Powerline Adapters

The Ayatolla

Hi just looking for a bit of advice.

I have "23 meg" eircom broadband. Realistically on SpeedTest i get around 13mbps.

Due to certain circumstances, I have to move my router from my bedroom to the hallway downstairs.

The problem is, in my bedroom, connected to the router, I have the following:

PS3 (no big deal, can reconnect VIA wifi)
Media Player (no big deal, can reconnect VIA wifi)
NAS Drive (this is the problem, as no wifi built in).
Laptop (when i need to transfer to-and-from the NAS drive)

I was going to buy Powerline Adapters, and then get an ethernet switch to connect all the above to the router.

What kind of Powerline adapters will I need? Will the 150mbps ones be sufficient? Or will I go for the 500? Is there any advantage to getting the more expensive ones, seeing as I only have 23meg on eircom?

I was thinking of getting the TP-Link ones on Amazon.

vibe666

speed ratings on powerline adapters are even more ambiguous than wifi speed ratings, so get the fastest ones you can comfortably afford.

i have 200mbps ones and get around 20-30mbps out of them. you can also lose speed if you have CFL bulbs and will take a big hit on speed if you try and use it on plugs connected to a different fuse in your fusebox (i.e. upstairs to downstairs).

i seem to remember maplin had a good deal on 500mbps ones in their specials at the moment, although i can't remember the euro price, this is the ones. http://www.maplin.co.uk/tp-link-500mbps-mini-powerline-adapter-starter-kit-636021

Vico1612

vibe666 wrote: »

speed ratings on powerline adapters are even more ambiguous than wifi speed ratings, so get the fastest ones you can comfortably afford.

i have 200mbps ones and get around 20-30mbps out of them. you can also lose speed if you have CFL bulbs and will take a big hit on speed if you try and use it on plugs connected to a different fuse in your fusebox (i.e. upstairs to downstairs).

i seem to remember maplin had a good deal on 500mbps ones in their specials at the moment, although i can't remember the euro price, this is the ones. http://www.maplin.co.uk/tp-link-500mbps-mini-powerline-adapter-starter-kit-636021

I've got the 500 model [ got them on amazon ] and usually get 150 out of them .
But had to play around with socket placement [ one is in attic office, other next to tv / router ] As vibe said, they are subject to interference [ ie switch on micro wave in kitchen , hair dryer ] but happy with them.
I still have an old pair of belkin 85 [ i think ] running for ip-phone and internet radio.

The Ayatolla

The 200mbps ones could do the trick so I reckon. I'll chance them and see how I get on. As poster above says theyre getting 20-30mbps , i get nowhere near that as it is so should be sufficient enough

Alun

Agreed. Powerline technology isn't actually that dissimilar to wifi technology really, and you'll only get the advertised speed under ideal conditions. All kinds of things interfere with them including, rather ironically, the chargers of a lot of laptops! I had a case recently where just plugging in a Dell laptop charger dropped the available speed by half. So do what vibe666 says, get the fastest you can i.e. the 500Mbit/s ones, and if you're lucky you'll get a decent fraction of that.

jamescd

I have UPC 100mb. The first couple of days I regularly got 55mb on speedtests using WiFi, but for the past week or so it's been constantly less than 20mb. It doesn't matter if it's day or night, it always stays at around the 20mb mark. It's like they've downgraded my connection or something, even though I'm still paying for 100mb :mad:

I got one of the Netgear Powerline Adapter Twin Pack on amazon for £21 earlier as part of their black friday sale. Hoping it will improve my speed, otherwise UPC are gonna get a call from me.

vibe666

i also think the brand you buy will have an effect on speed as well.

the first ones i got were el cheapo 85mbps ones and i was lucky to get 2-3mbps out of them most of the time, but that was going across a fuse (upstairs to downstairs), but the 200mbps ones i replaced them with get a much higher % of the advertised speed, so i think they're coping with interference better than the older ones, but whether that's down to better interference control, or extra fancy gubbins inside them because they're a specific brand i can't say for sure.

also, beware of any powerline adapters advertised as gigabit. they put a gigabit network port on the adapter, but they're still only going to be 500mbps over the actual powerlines, so it's a bit of a con imho, designed to fool people into spending more.

also, worth noting is that i got an electrician in to run a cat5e cable from my router in the front room downstairs, up the inside of the wall into the attic and back down into the back bedroom where my office was, with an RJ45 wall plate screwed flush (just sticking out a tiny bit like a plug socket) into the wall at each end of the cable, so i got gigabit speeds to my NAS from the router. it only took him about 20 minutes to do (he was there for some other jobs as well) and he only charged me 30 quid to do it on top of the other jobs, which was a bargain if you ask me, compared to buying homeplugs.

unfortunately i ended up moving house shortly after that.

The Ayatolla

Missed the black friday deal. Disaster!

