Powerline questions

Walker34

Hi Folks,
I have an old house and in the past used cat5 threaded under floors and through walls to get networking through out.I always preferred hardwired rather than wireless and now want to redo the system correctly.

I am looking at Powerline products,adapters,hubs,switches and am wondering how effective they are for gaming,multimedia streaming, and general file sharing. I just got UPC fibrepower broadband and while I get 100mgb/s at the modem, as soon as I go through a switch or router I am dropping speed, even though the router is a 300mbp/s unit. Will the use of a number of powerline units cause a cumulative loss of bandwidth......I am looking at about 12 pc`s and consoles. Is Powerline the way to go for an easy life, or do I have to get on my knees again and start threading cables.?Tia, John

Spacedog

no, powerline is not reliable past 50Mbps imo, and for gaming you will have a lot of collisions and dropped packets. better off going with switched gigabit over dedicated copper.

gigabit is good for non-secure / loss tolerant data comms like digital tv or streaming media, for games, voip etc. stick with tried and trusted wired Ethernet.

Walker34

Aaah bother!....I suspected it sounded a bit too good to be true, also a lot of the gear for sale has very confusing speed details. The large print calls it gigabit but further down in the specification if you look hard enough you start to see a lot of "Fully compliant with IEEE 802.3/802.3u 10/100Mbps RJ45". The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.!

Mumha

I have a Netgear Powerline (200mb) adapter connected to my router and 2 other Netgear adapters downstairs. I need to get another adapter, but I'm wondering if i am restricted to getting only Netgear, or could I get TP Link etc ?

who_me

Mumha wrote: »

I have a Netgear Powerline (200mb) adapter connected to my router and 2 other Netgear adapters downstairs. I need to get another adapter, but I'm wondering if i am restricted to getting only Netgear, or could I get TP Link etc ?

It might work - I've never tried it - but every report I've seen says don't mix and match.

To the OP (a bit late) - I have a pair of TP Link 500Mbps adaptors, and am seeing a steady 90Mbps of actual bandwidth (when downloading from a local webserver) or ~80 Mbps (when doing a local file copy). Very reliable connection, never drops. I'd opt for it over N wireless any day. It could depend on the wiring, so YMMV!

Obviously, gaming use is quite different to video streaming or downloads, likely transmitting in bursts, with latency being as/more important than bandwidth. Still, I'd imagine it's close to 100Mbps Ethernet in both, which should be more than good enough for gaming.

Mumha

who_me wrote: »

It might work - I've never tried it - but every report I've seen says don't mix and match.

To the OP (a bit late) - I have a pair of TP Link 500Mbps adaptors, and am seeing a steady 90Mbps of actual bandwidth (when downloading from a local webserver) or ~80 Mbps (when doing a local file copy). Very reliable connection, never drops. I'd opt for it over N wireless any day. It could depend on the wiring, so YMMV!

Obviously, gaming use is quite different to video streaming or downloads, likely transmitting in bursts, with latency being as/more important than bandwidth. Still, I'd imagine it's close to 100Mbps Ethernet in both, which should be more than good enough for gaming.

Thanks, I'll stick to netgear then.

Scruff

Spacedog wrote: »

no, powerline is not reliable past 50Mbps imo, and for gaming you will have a lot of collisions and dropped packets. better off going with switched gigabit over dedicated copper.

I've just recently switched my xbox from wifi to powerline.
Is powerline better\worse than wifi for gaming?
The pings seem a bit better but i havent played much BF3 online since i switched.

DublinDilbert

Scruff wrote: »

I've just recently switched my xbox from wifi to powerline.
Is powerline better\worse than wifi for gaming?
The pings seem a bit better but i havent played much BF3 online since i switched.

Power line should be better, a cable will always have a bit error rate much lower than an RF connection. Also with wifi the packet headers are sent using the most robust encoding, but at a very low speed 1MBper sec if i remember correctly. Also with wifi it will depend on what other nodes are on the network and what their signal strength is.

A good quality power line adapter should always be better than wifi, but CAT5 is always best if possible.