Powerline adapters, niche junk or?

[LiGhTfasT]

I've never used them as there is always a cable route. So many options - cavity, sub floor, under the carpet, external run. Do it properly to start with and cable anything that doesnt move.

[jimbouk]

So, scores on the door currently from a quick speedtest.net:

              | Ping ms | Download Mbps | Upload Mbps |
Router        | n/a     | 80            | 20          |
Network cable | 11      | 74.25         | 18.74       |
Via powerline | 17      | 5.77          | 12.6        |

Yeah, need to sort a wire out!

[DanceswithUnix]

My Internet connection is over a lot of old mains wiring and with 7 powerline adaptors in total which I think causes a slowdown from contention. I'm sat upstairs corner to corner diagonal across the house from the router in the opposing downstairs corner. Signal is going via the consumer unit in the garage which must be worst case for this house. A quick speedtest.net gets me:

PING ms
18

DOWNLOAD Mbps
51.48

UPLOAD Mbps
15.10

That seems on the low side, I often see the full 70Mbps of my VDSL line here.

I have a big reel of Cat 6 in the garage ready to pull a cable upstairs, but running cable in this old house is just so damned hard. That would really involve pulling floorboards up, and those suckers really aren't designed to come back up.

[Saracen999]

I've never used them as there is always a cable route. So many options - cavity, sub floor, under the carpet, external run. Do it properly to start with and cable anything that doesnt move.

That might (also might not, but for the sake of argument I'll stipulate it as correct) be true but it doesn't mean everybody is able to use them. Some such routes exist provided you can mess with the fabric of the building, such as taking up floorboards or drilling holes, either in internal or external walls. I can, because my house is freehold and I own it, but anyone in rented accomodation is going to find there are limits to what physical damage they can do without ending up with an irate landlord.

Also, there is the issue of what is physically within the capabilities of an individual to do, or to pay to get a tradesman to do.

My cousin, for instance, is quite seriously disabled and couldn't crawl under floorboards or climb ladders if her life depended on it, is dependent entirely on benefits and couldn't afford tradesmen to do it for her unless she stops eating for a few weeks, and her landlord (the local authority) are likely to be unamused at drilling holes everywhere.

Even in my case, where I can run cables and am costing up some fibre 10G stuff right now, it's only possible with the drilling of quite a few holes. The solution will be way better, and way faster than powerline, but also several times (and hundreds of pounds) more expensive.

Yeah, cabling is the better solution .... if you can use it. It isn't always possible though.

[Jay-Bruce]

Devolo despite being expensive do seem to have some issues. Currently using TP-Link 1200 ones at present and they're pretty good, but as others have said the home's mains circuit and what's plugged into it near the homeplug makes a huge difference where powerline are concerned. Personally I wouldn't use Devolo after reading some of the reviews.

I've also ran the TP 1200 powerline stuff, but I later found wireles AC or better yet AX offered improved connection performance and stability, and could be an attractive alternative to homeplug/powerline wallwarts, especially if you have devices on different circuits. By that I mean if your upstairs computer was on the breaker for the upstairs socket whereas the router was on the downstairs socket circuit breaker, the powerline stuff might be suboptimal.

[dannyboy75]

I used to swear by Powerlines, as long as they were decent quality & speed rating. But recently I've noticed my "500Mbps" ones starting to bottleneck my 110Mbps internet to ~ 93-94 Mbps. If I cable straight into the router, it's back to 110Mbps. Seems there's no substitute for proper Cat 6.

[[GSV]Trig]

Oh absolutely, there is no substitute for a decent hard wire into a machine, but when wifi's not going to give you the speed you need a PLA is the next best thing..