ZyXEL p-660hwp Manual Do Utilizador

Chapter 8 Powerline

P-660HWP-Dx User’s Guide

In this User’s Guide the electrical wiring network may be referred to as the “powerline 
network”.

When the P-660HWP-Dx communicates with each other HomePlug AV compliant powerline 
adapters, they use encryption to scramble the information that is sent in the powerline 
network. Encryption is like a secret code. If you do not know the secret code, you cannot 
understand the message. The HomePlug AV standard uses 128-bit AES (Advanced 
Encryption Standard) to safely transmit data between powerline adapters.
For the P-660HWP-Dx and powerline adapters to communicate with each other they all need 
to use the same Network Membership Key (NMK). Otherwise, they cannot unscramble the 
encrypted data sent in the powerline network. 
The NMK is derived from the network password you assign to the 

P-660HWP-Dx and 

powerline adapters. By default all HomePlug AV powerline adapters are configured with the 
network password HomePlugAV. This allows all HomePlug AV powerline adapters and the 
P-660HWP-Dx to communicate with each other without any software configuration. This also 
means that if you don’t change the network password, any HomePlug AV powerline adapter 
connected to your powerline circuit can see your network data. 

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To prevent others compromising your network security, you can create a private network. 
Create a private network by changing the network password only on the powerline adapters 
you want to communicate in your network. The P-660HWP-Dx and powerline adapters 
convert the network password to a Network Membership Key (NMK). Only the powerline 
adapters with the same NMK can communicate in your network. 
The following figure shows a scenario A - where all the powerline adapters have the same 
NMK (NMK1) and scenario B - where some adapters use NMK1 and some use NMK2.

Figure 79   Powerline Network Scenario