The home-phone-network bandwagon's a-hummin' and everyone's hoppin' on. Actiontec's ActionLink Home Network lets you connect up to 25 PCs (you've got that many ready for a home LAN game, right?), but starts you off with the goods for hooking up two.
Five-year limited warranty
Unlike a lot of these phone-line networks, the ActionLink package is geared toward gamers. It's bundled with Accolade's oldie-but-a-goodie Star Control 3, as well as a nice set of old-school demos. And as far as gaming goes, you can slag and frag on this network and let your answering machine handle the calls: That don't seem to slow the LAN down at all, and you can even use the phone at the same time you're using the network.
The PCI install requires case removal as well as a free PCI expansion slot in each PC. Even with these internal adapters, the physical installation for both computers took only around 20 minutes. Software install, on the other hand, took just as long and required several reboots for each system during the process. But no messing with network properties, no hassles--just a clean install.
Once we had our network up and running, we were pleased with the phone-line speed. Claiming a throughput of up to 1Mbps, the ActionLink came pretty darn close, according to our results. Transferring our 7MB test file took a minute and five seconds--quite a bit longer than the 22-second time for Actiontec's USB network, but almost twice as fast as Intel's AnyPoint parallel-port phone network). During Quake II, we never noticed any lag or even witnessed a ping time higher than zero during our LAN gaming.
Internet access worked smoothly--we didn't notice any delays or hiccups in our browsing on either machine. A nice extra with the included DynaNet software is a built-in firewall for extra protection from the Kevin Mitnicks of the world.
The ActionLink is also less expensive than the AnyPoint. At $104 for the two-user kit and $54 for additional-user expansion kits, it's a cost-effective option for gamers who don't need the speed of a "normal" network (which can be 10 to 100 times faster). It's also an excellent alternative for home or office users with PCs in different rooms or on opposite sides of a building.
-- Joel Strauch / GamePro