So A few of you might've caught my constant raging about Wireless in this house; I'm going for a new approach; Powerline Networking. So a few basic questions; Should I have them before the Surge Protector in my room, or won't it make much of a difference? And is it worth splurging out for the extra 500mb adaptors when so far as I can see; there's not much of a performance improvement for supposed 2.5X extra bandwidth.
Generally powerline plugs need to be plugged straight into the wall socket. My experience of this has been as follows, my sons and my daughters are in four way adapters and work fine, my wife's on the other hand (exact same make) utterly refused to work in one adapter but was fine in another. As for speed get the highest you can afford so you don't end up having to re-buy later on, we are still on 85mbps ones and no one is complaining but then we don't stream hd or anything.
I started running with 200mbps ones, but was struggling to play blu ray rips across the network (dvd was fine though). I have mine straight into the wall, as most websites suggest that that is the ideal. When moving files across cat5e and powerline 200mbps i was getting real world speeds of about 7Mbps. With 500mbps it's more like 15Mbps. Hope that helps.
Hrm. Well it would definitely be more consistent than my wireless, but no faster if that rings true. I find myself wondering how they can sell them as "500mb" adaptors when real world speeds are that hideously low. What were they using to test? Two wall sockets within two feet of each-other?
Surge protectors and the like will stop them working, they'll filter out the 'rogue' signals as part of how they function, meaning the network signal won't get through. I had a set of 85mbps ones for quite a while and streaming HD was fine. I'd still advise getting as fast as you can, as CrapBag said. The quality of the wiring in the house can has a massive impact on the speed and stability though.
So assuming I get a reasonable signal throughout the house; What'd be the best set to go for for under £50 where possible, I've found a D-link set that looks like it ought to fit the bill, but does anyone have any experience with those. I'm well aware the Zyxel set on Scan is cheaper, but it's 100mb ethernet ports only, which makes it a waste of the extra 400mb of theoretical bandwidth when it's bottlenecked at either end anyhow. (Bit-tech even acknowledged this in their review of said kit.)
Best are Delovo, but i get Solwise as they use the same chip in the AV 500 not sure about AV200 and cost less. Naturally they cost more than the melting cheap china brands and yes a friend of mine had a Homeplug melt. ()free sh t from sky)
I know someone who used powerline networking. Kept returning them saying they didn't work. Turns out, his house was on two circuit breakers... lol I'd avoid to be fair, unless you have to. Slow they used to be. Slow.
This is why you dont buy the crap ones. i HAD RUNNING THROUGH 2 MAINS BREAKERS (caps ops) and had 100% signal. Quality German solid-core wiring though.
I know this house was built in the 70's, with wiring to fit. The upstairs and downstairs are on two different ring mains, but they're connected through only a Fusebox. I'm assuming that wouldn't help with bandwidth at all, but I'm also assuming that, at least, I'd have better than crappy 2mb wireless bandwidth that I get up here.
I would suggest to get Solwise over amazon and us DSR if the speed is really slow. I would not suggest anything under AV200 tbh.
The advertising is down to Bits and bytes I guess. And the old UP TO catchall. 500mbps should theoretically get you to 62.5Mbps then throw in signal loss over the mains. 15Mbps per second is fine for streaming full Blu ray rips across the network (and across floors) in my house, where as the wireless signal is horrendous due to very thick old stone walls. Horses for courses.
Thats why I stumped up for the AV500 for my network as more then one PC accesses internet and Media server over the connection. Remember to think of it as radio signal over cables and not LAN. As all signal share the one backbone and are not on separate cables. BTW: Solwise use intel network chips as well, which are better then marvel of the cheaper brands. Can find in reviews my network has been up and running for about a year now so I got non of my research links sorry. http://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-500av-index.htm
I've been use powerline adapters for years now. ATM I'm using 1000Mbps Solwise adapters. I know they are supposed to be plugged directly into the mains socket, but I have mine plugged into a power strip (used to have it plugged into a power strip, which was plugged into another power strip, which was plugged into an electricity monitor thing, which was then plugged into the mains). I did try plugging it directly into the mains and never really noticed any difference to be honest. There have been a few occasions where I have had to unplug and re-plug the adapter (one or both ends), but most of the time it is fine.
I'm using TP-Link AV200 (PA 211)'s for my WHS box to TV, plugged into adapters, wiring just over 20 years old, to stream video, Divx and MKV, works fine, very handy...
Been using 200Mb adapters for almost a year now. So far speed has never really been an issue, it's always faster than my internet connection which is number one priority so that's one advantage over the WiFi I'd have otherwise been stuck with which as you well know is notorious for spotty connections. I also stream movies and TV shows in both 720p and 1080p and it's worked just fine for the most part (I blame PS3 Media Server for any problems). None of my stuff is terribly high bitrate so who knows.
Everything I've read suggests you should use the mains outlet, but I have a few friends that use them on power adapters too with only minor speed degradation... go figure!
Our house is 35 years old, powerline is wiping the floor with wireless here, no more dropouts for seemingly no reason.
