Corinex AnyWire Connectivity AV200 Introduction Manual

Brand: Corinex

Model: AnyWire Connectivity AV200

Category: PowerLine network adapters

Type: Introduction Manual

Corinex AV200 Powerline and CableLAN set the pace for alternative

home networking

Tim Higgins March 24, 2006 15:20

Introduction

At a Glance

Product Corinex AV200 Powerline Ethernet and CableLAN Adapters

Summary Ethernet to powerline and coax bridges targeted at household

distribution of IPTV and other streaming media without running

CAT 5

Pros • 2X - 3X better average throughput than HomePlug Turbo

• Multicast binding and QoS and VLAN tagging

Cons • Does not interoperate with HomePlug devices (and vice versa)

• Severely interferes with HomePlug devices (and vice versa)

• QoS features difﬁ cult to conﬁ gure

• Expensive (Powerline $159, CableLAN $179)

My last look at powerline networking products was in the HomePlug Turbo Adapter Round Up, where I

found that the “85 Mbps” advertised speed turned out to be typically 10 Mbps of real, usable bandwidth.

Although this is twice the 5 Mbps delivered by non-turbo HomePlug 1.0 products, it’s still borderline for

IPTV service providers, which is the target customer. The real HomePlug solution for video streaming lies

in HomePlug AV, which, unfortunately seems to remain six to nine months away - as it has for the past

year or so.

This delay has opened a market window that Madrid-based DS2 (Design of Systems on Silicon) has

attacked with a vengeance using its high speed “200 Mbps” powerline technology. DS2’s success to date

has been mostly in markets outside the U.S., since that’s mainly where the action is in IPTV right now. The

company claims an installed base of around 600,000 units with 30,000 in Spanish telecommunications

company Telefonica alone. DS2’s success seems likely to continue, given that Netgear recently

announced that it will be shipping products aimed at the IPTV market, based on DS2’s technology.

But we don’t need to wait to see what “200 Mbps” powerline networking technology is like, because

Vancouver-based Corinex is shipping its AV200 Powerline products today. This review will take an in-

depth look at Corinex’ powerline product and a shorter one at a version of the product for use with coax-

based TV distribution systems.

Product Features

The AV200 Powerline adapter doesn’t opt for “wall-wart” form factor now common in powerline adapters,

but is instead packaged in an off-white plastic enclosure about 6” X 4” X 2” (148 mm X 106 mm X 47

mm). Power, Powerline Link/Activity and Ethernet Link/Activity LEDs are arrayed across the front of the

product and the rear panel (Figure 1) contains only an AC line cord receptacle and 10/100 Ethernet RJ45

jack.

Figure 1: AV200 Powerline rear panel and speciﬁ cations

Figure 2 shows the back panel of the AV200 Coax version, which differs only in the addition of a coax “F”

type connector.

Figure 2: AV200 Coax rear panel

With the proper line cord, you can connect either product to an AC supply from 85 to 265 V AC and 50

or 60 Hz. Contrary to the instructions in the Installation Guide, I found that the Ethernet port has auto

MDI / MDI-X capability built in, so you can connect any Ethernet device you like without having to ﬁ nd

a crossover cable.

Note that the AV200 adapters are designed as bridges and support connection of up to 64 devices, 32 of

which can be AV200 Powerline or Coax adapters.

Inside Details - Powerline

The powerline and coax AV200’s have very similar designs, differing only by a small amount of circuitry

that couples the DS2 guts to either the AC mains or a single “F” type coax connector. Figure 2 is an photo

of the inside of the AV200 Powerline version that shows that most of the interesting circuitry is hidden

by a thick aluminum heatsink.

Figure 2: AV200 Powerline Internal view w/heatsink

Figure 3 shows the heatsink removed so that you can see the DS2 DS9001A processor and DSS7700S

analog front end devices (the DS9001A has white heatsink compound on it). The other ICs used in the

design are RAM, ﬂ ash (on the underside of the board) and a Realtek RTL8201CL Single-Port 10/100M

Fast Ethernet PHYceiver.