I'm a sparky myself, but I don't have a handy route from bedroom to downstairs unfortunately!

vibe666

yeah, i was lucky that there was no obstruction down the inside of the wall cavity from the attic down to the ground floor where the router was.

moved into a rented house now though to be closer to work, so the guy we have living in our old house gets to make the most of it now.

Chaos Marine

I've seen some of the 500Mb/s ones in Maplins recently. They looked pretty cheap.

vibe666

yeah, seem to remember them being around 55 quid for a pair in the specials catalogue in store.

bonoman66

The Ayatolla wrote: »

Hi just looking for a bit of advice.

I have "23 meg" eircom broadband. Realistically on SpeedTest i get around 13mbps.

Due to certain circumstances, I have to move my router from my bedroom to the hallway downstairs.

The problem is, in my bedroom, connected to the router, I have the following:

PS3 (no big deal, can reconnect VIA wifi)
Media Player (no big deal, can reconnect VIA wifi)
NAS Drive (this is the problem, as no wifi built in).
Laptop (when i need to transfer to-and-from the NAS drive)

I was going to buy Powerline Adapters, and then get an ethernet switch to connect all the above to the router.

What kind of Powerline adapters will I need? Will the 150mbps ones be sufficient? Or will I go for the 500? Is there any advantage to getting the more expensive ones, seeing as I only have 23meg on eircom?

I was thinking of getting the TP-Link ones on Amazon.

Hi,

I bought these in June..

http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?manufacturer=TP-LINK&mancode=TL-PA251KIT&productcode=ECE2396677

I have a UPC 120Meg Down / 10Meg Up connection coming into the house.


I was getting a max of 67Meg Down / 7Meg Up when connected to the above Home Plugs.


I then read about Solwise Home Plugs & how many users were achieving very good speed results with these, even where their rooms had thick / dense internal walls.



I bought these...

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=10670

The only thing that has changed has been the type of Home Plugs.

I'm now regularly getting 127Meg Down / 9.83 Meg Up through these Solwise Home Plugs.



They are also quieter than the TP-Link Models I used to have. I found the TP-Links emitted a very high pitched sound - like an electrical / capacitive component type sound. Not hugely distracting by any means but if it was quiet in the room, I'd pick up on it.

The Solwise are completely silent.


Hope this might help...

The Ayatolla

Just picked up a pair of 500mbps D-Link ones on Amazon. Normally 42 pounds down to 29.99

Zapho

The Ayatolla wrote: »

Just picked up a pair of 500mbps D-Link ones on Amazon. Normally 42 pounds down to 29.99

Wow, fantastic price :mad: I have a pair of TP-Links 200 set but cost me €50 about 6 months ago. Best network upgrade I've gotten in a while! Well worth it - as others have said, I found the speed to be nowhere as good as advertised but I get better than wifi 802.11G speeds and far better connection reliability.

I had a belkin pair before - don't go near them. They seem to only support one other MAC address connected. I had a two routers connected together using the belkin pair in order to have a 2 wifi networks (one acting as a AP, the other doing the routing) and got nothing out of it. Swapped them for the TP-Link pair and booom. Perfect!

The Ayatolla

THey should be arriving Wednesday and I'll be using them to piggy-back a Wireless N Gigabit router onto my standard Eircom Modem. Will then be connecting my NAS to the router and laptop to the wireless N Router so hopefully will get faster speeds. Fingers crossed!

The Wireless router I'm getting is the TP-Link Ultra Wireless N Gigabit Router.

ibFoxer

For what it's worth to anyone I bought a few of the Technika Passthrough Homeplugs in Tesco, €54.99 for a pair of 200mb, I am on an up to 12meg eircom connection and get 10.83 down plugged directly into the router, 10.65 with the plugs.

vibe666

Zapho wrote: »

Wow, fantastic price :mad: I have a pair of TP-Links 200 set but cost me €50 about 6 months ago.

if it makes you feel any better, I paid €75 for a pair of 85mbps ones a few years ago.

Stone

For what it's worth ..... just my practical experience:

I have UPCs 50mbit connection (actually they give you 60 mbit ...) and in lieu of a cabled connection from my 'office' to where my UPC router/modem is I use a power line adapter.
I have the Netgear XAV5501 'AV+ 500' adapters - they work great for me, I get roughly around 7.5Mbyte download out of them. This equates into pretty much full usage of my 60mbit connection :-)
The diagnostics tools from Netgear claim a ~200mbit link, but I can obviously not test this ....

What is vital - for me at least - is that my set has a filtered power pass through option .... let me explain - I have dual wall power plugs, and if I plug my power line adapter into the one and my hardware into the other I get a LOT less bandwidth (up to 70% less !!) as when I plug all my HW into the filtered pass through plug of the XAV5501's. This goes for both ends of the connection ...

