How Leaky Is A HomePlug Network?

I've been using HomePlugs to feed my Squeezeboxes, TVs, DS etc. for approximately 3 years and they've been completely reliable to date. I use a mix of TP-Link single plugs and Zyxel multi-port units.
Just in the last week I've started to have reliability issues with my network - weird stuff was happening like the wifi recycling every 2 to 3 minutes and having trouble logging into my EE router from my PC. Re-setting the router to factory default seem to resolve the problem for up to half a day or so then everything started going wobbly again.
Then, just yesterday, I did a factory default reset of the router and as I was trying to log into it, the router suddenly flipped from an EE log in page to a Huawei log in page. Weird as I don't have an Huawei router in the house, never mind plugged in. Access to the internet continued OK, but the devices plugged into the HomePlugs were not connecting properly with the network and the DS started doing that fading then coming back thing every couple of minutes which happens only when there's a network problem.
Removing all the HomePlugs and running only on wifi made the whole thing stable, but the hifi very quiet of course. I decided on a process of elimination by plugging in one HomePlug at a time to see which one was causing the problem. But this wasn't consistent - sometimes the problem arose with one device, then with another.
Then, the weirdest thing happened - McAfee on my PC popped up with a warning that I had about 10 devices on my network that "are not protected by McAfee". One of these was a laptop named "CHRIS". A Chris lives over the road from me! This only happened when a HomePlug was connected up - any of them - but not when only running wifi.
A bit of Googling later and I find that the general concensus on "leakage" of HomePlug signals beyond the house circuit breaker box / consumption meter has changed significantly compared to 3 years ago. When I first started with these things, leakage beyond the consumer unit was "extremely unlikely". Now, its reckoned to be virtually certain in an apartment block, and "fairly likely" in houses.
In order to make these devices "plug and play" they all present themselves to a default network grouping of HomePlug devices called "HomePlugAV". So any of these devices that stick with this default name will talk to each other. I think one of my near neighbours must've recently decided to use HomePlugs when they haven't before, and our 2 networks are talking to each other. And because many routers default to the same network IP address, I was getting access to my neighbour's Huawei router. For some reason, that was "over powering" the IP address of my own router.
So not surprising that my HomePlug devices and the rest of the network was getting confused - the DHCP server and default gateway were probably flipping between my own router and that of my neighbour.
So the resolution was to install the HomePlug management software on my PC and rename the network name on all the devices away from HomePlugAV and to something unique to my own house.
Now all seems to be well and stable - across HomePlug and wifi. Will keep an eye on how it goes and I have a list of the MAC addresses of the outsider HomePlugs so I can go and advise whichever neighbour they belong to to secure his/her own network.
So there you go. Take note and make the changes to your own HomePlugs before things start to go a bit wobbly in your network too.TP

Why?

I'm sure there must be a reason for this product to exist, but I'm really struggling with the way Bryston have gone with the BDP-1 digital music transport.  It's reviewed in the March 2011 edition of HiFi Choice magazine, page 64.
There are 3 main ways in which digital file based music is being delivered into hifi systems at the moment - one is the PC / Laptop / Mac feeding through USB into a DAC, the second being streaming from a PC / Laptop / MAC over a network, be it Ethernet, Ethernet over mains or Wifi and finally we have music servers which contain an internal hard drive in addition to the control elements and DAC (and sometimes pre-amp / power amps).  The latter one has a further option of adding other "clients" to the system - examples being SooLoos and Sonos.
So the beautifully built Bryston chooses another route - to only play music directly from direct attached USB storage - be that solid state or a hard drive.  So you have to get your music off your computer, onto some kind of USB attached media and then plug it into the Bryston.  It then scans the storage and builds an index - every time you connect.  So you add one more ripped CD to your portable USB hard disk storage and when you re-connect to the Bryston, it re-scans your collection of 1000 CDs (or whatever your numbers are).  Bryston claim that streaming over a network is messy and hard.  Interesting - and see my next post about the Linn Akurate DS, also reviewed in the same magazine edition (coming soon).
All of that seems unusual, to say the least.  Personally I'm not convinced of the merits - putting a CD in a player seems somewhat easier to me.  So having got all the media onto the hard disk, you just plug the £2200 device into a system right?  Wrong.  All this device is doing is taking the digital file, providing some control over the content (selection, playlists etc.) and squirting it to a digital output.  You need to add an external DAC, which, of course, Bryston can supply, as can many other manufacturers.  The outputs use a choice of electrical connections (no optical, good) which use either a BNC connector or XLR.  And we used to think Naim were a little odd with their choice of connectors!  The Bryston DAC has an asychronous USB input, but this device has no equivalent output.  Hmmm.  With a decent DAC this device is competing with the Linn Akurate DS on price but is no comparison on capability.  Sound quality might be a factor of course, but I doubt I'll be lucky enough to have the chance to make that comparison.
HiFi Choice give the device a good review for sound quality but pronounce the device low on features.  That seems to be a bit of an understatement.  I just don't see a place for this, but perhaps you can correct me?  There may be a market out there for those who find Windows Explorer or Mac Finder enough from the computer side and don't want to have a computer close to their listening system, or don't want to mess about with networking I suppose.  And here is the final oddity - the device has an ethernet port on the back - to allow you to connect to your network which enables the use of an Apple device to provide control over wifi.  Bizarre.

A relevant thread at Computer Audiophile can be found here.