Performance

Seamless...

The Phoneline LAN performed just like any typical LAN, albeit (and expectedly) slower than your average network. There is virtually no difference between a Phoneline LAN and a traditional LAN except for the slower transfer rate. Windows networking and other networking applications should work without any extra-curricular configuration.

...but a bit slow

Phoneline's 1Mbps transfer rate is far slower than the 10Mbps and 100Mbps rates of traditional LANs, but most networking applications don't need all that bandwidth. The 1Mbps rate will hurt the most during large file transfers. Transferring the 21.7MB Q3test setup file took 3 minutes and 15 seconds -that's about 911kbps or 0.89Mbps. Transferring the entire unzipped 39.9MB Q3test directory took 6 minutes and 14 seconds -that's about 847kbps or 0.85Mbps. Of course, transferring files over our Firingsquad 100Mbps network is considerably faster than over Phoneline. The 39.9MB Q3test directory transfer took 1 minute and 30 seconds on our real world network. Nevertheless, we were still pleased to see that the transfer rates were very close to Diamond's 1Mbps claim, and these are about the same speeds we can achieve over at FiringSquad's T1 Internet line.

It's all about the games!

Multiplayer gaming was excellent. Considering that 1Mbps is close to T1 speed, you can assume that any multiplayer game playable over a T1 will perform just as well and probably better on a Phoneline network. Quake was smooth with pings averaging around 15ms, and Starcraft was similarly lagless. Simply put, Phoneline is definitely fast enough to handle multiplayer gaming.

Since network optimizations (mainly for 28.8k/56k modems) are receiving so much attention from game programmers, you'll find the move to a LAN-based system startlingly fast - this is what multiplayer gaming is supposed to be like!