[geeks] Zyxel PLA4201 v2

[Lionel Peterson]

As I understand it, you just treat it like a piece of Cat5 cable, if Security
is an issue, you certainly must have other methods to encrypt traffic flowing
over it.

I suppose it treats your electrical system as a huge collision cloud, and in
theory anyone could plug in a similar device and get on your network, as if
they 'jacked into' an open RJ45 somewhere in your home.

Ken (Lionel)

> On Mar 18, 2020, at 16:56, Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote:
>
> o;?I have - borrowed from a cow-orker - two Zyxel "PLA4201 v2" powerline
> Ethernet bridges.  I found Zyxel's user manual for it, which makes it
> clear it's got some intelligence onboard with some kind of control
> protocol (there's admin software which can do assorted things).
>
> I'm not fond of exposing my packets to anyone else too electrically
> close to me; since I'm in a highrise, that is probably a significant
> number of people.  Even if I were willing to run a vendor binary-only
> blob - which of course I'm not - their manual doesn't describe any
> admin software that would run on my machines; it's Windows and Mac and
> nothing else.  And the device has apparently been EOLed by Zyxel, so
> I'd be unlikely to be able to get even what little support they might
> have provided when it was live.
>
> It _might_ be safe to just use the encryption features it's got.  But
> I've heard of enough disasters in closed-source vendor software - and
> seen a few myself - that I don't trust it.
>
> So I thought I'd ping the accumulated knowledge of geeks at .  I don't
> suppose any of you happen to know anything about the firmware or
> control protocol or anything else useful?
>
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