My work computer is located on the top floor of the house, and is pretty much as far away from my router as possible short of putting it on the roof. Because of this, the wifi connection I use to connect to my LAN is terribly instable and although Vista reports “good” signal quality the throughput can be abysmal at times. This is why I’ve been reading up on HomePlug, or power line networking.

Almost all the reviews I’ve read say that HomePlug adapters provide a stable and fast connection, offer decent security and are incredibly easy to install. The only real downside they write about is the somewhat higher price compared to other network adapters. Because of recent price drops this is no longer much of an argument ($40 gets you one, $70 for a 2-piece kit).

Does anyone use HomePlug adapters (preferably of the cheaper 85 mbps variety) in a situation resembling mine? Any word on speed, ping times and stability? I’d really love to be able to play an occasional game of Counter Strike over this connection (impossible in most cases now), but most importantly I’d like to be FTP large queues without having to worry about dropped connections and upload failures.