveiled a new line of powerline networking products. The MegaPlus series – consisting of an adapter ($59.99), wireless network extender ($99.99) and 4-port hub ($89.99) – should all be available this month.

Actiontec’s MegaPlus series, the company said, is the market’s first family of powerline networking solutions to reportedly support throughput speeds of 85 Mbps over standard home electrical outlets. This is a marked sixfold increase over first generation powerline networking solutions based upon the HomePlug 1.0 standard.

As for the specific products, the adapter is a small box that fits into any two or three pronged electrical outlet to connect a compatible device to an existing home network; the wireless network extender plugs into an electrical outlet to extend an existing wireless home network within 1,000 feet of the device; and the 4-port hub plugs into a modem or gateway to not only add HomePlug capabilities but also add extra Ethernet ports to connect other networked devices.

Technologies in the product line include 56 DES data encryption to help foil hackers and assignable bandwidth priorities.

“Using the existing electrical infrastructure to link all of a home’s media resources is the easiest networking solution available, but today’s home entertainment applications require more bandwidth than the older 14 Mbps HomePlug products can provide,” said David Appleman, vice president of business development of Actiontec Electronics. “Our 85 Mbps MegaPlug products make it possible to build powerline networks that can support new services such as TV over IP, digital video recorder networking, and whole-house video and audio streaming.”