Unix Support For HPNA 2.0?

spell_caster asks: "I have an HPNA 2.0 network at home (10M LAN over ordinary phone lines). I am experimenting with Linux, but I can't find any drivers for HPNA 2.0. Is anyone working on this? Has anyone else tried the HPNA cards?" For those of you searching for this type of support, there might be some good news for you.

Here's a helpful post from the Linux-Hardware Digest #870:

From: Mark Darby [e-mail]
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking
Subject: Re: Phone line networking
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 12:06:52 -0400

       The pcnet32 module that comes with the 2.2.13 kernel appears to
 support any 1Mbps phoneline (HPNA) card that is made with the AMD
 PCNet-Home controller.  Most of the 1Mbps cards on the market appear
 to be made with the AMD chip, although Intel has their version of
 1Mbps HPNA with the AnyPoint product line.  Their controller is the
 21145. So far, I haven't seen any "freely" available Linux drivers
 that support the Intel variant.

       FYI, RedHat created a driver module (called pcnethme) which
 supports AMD-based HPNA cards for RedHat 6.0. It's on their Web site.

       For 10Mbps HPNA, all cards are made with the Broadcom iLine10
 controller chip so far.  Broadcom doesn't freely distribute any
 drivers for cards based on their controller, but they claim they
 provide drivers for vendors who build cards with their chip. Again, I
 haven't seen any 10Mbps HPNA card vendor provide a Linux driver yet.

       I play with LRP (Linux Router Project - www.linuxrouter.org),
 and I've successfully used some AMD-based cards to create a gateway
 for my home. I have a Web page (

www.iop.com/~intutor/lrprg/index.html ) which documents my tinkering thus far, if you're interested...... Mark Darby [e-mail] (work) [e-mail] (home)

So there looks like there may be some small support out there. Have others experimented with HPNA with Unix?

Some links

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux Router Project Residential Gateway [iop.com]

Google [google.com]

I really like HPNA

[joshwa]

I have a pair of the Diamond 10mbps cards that I use (unfortunately) only with my Windows boxen. They've been nothing but reliable and fast. Installation was painless.

The best part about this system is the fact that you don't have to rip up your house to install wires... it was the only way I could get my family to put in a network at all. Now they're hooked and all want PCMCIA cards so they can browse from their bedrooms!

I *wish* I could set up a Linux firewall/router for my network, but since there is no driver support I'm stuck using a Windows box and a poor software router (winroute). Since the box now has 3 NICs (one more to connect to my linux boxes via 10baseT), Win98 TCP/IP likes to crap out all the time when the drivers step all over each other... it's pretty frustrating when I have to reboot twice a day just to keep my internet connection up!

I'd buy a hardware firewall, but there are no products that support HPNA. What I'm going to end up doing is buying a Linksys bridge (which only runs at 1mbps) and a Linksys firewall. Suboptimal.

Diamond doesn't support Linux at all, and Broadcom hasn't responded to any of my emails.

This could be a really successful product if the manufacturers harnessed the word-of-mouth marketing power of the Linux world... I guarantee that if Phoneline drivers were available under Linux, phoneline devices would become VERY popular. Or at least in my household :)

1Mbps

[Elm Tree]

I've been using a 1 mbps lynksys card for the past 3 months on my firewall. Overall it's worked well, however sped is commonly slow (not as slow as when i connected 2 windows boxen together thought :) ) however this may be because of bad phone wire as our service is suboptimal. As well, despite their advertisments to the contrairy I was unable to get my adsl to share the line with the hpna cards.