2014-12-17, 14:51
Devolo may have proprietary features but these come from the Atheros chipset which is pretty much the "standard" where Homeplug is concerned. Devolo calls this feature Range+ and tries to give the impression it's their own technology, when every other vendor refers to it as SmartLink, which is the Atheros given name.
There's really nothing particularly special about Devolo gear, apart from the inflated prices they charge and fancy marketing. Shop around and you're guaranteed to find equivalent if not better specified AV1/AV2 kit for half the price Devolo will try to charge you.
I've nothing against Devolo, just saying all this kit is based on basically the same fundamental design and chipset so don't be fooled into paying top dollar by fancy advertising.
Though you're right to be wary of the PHY as that's often a cost saving bottleneck, so check the specs thoroughly but I would hope AV2 will be universally GigE. AV1 up to 500/600 initially started out with the GigE support in the Atheros AR7400 chipset, followed later by the introduction of a cost-reduced AR7420 chipset which reduced PHY to fast Ethernet (so avoid AR7420-based products like the plague). Maybe the same will happen with AV2 and the Atheros QCA7500 chipset, but I hope not.
There's really nothing particularly special about Devolo gear, apart from the inflated prices they charge and fancy marketing. Shop around and you're guaranteed to find equivalent if not better specified AV1/AV2 kit for half the price Devolo will try to charge you.
I've nothing against Devolo, just saying all this kit is based on basically the same fundamental design and chipset so don't be fooled into paying top dollar by fancy advertising.
Though you're right to be wary of the PHY as that's often a cost saving bottleneck, so check the specs thoroughly but I would hope AV2 will be universally GigE. AV1 up to 500/600 initially started out with the GigE support in the Atheros AR7400 chipset, followed later by the introduction of a cost-reduced AR7420 chipset which reduced PHY to fast Ethernet (so avoid AR7420-based products like the plague). Maybe the same will happen with AV2 and the Atheros QCA7500 chipset, but I hope not.