Homeplug Relaibility

tombrown

Hi

I live in a large house & have Sky BB; the wifi range on the router is not good enough to reach all corners of the house so I have a second Wifi router & I connect the two via Homeplug (TP Link AV) adapters. This works fine 80% of the time, but on a regular basis the connection between the two fails and so anything connected to the second Wifi router loses internet connection (in fact cannot even get an IP address as the main router is the DHCP server). After a few hours the connection restores & we are OK again.

Unfortunately I recently moved my home office to a part of the house served by the second router, so this is now more than just "an annoyance to the kids"

The electrical wiring in the original part of the house is old enough (30 years for the most part) & so probably not the best and the main router is in an extended part of the house and so the ring main is off a secondary fuse board.

I needed a second set of Homeplug adapters for another house so I am looking to replace my existing ones with an AV2 system from TP Link and then use the older AV ones in the other house. Is this likely to improve relaibility?

Is there anything else I should be looking at?

ED E

Personally, I'd give up on EoP now and run a CAT6 length. If you're going through the RCBOs then the homeplugs will likely always have problems.

If running a cable the entire way is problematic, running a link from the main router to the edge of the other ring main and "starting" the homeplug leg there would be significantly better.

crawler

ED E is 100% correct but it may be worth trying the G.hn standard

tombrown

Thanks

I'm trying Ed E's suggestion via various different sockets ... i really want to avoid having to run CAT5/6 from one end of the house to the other, if at all possible.

Will the AV2 version improve reliability or just face the exact same issues?

Praetorian

Definitely try various sockets, I have an entertainment room / cinema room at the back of my house & since our electrician failed to run cat6 like requested I'm running the equipment off powerline tech at the moment. I was only receiving about 70 down and 2 m/bit up on one socket and 3 sockets over I am getting very close to 100m/bit in each direction. Definitely do not plug in via a double adapter / multi adapter.

Reliability is great in general with powerline, I've deployed it about 10 times in peoples homes / businesses.

I don't know if it's allowed to pimp that I'm selling two wall plugs but I'll take a chance.

http://www.adverts.ie/other-computers/tp-link-tl-pa451kit-av500-powerline-adapter-with-ac-pass-through-starter-kit/9574190

tombrown

Thanks - the plugs I use are the "pass through" type, so I can plug them directly into the sockets and then run any extensions off the back of them

Johnboy1951

A couple of things that can have detrimental affect on connection:-

Plugging in a power supply for charging a phone or such close to the device can affect throughput.
The pass-through devices are usually filtered so should not affect throughput when used.

Wire connections in the power socket not sufficiently tight can interfere. Probably the same applies to connections in the consumer unit.

In the case of connection completely dropping at times I would examine carefully what might have been plugged in or switched on just before the connection dropped.
The problem is likely caused by interference.

tombrown

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

In the case of connection completely dropping at times I would examine carefully what might have been plugged in or switched on just before the connection dropped.
The problem is likely caused by interference.

Thanks for the information. Can such interference cause the connection to drop & not recover (without some sort of reset) when the interference ceases or should the connection come back as soon as it ends?
i.e. shoudl I just be looking for devices that are on for the duration of the connection downtime, or a broader search for devices that are on at the time the connection is lost?

Johnboy1951

tombrown wrote: »

Thanks for the information. Can such interference cause the connection to drop & not recover (without some sort of reset) when the interference ceases or should the connection come back as soon as it ends?
i.e. shoudl I just be looking for devices that are on for the duration of the connection downtime, or a broader search for devices that are on at the time the connection is lost?

Any answer I give would only be a guess, TBH

I would first look for devices that have been newly plugged in or switched on when the connection drops.

Switched mode PSUs could be one cause ..... such as used for phone charging ...... although I would not expect them to cause the connection to drop, but rather slow down.

tombrown

Yesterday I moved the first homeplug plug inside the original house (the second one is also in the original house & not extension), but the quality got significantly worse. Realised two things :

1) I plugged it into a socket behind the TV, where I have multiple devices (tv, sky box, dvd etc) plugged in, some with AC/DC converters
2) On recollection, while this is inside the original house, the socket was added when the extension was built, so is quite possibly on the second fuse board (its on a wall directly opposite new sockets in the extension)

So tonight I've moved it round the corner and its working really well. I'm actually getting better ping & download speeds from the second router than I have seen before.

Touch wood, as I need to monitor it over time, but I have a feeling I've nailed it. Thanks for all the advice & help

Cue a further post in 24 hours saying "damn ..."