There are times when a reviewer can spend ages hunting for the perfect phrase that will neatly describe a product, and there are times when he simply picks up the box and writes what he sees. So the Netgear WGXB102 is a '54Mbps Wall-Plugged Wireless Range Extender Kit' and in a Ronseal moment it does indeed do exactly what it says on the packet.

Let's assume that you have a broadband connection somewhere in your house and you want an Internet connection on a PC or notebook which is in a different room. You could string a piece of CAT 5 Ethernet cable between the two, but it's messy and you'll trip over the thing at some point.

Alternatively you could use wireless networking, which is a superb technology that is practically free of charge as the vast majority of routers include one form of wireless or another. The problem is that wireless doesn't work too well when walls and floors get in the way. So you can flood an open-plan office with 802.11g easily enough but you'll find that a Victorian terraced house will kill your signal stone cold dead, or at the least it'll slow the signal to a crawl.

The answer is a technology called Ethernet-over-Power that we Brits know little about but which is very popular in Germany where the services (power, telephone, water) come into the cellar of your house; but they also have concrete floors that prevent you creating a network.

The solution is to use the mains power cabling that runs all over your house, so the Netgear WGXB102 consists of two modules. You plug the XE102 bridge into a mains power socket near your router and then you connect it to the router with the supplied Ethernet cable. Now plug the WGX102 access point into another mains socket where you want wireless coverage and then sit back and watch the activity lights burst into life. The network signal runs from the router, down the Ethernet cable, into the first module, along the mains power cable and out of the second module as an 802.11g signal.

As with any network device, you can configure the security settings for the WGX102 with your browser. Interestingly, the power line part of the communication between the two Netgear modules is automatically encrypted.

Tragically we didn't have an 802.11g notebook to hand for testing so we grabbed a Wi-Fi Tablet and connected with no problem, although the signal was reduced to 11Mbps to match the tablet.

We had no problem getting a signal with the bridge plugged into the downstairs socket circuit and the access point on the upstairs circuit, and as we were running the latest version of Windows XP we didn't even need to resort to the Netgear CD. Indeed, our only negative comment is that the two Netgear devices felt rather hot to the touch.

This Netgear gadget works superbly well, bringing wireless networking even to those parts of the home or office that are a distance from your router. If you currently have 802.11b Wi-Fi and you want to extend the network we'd recommend this Ethernet-over-Power approach instead of replacing your existing router and adapters.