We encountered no problems in our evaluation, but you should note that powerline networking can be problematic in some environments: If your home or facility has poor-quality electrical wiring, or if your circuits must also support machines that draw high amounts of electrical current, for example, powerline networking might deliver poor performance or fail altogether. The software can show all six cameras, but five are limited to very small windows. To view recorded video or to control the system remotely, however, you’ll need to sign up for Logitech’s Web & Mobile Commander service (first year included, $80 per year after that). You can view live video from any PC, smartphone, or tablet with Internet access. Since Logitech routes the cameras’ video through its own servers, you don’t need to futz with port forwarding or other complex router settings to enable remote viewing of your cameras. Each camera must be connected to a somewhat large HomePlug AV adapter (the indoor model plugs directly into a receptacle the weatherized outdoor models, which have short pigtail plugs, should be secured to a wall). Logitech provides a 10-foot ethernet ribbon cable with each camera, but you can purchase longer cables if you need them (a 50-foot cable is priced at $20, and a 100-foot cable costs $40). This arrangement means you must have an AC receptacle within the vicinity of each camera you deploy, but you don’t need to string cable from your router or your computer to make any connections you just plug Logitech’s HomePlug AV adapter (included with each master system) into an outlet near your router.

In this kind of networking, electricity and ethernet data packets (including audio and video) travel over the same cable. The setup we evaluated utilizes HomePlug AV powerline networking.

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