Figure 3: AV200 Powerline Internal view w/o heatsink

The component grouping at the top of Figure 3 is the power supply. You can also see the coupling

transformer and associated components clustered near the power receptacle, which connect the AC

line and DS2 circuitry. You can also see empty mounting pads for the coax connector and its coupling

transformer, which are not loaded in the powerline version at the bottom center of the photo.

Inside Details - Coax

Figure 4’s photo shows the AV200 Coax inside view, which as noted above, is very similar to the powerline

version. You can see that the AC line coupling components in the lower right-hand corner are not loaded

in this version, but you’ll have to refer to Figure 5 to see the coax connector coupling components.

Figure 4: AV200 Coax Internal view w/heatsink

If you carefully compare the larger versions of Figures 3 and 5, you can see that the coax version board

is slightly different, with a cluster of passive components that have no blank mounting pads in the

powerline version of the board.

Figure 5: AV200 Coax Internal view w/o heatsink

Figure 6 provides a view of the underside of the coax version board, which has a string of passive

surface-mount components running in a line up from the left side of the coax connector. The mounting

pads for these components are also not present on the powerline version of the board. You can also see

the single ﬂ ash memory device with its ﬁ rmware revision label toward the right side of the board.

Figure 6: AV200 Coax Internal view board bottom

Setup And Administration

Both the AV200 adapters come set so that they will just plug and play if you don’t feel the need to mess

with their settings. Like HomePlug adapters, they use a Network Identiﬁ er to let you keep your network

separated from your neighbor’s. It ships with a blank setting, which is essentially as good as the default

“HomePlug” that the other guys use. This Network Identiﬁ er also serves as the key for the combination

of DES and 3DES encryption used to secure data between AV200 adapters.

Both AV200 adapters are a bit unusual for these types of devices in that the adapters have IP

addresses and built in web-based administration. I’ll touch on both as I describe the devices’ settings. The

AV200 comes with its IP address set to 10.10.1.69, so Corinex’ Quick Start Guide advises changing the

computer you use to set up the adapter to an IP of 10.10.1.1. Of course, since all adapters come set

to the same IP address, you should power up only one device at a time if you want to access its web-

based admin features. Figure 7 shows the main page of the web admin that you are presented with upon

Figure 7: Web-based admin main page

The interface departs from the design found in most networking devices in that it doesn’t have a

navigation bar to direct you to its various sections. Instead, there are only the subtle “Further

information” and “Change conﬁ guration” links that aren’t even underlined to help announce their

existence. The PLC Connections section shows information about other connected AV200 powerline

devices, including the Phy receive and transmit throughput. The “Phy” rate is that of the physical

interface, i.e. the best-case “raw” bit rate. Of course, you’ll never get this throughput in your actual

network connection, but it’s the same game played by every other networking product manufacturer.

If you are running Windows, you can opt to install the AV200 Conﬁ guration Utility, which has its settings

organized into separate pages, instead of the single long page used by the web interface. The other plus

the Utility provides is that you don’t need to futz with your computer’s IP address settings, since the

utility can ﬁ nd and connect to AV200 adapters with any LAN IP address scheme. Note that this utility is

relatively new and didn’t come on the CD included with the product. Corinex said the utility has since

been added to the CD, but it would be nice if it were also posted for download.

Figure 7: Corinex Setup Tool Search screen

Figure 7 shows the Windows-based Conﬁ guration Utility’s opening screen. The Search for devices button

will ﬁ nd only “locally connected” AV200 devices, which means that they need to plugged into the same

Ethernet LAN that the computer running the Utility is on. Once you ﬁ nd a device, you just double click on

it to proceed into the admin and status pages of the Utility.

