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Many ISPs offer the 2wire homeportal as a homenetworking CPE.  The 2wire is unique in that offers home PNA networking.  This is networking that uses the telephone wiring in your house.  see www.homepna.org for some good info.  The only drawback to this technique is that you have to install a home PNA NIC in each PC that you want to connect to this network.  Now this is not so bad, except they are still pretty rare beasts, and they cost a lot more than ethernet or wireless NICs.  Most new PCs come with built-in ethernet NICs, NOT homePNA NICs as luck would have it.  SO make your own decision.  If your house is really that hard to wire, it better be real hard to wire before I would consider putting homePNA in every PC.  This would probably be a case for wireless networking.

Copyright John D Loop Saturday January 22, 2005