NetGear Powerline Av 200 Wireless-N Extender Kit XAVNB2001
Internet Routers
-Hello.
Dong Ngo here and I have with me the first contender for the most confusing and long name product award of the year, the Powerline Av 200 Wireless-N Extender Kit XAVNB2001 from Netgear.
While there's no such a word, but if you can bear with the name, this is the first Powerline kit that also works as a Wi-Fi extender.
First, however, let's work on the rest of the confusing part.
The kit includes two adapters.
One of them is XAV2001.
From now on, known as the small guy.
And the second adapter is the XAVN2001 or the big guy.
As you can see the big guy is about twice the size of the small guy.
This two adapters need to be use at specific ends of the Powerline connection.
The small guy is to be connected to your router and the big guy to an Ethernet ready device at the far end.
After that, you plug both of them into the wall socket, and voila, you have just made a Powerline connection.
A Powerline connection is basically a wired connection that uses your home's electrical wiring as network cables.
In this regard, the XAVNB2001 kit work just like any other Powerline kit.
Each of the adapters has one Ethernet port, and this means at the box, the kit can support just one wired client at the far end of the connection.
What makes this kit different, however, is a fact that the XAVN2001 adapter or the big guy can also work as an access point.
This allows you to create a new wireless network at the far end corner of the house or extend existing wireless network there.
These features make the kit an excellent product for lots of home or even apartment buildings.
Each of the adapter has a security button that helps encrypting the connection between them and an array of [unk] on top.
The big guy also has an on/off button that allows it to connect to a wireless network via other Wi-Fi protected setup feature.
Design-wise, these adapters are much like the power adapter of other devices with 2 prongs that can snap on to any power socket.
Unfortunately, this 2 are rather big and might obstruct adjacent receptacles.
Like all home plug AV devices, they can't work with power strip or [unk] which could cause a problem at [unk] where you have only one power outlet.
To make up for this clunky design, the kit works very well in all testing and proved itself to be worth the $160 price tag.
For more information, check out the in-depth review at cnet.com.
Once again, my name is Dong Ngo and this has been the first look at the Powerline Av 200 Wireless-N Extender Kit XAVNB2001 from Netgear.