Alternatively, if you have copied down the MAC address from the label on the bottom of each of your

AV200 devices, you can enter it into the MAC address ﬁ eld at the right of the page and click the Conﬁ gure

button. I think I prefer the utilities that came with the HomePlug Turbo devices I recently reviewed, an

example of which is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: NETGEAR Utility Main screen

Both the Windows application and the web-based admin provide access to the same status information

and conﬁ guration options, so I’ll mostly show the Windows app, since its screens are better organized.

Many of the controls (Multicast, VLAN, QoS) appear to be intended for use by the AV200’s primary

target market, IPTV service providers, with settings that are fairly cryptic. The User Guide at least

explains what each setting is intended to do, but falls a bit short on providing consumer-level guidance

on the how, when and why.

The MAC page lets you force an AV200 to End Point (EP) or Access Point (AP) mode - the latter only if

you’ve entered a Network Identiﬁ er, however. Each AV200 network has a single AP and up to 31 EPs, with

APs in charge of sharing channel access within the nodes of each network. If two or more networks share

the same power lines, one of the access points becomes a “QoS Controller” (QC), which is responsible for

controlling how the multiple networks share the OFDM spectrum to avoid collisions and interference. This

determination is normally made automatically, and these settings are mainly needed in situations such

as apartment buildings or hotels, where multiple networks might need to share the same power grid.

NOTE: Both HomePlug and DS2 200 Mbps based devices use OFDM as part of their base

technologies. OFDM is a modulation technique also used by ADSL modems and 802.11a and g wireless

networking products.

The Network Settings page contains the IP address controls for the device, letting you set static IP

information or change to having the AV200 pick up the info via DHCP.

Figure 9 shows the PHY settings page, which I’ve included because I thought its function was interesting,

if not a bit cryptic. All you get is Enable / Disable, so enable at your own risk.

Figure 9: PHY settings

Multimedia content is often distributed using IP multicasting, which allows the same content to be more

efﬁ ciently delivered to multiple recipients. Figure 10 shows the AV200’s Multicast settings, which allow

bindings between adapter MAC addresses and multicast IP addresses. No bindings are set by default, and

the results are saved in the adapter’s non-volatile RAM (NVRAM).

Figure 10: Multicast settings

The VLAN page allows you to enable (default is disabled) 802.1q VLAN tagging for data entering an

adapter’s Ethernet port. This is another feature for network operators, since no VLAN ﬁ ltering is done in

the AV200 itself. Controls are provided to set the VLAN Tag (or ID) and set the priority from 0 to 7.

QoS controls (called Priority Conﬁ guration in the User Guide and web interface) come set to a default

priority of 2 and Criterion 1 and 2 set to “none”. Priority can be set from 0 to 7 and the Criterion settings

changed as shown in Figure 11 to support 802.1p or ToS (Type of Service) tagging.

Figure 11: QoS settings

Figure 12 shows what you get into when selecting “Custom” Criterion setting. This is a fairly low-level

interface for a trafﬁ c classiﬁ er, again, not intended for general consumer use. The User Guide provides

a little insight into the Custom controls via a video streaming example, but not enough that I’d feel

comfortable messing with the settings. Figure 12 is a shot of a portion of the web admin interface, but

the same controls appear when selecting the Custom Criterion in the Utility application.

Figure 12: QoS Custom Priority settings

The remaining settings include Security to set the admin login password, Firmware Update to control

interaction with a TFTP application used for ﬁ rmware upgrading and Tools, which provides soft reset and

reset-to-factory defaults controls.

Performance - Powerline

For the AV200 powerline’s performance testing, I used the same ﬁ ve test locations around my home that

I used for the HomePlug Turbo Roundup testing. Go here if you want the details on the locations and

distances.

I used Ixia’s IxChariot and set up two copies of the standard throughput.scr script to run

simultaneously, one from the IxChariot console to a remote endpoint (for transmit), and the second with

endpoints swapped (for receive). I used TCP/IP, changed the ﬁ le size to 300,000 Bytes from the 100,000

Byte default, and set the scripts to loop for one minute.

