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Anyone recommend a network Powerline kit?

E

Eriktheviking

Goran Bunjevcevic
My house was build in the 1940s if what seems like lead. My office is located on the other side of the house to the router and I'm getting circa 4meg connection from a 40meg line. Nothing to do with the connection as i get 40 meg in the living room on a wired connection. My router isn't the best but i fear upgrading to a dual channel .ac router would not give any real benefits.

A wired network is a no go without a serious amount of drilling which i simply can't be arsed with.

Ive decided to go with the Powerline option. Has anyone got any experience of this and recommend a decent kit? One with a Wifi option would be better but is not essential.

The other concern is the fact my study is in an extension that is not on the main electrical ring... does this have any impact in the real world?
 
if it's not on the same ring you might have problems, saying that I've known them work across rings, multiway extensions and all sorts

generally I wouldn't recommend them but if it's the only possibility it's certainly worth a try, I'd probably just go point to point and put an AP on the other end for wireless

I have a devolo set (similarly I can't run cable as we rent, it's solely for my PS3 as PSN kept kicking me out over wifi) and it does work, I get about 60% of the bandwidth compared to a straight wired or N connection but that's enough

as an alternative you might want to look at eero wifi, they do some quite clever stuff, I've not tried them myself though
 
I've got the same problem - my house won't pass a wifi signal more than about 5 yards. I was lucky and could drill through the floorboards into the cellar and run all of my speaker/CAT5 cable down there.

If you can't do that you really have 3 options:
  • Get a really good router. Netgear claim the Nighthawk's antennae can be arranged to reflect signal from a number of surfaces and do a better job of bouncing signal around the house. This is by far the most expensive option.
  • Run cable without drilling. Normally skirting board has a cavity in behind which is plenty of space to run CAT5/6. You can often just level it off the wall a bit, poke the cable down and glue the skirting back. If you buy flat cable you can also just dig a channel out of the plaster, Polyfilla over it, sand and repaint.
  • Use Powerline - I've had to do this to get signal upstairs and use these - http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/networking/powerline/tl-pa411kit.htm

In terms of speed, think what you might need and then double it as you'll only ever get half in the real world. If Netflix compresses 4K into about 15-20 Mbps then you'll need at least twice that - four times if you have two people watching at once.

The other thing to watch out for with Powerline adapters is that they tend to go pop quite often. Every time I switch off the power to do some electrical work, if I've forgotten to unplug the adapters at least one will burn out. This has happened in two houses so I doubt it's the wiring causing it. You can't plug them into surge protectors as it filters much of the signal out.
 
I have a couple of powerline adapters (TPlink) in the house which work great. I'm getting download of 40mbps and an upload speed of 16mbps using WIFI on the one I measured (250Mbps into the house). I also have another TPlink endpoint with a wired connection going into the kids xbox. I haven't measured it but it never lags. Two of the three tplinks are actually in extension leads which I'm sure is not good for interference levels, but they seems to work well irrespective.
 
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Rorschach said:
I have a couple of powerline adapters (TPlink) in the house which work great. I'm getting download of 40mbps and an upload speed of 16mbps using WIFI in the one I measured (250Mbps into the house). I also have another TPlink endpoint with a wired connection going into the kids xbox. I haven't measured it but it never lags. Two of the three end points are actually in extension leads which I'm sure is not good for interference levels, but they seems to work well irrespective.
Click to expand...

Do these all linkl into each other? I have a similar problem. I use a Devolo D-Lan into my work phone (IP), and need wifi in other parts of the house, where there's no signal. Could I use one downstairs and one upstairs to create a wifi "Umbrella" to encompass the whole house?
 
Charliedup said:
Do these all linkl into each other? I have a similar problem. I use a Devolo D-Lan into my work phone (IP), and need wifi in other parts of the house, where there's no signal. Could I use one downstairs and one upstairs to create a wifi "Umbrella" to encompass the whole house?
Click to expand...
Yep they are all connected. So one TPlink connect directly to the router using an etherlink cable and two endpoint TPlinks in different rooms both connected back to the router TPlink via the power circuit. The WAN settings have been changed on each endpoint to the same WIFI network name and passwords (effectively a clone of the original wireless network).

These are not the exact models I have but the setup is not all that different.
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So based on that theory, could I connect another router upstairs and piggyback off of the one downstairs? BT in their wisdom sent me two routers last week. It seems a shame to see the other one sitting in a drawer redundant
 
Charliedup said:
So based on that theory, could I connect another router upstairs and piggyback off of the one downstairs? BT in their wisdom sent me two routers last week. It seems a shame to see the other one sitting in a drawer redundant
Click to expand...
Yep you can use a second router to bridge into your network but it will be limited to the speeds achieved over your powerline connection.

In fact I have another router in my own setup (which I didn't mention) running another dual band WIFI network. I won't go into why but it has to do with the piece of crap router my provider makes me use.
 
I use TP link single Ethernet port 500MBs and it is solid enough. But next time we decorate I am Cat 5ing the whole house and my wife can moan as much as she wants about the cables. It makes sense.

Next lot of power link bits I get will be the dual network port 1200mbps, I have 200MB Virgin so it makes sense. If you have a bricky 20mb connection don't go mad on the tech
 
well, i got a pair tonight (1200mbps) and WOW.... on a secondary loop to the main circuit I'm getting a 21mb download and 8mb upload connection! thats even better than wireless in the same room. very impressed.

Looking forward to getting away from sky and their bricky connection to Virgin in a month or so.

Edit: now it has bedded in I'm getting 30mb.... makes my new £1700 iMac a pleasure to finally use.
 
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