I have had a wireless network in my house for a year, but it has cold spots that are inconvenient for my wife's work-at-home days. And she sometimes has configuration problems after working in a wireless cafe. So I thought I'd try powerline networking as a complement to the wireless; this would also give me PC access in my basement, now out of reach of my wireless network.
So I have a pair of new Netgear XE102 powerline network adapters: one is plugged into LAN port 4 of a Linksys Wireless Router/AccessPoint (model WRT54G) and the other into my wife's ThinkPad notebook. The 3 green lights are one on both XE102's, as the documentation says is needed to show that the network connection is there. But the notebook cannot connect to any web site: IE gives me an error pop-up saying "IE could not open the search page".
If I disconnect the XE102 from her notebook and insert her wireless card, she can connect to web sites without doing anything else. And when she takes her notebook to work, she connects to her network and works fine without changing any configuraiton.
I've read the whole XE102 manual, and everything I can find on the Netgear website. But I cannot find anything to suggest what to try next. I tried this 2 adapters in outlets in the same room, ones that are 8 feet apart. My house is 100 years old, but much of the electrical wiring is new--I just don't know how much.
So why can't we get to a web site with the XE102's? Any suggestions would be welcome.