NOTE: I did not follow Corinex’s recommendation to change the TCP window size to 512 kBytes

to accommodate the “higher latency” of a powerline network, since I don’t like messing with my TCP/IP

settings. But if you have no such qualms, you can run the scripts Corinex supplies to execute the tweak

for Win 98, XP or Linux kernel 2.4 or higher.

Figure 13: AV200 powerline throughput comparison with HomePlug Turbo

Figure 13 shows the results for the AV200 along with the results from the HomePlug Turbo roundup

testing. I guess I can see why networking product manufacturers are willing to give up HomePlug

interoperability to use DS2’s technology! The AV200 beat the best case HomePlug Turbo results (Netgear

XE104) in all test locations and had a best case (Location 1) throughput of almost three times that of

HomePlug Turbo (70.9 vs. 24.8 Mbps)

Figure 14 shows an IxChariot plot of the simultaneous receive and transmit runs in Location 1 so that

you can see the throughput variation.

Figure 14: Location 1 AV200 throughput

Figure 15 shows the plot for my infamous Location 4, which seems to defy all attempts at networking to

it other than with good old Ethernet! I know why this location is tough for wireless, but have yet to ﬁ gure

out why it’s also bad news for powerline networking.

Figure 15: Location 4 AV200 throughput

Performance - Coax

I was only able to give the AV200 Coax adapter a few cursory throughput checks since my in-home

test setup still needs more development. My original plan was actually to test the Corinex AV200 Coax

product against MoCA-compliant (Multimedia over Coaxial Alliance) adapters. I’ve been after MoCA to

supply product for review since CES 2005 and thought I was ﬁ nally going to succeed after an encouraging

meeting at this January’s CES. But after a number of emails with a MoCA rep after the show, I ﬁ nally got

the word that no MoCA product would be forthcoming since member companies weren’t able to part with

product due to “certiﬁ cation” and “standards-ratiﬁ cation” activities.

So I had to settle for two relatively unstressful tests. The ﬁ rst test just connected two AV200 Coax

adapters via a 6’ piece of RG 6 coax with an IxChariot test pair plugged into the adapters’ Ethernet ports.

I ran the same script that I used for the AV200 powerline tests, with the results shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16: AV200 coax direct back-to-back throughput

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by these results, which were essentially the same as those

I got in the Location 1 powerline test. But I had thought (hoped?) that given the superior electrical

environment of coaxial cable over power wiring, that DS2 could have tuned its OFDM signal processing

magic to eke out higher throughput.

But I suspect that the coax product’s real advantage comes from less throughput degradation over

distance, even though I couldn’t effectively test that...yet! Instead I had to settle for simple tests using

the two-way splitters that came packaged with each AV200 Coax adapter. For one test, I cabled the IN

connectors of the two splitters together with a short piece of RG 6, then connected each AV200 Coax

adapter to one of each splitter’s OUT connectors in a back-to-back splitter conﬁ guration.

Figure 17: AV200 coax throughput through two back-to-back splitters

The results are shown in Figure 17, which are essentially the same as Figure 16. I also connected the

splitters in a cascade conﬁ guration, i.e. an OUT of one splitter to the IN of the other, but the results were

again essentially the same as with the direct cable connection.

Interoperability And Coexistence

Although I knew that HomePlug and DS2-based devices would not communicate (interoperate) with one

another, I at least hoped that they would somehow cooperate so that they could coexist when plugged

into the same electrical grid. So I threw together the testbed shown in Figure 18 to ﬁ nd out.

Figure 18: DS2 and HomePlug Turbo coexistence testbed

The three computers in Figure 16 were all set to different static IP addresses in the 10.168.3.X subnet

and all adapters were plugged directly into outlets in my ofﬁ ce lab. The two Netgear XE104 HomePlug

Turbo adapters had their Network ID set to the default “HomePlug” and the two AV200 powerline

adapters had their blank default Network IDs.

