How good is Powerline?

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Let me explain my network setup I have:

I have my main PC up stares, one in the front room with my ADSL router and my server in the garage.
I cannot hard wire any of these together so I have 3 wireless routers forming wireless bridges. One bridge is up stares to down stares and from from down stares to the garage.
I'm using wireless bridges because I can stop wireless clients from logging onto them making it a bit more secure.
The problem is that if I want to copy files to my server from my main PC I have to go over 2 wireless connections and I want something faster.

This is why I was thinking about using 200Mbits/s powerline...

1. How reliable is powerline
2. If you have 3 powerline adapters do you have to setup bridged connections between 2 pairs or can each communicate to each other just like they were a single switch?
3. How secure is Powerline?

Thanks
 
1. As reliable as your power connection.
2. It works the same as a hub, traffic from one client is broadcast to everyone.
3. The next best thing to having a hard wired net, and in the rare event your immediate neighbour tries to eavesdrop on your network (assumes your power circuit is shared, which isn't always the case) there's encryption available.
 
I have used Netgear powerline pack (the older version with wireless access point adapater), and it worked really well. It was very easy to setup and get going with. It should be secure as you can only 'see' the network, if on the same ring main, plus what are the chanced of a neighbour using the same tech anyway?

I would guess the newer 200mbit range are even better. No idea about bridging them though, only had 1 connected to cable router and one access point for laptop use.
 
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