So IMHO the main culprit is the 'noise' generated by other appliances using the same power cables .... I hope ye get my 'description' here :rolleyes:
Either get some adapters that provide a filtered pass through option or route any other appliances to another power outlet.

Just my 2 cents worth ...

//Stone

The Ayatolla

Quick review of the D-Links

Have them set up. Very easy, didnt even have to pair them.

The diagnostics they provide show I'm getting around 140mbps instead of the 500 mbps.

This is fine, as I'm only transferring a 12meg eircom connection.

The main purpose I'll have is to provide internet to a Gigabit router in another room which should provide me with fast streaming and transfer speeds to my NAS.

irishgeo

How is everyone testing the speed of their homeplugs?

The Ayatolla

I'm getting faster than Wifi anyway from my eircom router. 9mbps vs 10.5mbps using the homeplugs.

Sponge Bob

The Ayatolla wrote: »

Quick review of the D-Links&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
Have them set up. Very easy, didnt even have to pair them. &lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
The diagnostics they provide show I'm getting around 140mbps instead of the 500 mbps. &lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
This is fine, as I'm only transferring a 12meg eircom connection. &lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
The main purpose I'll have is to provide internet to a Gigabit router in another room which should provide me with fast streaming and transfer speeds to my NAS.

&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
You are a sparks, have you put the sockets trips onto the same busbar in the fuseboard. I found that junping busbars ( across the 40A internal cable, ) degrades a lot but crossing circuits but not changing the busbar is less of a hit. &lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
Solwise are the best. NEVER BUY BELKIN, cheapest and nastiest rubbish there is.

vibe666

irishgeo wrote: »

How is everyone testing the speed of their homeplugs?

i use teracopy to copy a video file from my nas to my htpc, it gives you the details of how fast the copy is running on the fly.

it's also very useful for copying large amounts of data and i wouldn't be without it myself.

The Ayatolla

Sponge Bob wrote: »

&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
You are a sparks, have you put the sockets trips onto the same busbar in the fuseboard. I found that junping busbars ( across the 40A internal cable, ) degrades a lot but crossing circuits but not changing the busbar is less of a hit. &lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
&lt;br /&gt;<br /><br />
Solwise are the best. NEVER BUY BELKIN, cheapest and nastiest rubbish there is.

I put the bedroom sockets and living room/hall sockets on the same circuit, into the same terminal on he outgoing side of the MCB. There's a good bit of equipment connected on that circuit though, which probably explains the degraded speeds I'm getting, but nonetheless still sufficient for what I need.

mossie

I have a pair of devolo plugs. Is it possible to mix different brands, or should I stick to devolo?

Sponge Bob

Should be possible but may only work at 85mbit nominal ( the oldest standard)

mossie

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Should be possible but may only work at 85mbit nominal ( the oldest standard)

The devolo plugs are very good, but also expensive. I Might try one cheaper one firts, just to see how it goes.

Sponge Bob

cheap = interference.

The Ayatolla

The D-Link 500mbps ones I got seem to be running very smoothly after almost 4 days connected non stop, using them to provide internet to a gigabit router.

BaconZombie

I was able to use my 80Mbps Ether-Over-Power adapters fine in my last apartment but this is what I get when trying to use them in the current { newer } one.



So it's all down to how your place is wired and what else is on the same power phases.

Lukker-

What throughput of my 120mb UPC connection could I expect to get with some 500 mb adapters? Currently only get 15-35mb over Wi-Fi depending on the time of day.

jamescd

I have Netgear 200 mbps one's and I get steady 45 - 50 mb speeds. Same 120mb UPC broadband.

So with the 500 mbps one's, you should get higher speeds.

Lukker-

jamescd wrote: »

I have Netgear 200 mbps one's and I get steady 45 - 50 mb speeds. Same 120mb UPC broadband.

So with the 500 mbps one's, you should get higher speeds.

Cheers, anyone out there with a 500 mbps one and similar connection share there results?

srsly78

I get over 100mbps on mine. Limited by 100mbit ethernet port tho.... If you get av500 adapters make sure they have gigabit ports.

Fiddlex

I have the 500Mbps adapters and Im on upcs 200Mb package. I have my adapters connected to an AP and get over wifi between 80-100Mbps. But it will depend on how much interference you have in your house and how old the wiring is.

vibe666

srsly78 wrote: »

I get over 100mbps on mine. Limited by 100mbit ethernet port tho.... If you get av500 adapters make sure they have gigabit ports.

a very good point to consider.

not all the 500mbps ones have gigabit ethernet ports, so if you are lucky enough to be able to get real world speeds of over 100mbps on your 500mbps ones, you'll still only get 100mbps if the homeplugs themselves only have 100mbps ethernet ports on them, which a lot of the earlier ones (and the current cheaper ones) did.