I modiﬁ ed the IxChariot script used for the throughput testing so that in one case I gave the AV200 test

pair a 10 second head start in one case and the HomePlug Turbo the head start in the other. I also had

both scripts send data from the IxChariot console to the remote endpoints instead of one receive and one

transmit used in the performance tests.

Figure 19: HomePlug and DS2 competing for bandwidth

Figure 19 shows that the two powerline networking technologies battle each other so that only one can

operate at a time. The results I got over repeated runs were highly variable and would also depend

on the distance between the various adapters. The bottom line is that the two technologies neither

interoperate nor coexist without severly interfering with each other. This behavior was conﬁ rmed as

expected by both Intellon and DS2.

Wrapup

I dinged the HomePlug Turbo folks for advertising 85 Mbps and delivering an average of 10, so let’s see

if DS2 does any better. Table 1 compares the % reduction from the advertised maximum throughput for

the Corinex AV200 powerline and Netgear XE104 “85 Mbps” (HomePlug Turbo) for each of my ﬁ ve test

locations.

Although the Corinex’ best-case throughput of 65% is better than the Netgear’s 71%, the other values

are similar enough that DS2 deserves as much of a “shame on you” as I awarded to Intellon for selling

high and delivering (relatively) low on throughput.

That having been said, however, it’s clear that DS2’s technology delivered consistently better

performance than HomePlug turbo in my test environment.

Location 1 Location 2 Location 3 Location 4 Location 5

Corinex

AV200 Powerline (DS2)

Throughput (Mbps)

70.9 29.5 24.5 4.2 12.1

Throughput Reduction from 200 Mbps (%)

65% 85% 88% 98% 94%

Netgear XE104 (HomePlug Turbo)

Throughput (Mbps)

24.8 10.5 8.1 2.1 8.5

Throughput Reduction from 85 Mbps (%)

71% 88% 90% 98% 90%

Table 1: Actual Throughput Reduction

from Advertised Maximum

The big question is why did DS2 design its technology so that it doesn’t nicely coexist with HomePlug?

It’s not as if DS2 doesn’t know what it takes to have its 200 Mbps technology coexist with both the

installed base of HomePlug 1.0 and 1.0 plus Turbo products. After all, DS2 joined the HomePlug board at

the beginning of 2004 (but at some point left both the board and HomePlug entirely).

What we have here is yet another case of a grab for marketshare using incompatibility with a competitive

technology as a weapon. And, as usual, the consumer is once again thrown into the middle. Granted, that

AV200 products aren’t intended to be a big retail item. But consumers could be put into the position of

having to throw out any HomePlug products they have when they sign up for an IPTV service that uses

DS2-based powerline technology to distribute the service throughout a home.

As much as DS2 and HomePlug wish the other would go away, both are probably going to be around for

the foreseeable future. HomePlug AV - which incidentally doesn’t interoperate with HomePlug 1.0 and

Turbo, but cooperates with them to share bandwidth - will eventually make it out of the labs and into

consumer homes. Indications are that the HomePlug AV and DS2 technologies will battle each other for

powerline bandwidth even more severely than has been shown for HomePlug 1.0 / Turbo and DS2. So all

companies involved are going to need to confront this issue in a more constructive way or face consumer

(and hopefully service provider) resistance.

Fortunately, the new leadership in the HomePlug Alliance seems to understand what’s at stake and

recently announced a new “compliance, interoperability and coexistence program”. This initiative

includes working with the IEEE P1901 Work Group and European Telecommunications Standards

Institute (ETSI) Powerline Coexistence Work Group - the same groups that DS2 has been working with

on the same issues.

The good news from all of this is that there is a powerline-based networking alternative that appears to

be capable of supporting a few video streams and even some simultaneous good old data trafﬁ c to boot.

Now if everyone would please just get along, maybe there will be room for everyone in the shiny, happy

powerline-networked streaming video future, eh?

Corinex AnyWire Connectivity AV200 Introduction Manual

Brand: Corinex

Model: AnyWire Connectivity AV200

Category: PowerLine network adapters

Type: Introduction Manual

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