My friend lives in a vicarage and she wants to get broadband. Only problem is that she can't lay cable and wireless struggles to establish a signal throughout the house as the construction is a little old. I have seen reports that powerline ethernet is quite solid (albeit a little slow) and this would be perfect as she only needs it for web surfing (little/no downloading or file transfers). The one point I'm not sure on is that circuits for upstair and downstairs are usually on seperate fuses, does this mean that they are seperate, e.g. will not carry a link from downstairs to upstairs or am I worrying about nothing? Does anyone have a personal experience of powerline ethernet they would like to share or any tips?
Power line broadband is evil!! It distributes so much RF noise! Most people don't care of course, but as a licensed radio amateur, myself and around 3 million others are actively petitioning to get this technology banned. It's short-sighted, foolish, and will spell the death of HF radio communication worldwide. It has a 10+ MHz RF bandwidth, and quite a high field strength. If this technology catches on, the entire planet will just be polluted with high levels of noise in the HF radio spectrum, rendering most communication on the short wave band impossible. Not only Ham frequencies, but marine, oceanic AIr traffic control, and medium wave, and shortwave broadcast bands. Tests carried out by myself and others in the RSGB and Ofcom have found that high levels of noise within 1 and 13 MHz can be heard within a 20 metre radius of the home and associated power substation that uses it. Now imagine every home in the world using it? The whole planet will be drowned out with a radio smog that no one can get through. DSL is causing enough problems as it is, but that's managable. PLT spells the death of worldwide HF radio communication. It's quite possibly the most foolish idea anyone's ever had. This doesn't really help of course, and I apologise for that... I just thought I'd spell out the shortcomings of the technology. More info on the problems to the HF spectrum can be found here and here ...oh, and here too. This can't be allowed to go ahead. Surely optical cable is better for everyone. The type you can buy yourself are not quite as bad as the commercial services being trialled right now, but they're still noisey. Intriducing RF to a long length of wire will end up with that RF being radiated. RF sees a piece of wire longer than it's wavelength as a radiator or antenna.... this is just a fact, and there's nothing you can do about it. Unless you're going to rewire your house with very expensive sheilded cable your entire home will be radiating a broad-spectrum radio signal between 1 and 30 MHz that will be causing anyone upto a square kilometre away a great deal of trouble if they need to use, or listen to HF radio communications. Plans are afoot to introduce this nationwide, across unsheilded, plain copper cables, with more power, and a broader spectrum... so when planes start crashing into each other because the HF oceanic ATC bands are rendered useless due to every home in the west radiating HF radio noise, don't say no one warned you Just another example of governments pandering to popular opinion. Blair and his Broadband Britain rhetoric have created this environment where everyone sees being connected as of paramount importance. If that's what we want, then we have to do it responsibly and do it optically, or not do it at all, because whether you think so or not, blacking out HF radio communications will be disasterous. Rant over.... thanks for listening.
I had Ethernet over internal mains - It ran at 14Mbps, at was fine for sharing an ADSL line. However, the latest kit runs at 85MBps - so faster than 11g. I never had any problems with Upstairs / Downstairs being on seperate circuits. It really is plug and play stuff as well, if you pardon the pun. Plug one unit in next to your router, and connect it with a Cat5 cable. Plug another one next to your computer, and use a Cat5 from it to the NIC in the PC. Switch units on, and enjoy. You can also add additional units as well - you're not restricted to the two. So if in the future your friend decides to have an additional PC in the house in a different location, buy an extra unit for it.
Ethernet over power may provide a solution to my problem too However, this page links to this which states that "All Turbo HomePlugs must be on the same power circuit"
They will be on the same circuit - (My mistake on the jargon). Upstairs mains and Downstairs mains are on the same circuit (they all go back to the fusebox), but have seperate fuses on the board. When I had them, My computer was upstairs in my study, and my router was downstairs near the master phone socket. Two powerline units connected the two with no issues.
Same thing: Your using a modulated RF signal over the home's unsheilded power lines. They'll radiate. From the eConnect website regarding their "plug and play" ethernet over mains: "Frequency Band 4.3 Mhz to 20.9 Mhz band" That's where HF ATC is, where many military frequencies are, where 6 ham radio bands are... and a HUGE amount of SW broadcast stations. If every home in the western world took up this technology, it would mean death for global radio communications.
so those plug in and play things you were saying about greatoldone, are they the same speed as having it directly plugged into a router? cause i may look at getting this over wireless since there is no telephone socket in my room
seriously mate, pretty sure this isn't the place to drag this debate/issue out... it doesn't answer the blokes question, or help at all. it's understandably frustrating to you, but the HF radio percentage of the population isn't all that large
OK, perhaps not the best place. If anyone wants to debate the point further, I'll create a new thread elsewhere, but you're wrong about the percentage. All long haul air travel relies exclusively on HF radio, as does about 70% of shipping, and not to mention am broadcasting. To get back on track, ethernet over mains will work on both floors, will giove around 14mb/sec, and seems to be reliable. However, it's broadband she seems to want, not just home network. Plug and play Ethernet over Mains will not give her any WAN access... she'll still need a ISP, and if laying cable is out of the question, there's still no internet access. I may be wrong, but the post sayd she wants to get broadband... which leads me to belive there's no internet access. If I'm wrong, and she's got access and just wants a home network, then ethernet over mains works fine..... even if it is polluting and evil.
...led me to beleive she has no internet access. Maybe Awoken can shed some light... (let's assume she has internet access) anyway... like we've all said. Ethernet over Mains will work very well. You're making assumption here tho. Maybe she can't start ripping up floorboards, and channeling into walls to hide cables.. maybe it's a listed building.. maybe the landlord (presumably the church) won;t allow it. Maybe she has no option. To wire a house up with cat5e means taking some measures to hide to cables. If you can't do that, and wireless won't work 'cos it's an old building with thick stone walls, maybe granite with a high metallic content(more assumptions). what you going to do? Ethernet over mains would appear to be a solution in this case.... let's just hope there's not a licensed radio ham next door to annoy, and he won't deliberately point his antennas at your house and give you 1.5Kw of SSB when you're trying to watch Eastenders to get revenge.
Just get rid of your power line broadband. _________________________ AES Ham Radio - AES Ham Radio Catalog by AES Amateur Electronic Supply
Powerline ethernet would work, or just get wireless with range boosters. Since powerline ethernet is pretty expensive, a wireless setup with rangeboosters will probably work out around the same price.
Never used it myself - but from reviews online it seems it suffers from the same problem wireless does with older buildings... Old electricity supply really harms the throughput. Pretty confident it'll be fine for just the internet though.
