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Of course there's potentially more to it, but not at its simplest.
The Billion BiPAC P108 (hereafter referred to as 'the Billion') consists of two power packs, a couple of blue cables (except for some strange reason they're yellow!) a simple instruction pamphlet and a CD.
For the simplest of installations, the disk isn't required. Simply connect both end-points into the mains power sockets, the yellow cables one into the broadband modem and the other into the PC and everything wakes up as if by magic.
Of course 'simple' doesn't include any level of security. This requires the installation disk which will enable encryption between the two devices.
This writer has an Optus cable broadband connection for the Chaotic Manor to connect to the universe which is sufficiently fast to give the Billion a suitable test. In this environment, three computers were tested, a computer connected directly (via ethernet) to the cable modem, another computer with a wireless G connection and a third computer using the Billion.
Using the Optus speedtest service, all three computers showed significant variation in download speed (clearly due to the usage of other nearby households) but they all showed very consistent data in the other parameters.
The computer connected directly to the cable modem via an ethernet cable was probably the fastest (although other users' usage made this difficult to determine). What was clearer was that this computer had (by far) the lowest ping response (9ms) and a marginally quicker upload speed.
The wireless computer showed a ping response of about double (20ms) the wired computer, but the download was almost identical (on average 491kb/sec for the wireless vs 492b/sec for the wired).
Having established a household baseline, the Billion was assessed. Here again the download data was inconclusive - users outside the house were probably the governing factor (across all three devices, download rates between 5Mb/sec and 18Mb/sec were observed. However, the other factors were significant. The ping response for the Billion was double that of the wireless computer and near-enough to four times that of the directly-connected computer. In addition, the upload rate of the Billion was a little slower than the other computers - 492 vs 491 vs 483 kb/sec).
So, why would you choose a Billion device? Read on.
