
Converting to Powerline on one machine can be a help to your whole house - EwanG
http://a1.blogspot.com/2013/07/why-converting-to-powerline-on-one.html
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cjoh
I tried powerline for quite some time and thought it was useful. But once I
became a homeowner, I decided it was time to wire my house for ethernet. To be
honest -- it's one of the smarter things I've done when it comes to
networking. Not only am I getting the full bandwidth out of my cable modem
subscription, but I also walked away knowing more about how my house fits
together.

Since I've done that, I've been able to diagnose other problems in the house
that don't have anything to do with networking. It's not that hard, and if
you're not-a-renter, it's a great little project that'll give you knowledge
over your house should other things go wrong.

Don't get me wrong -- powerline's great. But cat6 is greater, cheaper, easier,
not mutually-exclusive, and, unlike powerline, adds value onto the house.

~~~
gsnedders
Where are you? I'm surprised that wired-in-ethernet adds noticeable value to a
house — I rarely see ethernet used except by technically minded people; most
people I know just use wifi for everything nowadays. (I know, anecdotal, but
I'm wondering if geographic area has anything to do with attitudes about
this.)

~~~
bradleyland
I think it has more to do with the market segment to which your home belongs
than it does your geography. For example, where I live only higher-end homes
have built in wiring suitable for computer networking. However, homes in the
mid-range can be fitted with this type of wiring as an upgrade. It's not
uncommon to see it listed as an upgrade when it's present, and this is in a
non-urban area of the Florida east coast.

I bootstrapped my way in to the startup scene by starting out doing in-home
computer repair, so I've been in a lot of houses to see the variety and extent
of the wiring available. My experience is that a homeowner only needs to
experience a home wired for ethernet one time time before it becomes a "must
have" on all future home purchases. Even for non-tech-savy home owners.

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Jhsto
I don't find this result unexpected at all. In fact, ever since I had my two
PLC adapters I've taken the speed as granted.

I can agree with OP about the superiority of Powerline. I've stretched them as
much as running it in my old house to a cottage circa 25 meters from the
router. In the cottage I've had 6 computers linked to Internet trough 3
switches, which all come down to the single PLC adapter. Latency and overall
bandwidth is almost the same, whilst WiFi struggles to even reach some
devices, such as phones.

For OP I would suggest trying different wall sockets as well; I've noticed
that different wall sockets provide different speeds, whilst some don't even
work for me.

The adapters I'am using are low tier D-Link adapters.

~~~
X-Istence
Different wall sockets may well be on different legs of the three phase power.
That may be why you can't communicate from one to the other.

~~~
ams6110
Technically you mean opposite phase, not three-phase.

Three-phase power is rarely (never?) seen in residential settings. It's a
commercial/industrial service.

Edit: s/opposite polarity/opposite phase/

~~~
X-Istence
In the US maybe, in Europe (The Netherlands at least) three phase power to the
home is the norm. Split phase is weird to me...

~~~
ams6110
Yep, I was speaking about the US. Didn't know that about Europe. In the US
three-phase power is only seen in commercial or industrial installations. I
know a machinist who has a lathe in his home workshop that requires three-
phase power. He can't get it from the utility so he makes his own by using a
single-phase electric motor to drive a three-phase motor as a generator.

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X-Istence
As a HAM radio operator, I was playing around with ethernet over powerline
adapters and it caused all kinds of issues. Signal quality to many repeaters
dropped, and I would get random interference when one of the computers would
wake up.

Instead I just wired my whole house with Cat6 instead. Nice patch panel in the
basement, and I am a happy camper.

~~~
revelation
Thats because powerline adapters turn your normal, non isolated wiring into a
big antenna.

(Interestingly, the FCC does not seem to care that 50$ boxes are messing up
public frequency bands.)

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hristov
You have to be careful with powerline, because plugging a new device into your
power system may completely kill your network. When engineers design home
appliances they do not assume that your power wires are used to transmit data,
so their appliances can add all kinds of noise over the power wires.

For example, the inverters of solar panels are known to kill powerline
networking.

~~~
syncerr
You can buy filters to reduce noise.

[http://www.amazon.com/Smarthome-1626-10-FilterLinc-10-Amp-
Fi...](http://www.amazon.com/Smarthome-1626-10-FilterLinc-10-Amp-
Filter/dp/B003ICY1S4)

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droopyEyelids
If anyone is wondering what Powerline is:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug)

Basically IP over the same wires that you use for electricity.

Seems pretty crazy!

~~~
stephengillie
The technology has been around for 10 years...

~~~
pmjordan
It's been progressively updated (faster speeds, more reliable, more secure[1])
and in recent years, standardised (I think we're on the second version of the
standard now) to enable interop/less interference between gear from different
manufacturers.

[1] Yes, secure. Much like wifi, power lines do leave your house :), and
despite claims to the contrary, the signal can be strong enough on the other
side of circuit breakers/RCDs for it to be picked up by attackers (or
neighbours). Hence encryption of the whole system.

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mikevm
I've been using the older Powerline technology for a couple of years now, I
think the adapter is rated 200Mb/s, but I only get about 26Mb/s on the other
machine.

Anyway, the latest generation of Powerline is called G.hn:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.hn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.hn) As you
can see, it's targeting 1Gb/s rates, which is pretty cool!

~~~
Scramblejams
G.hn gear you can buy has been slow in coming, and it's got competition. I
found a good overview of the situation here:

www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/05/feature_powerline_networking_the_next_generation/print.html

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jimueller
I had to use Powerline adapters in my apartment and was skeptical because of
early problems. I have been very impressed. I've had no problems. Although I
don't understand why the manufacturers put 100 Mbps Ethernet on 500 Mbps
adapters. Probably because 500 Mbps real world performance is closer to 100
Mbps.

~~~
gambiting
That's the capacity of the entire network,so if you had multiple adapters data
between them might travel at 500Mbps even if each individual computer is
capped at 100Mbps.

~~~
bobdvb
Its the maximum physical rate of the mains interface, but in reality they
won't achieve close to that rate unless they are welded to each other in an
anechoic chamber with a noiseless sine wave supply.

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fpgeek
I'm not surprised by this result, though mine was the exact opposite: I
migrated from powerline to an 802.11ac bridge.

I'd turned to powerline a few years ago, once it became clear that, between
the walls and my neighbors, I couldn't reasonably cover my apartment with only
one access point. It more-or-less worked, but was pretty flaky (fluctuating
speed, lots of trouble streaming video, resetting the powerline adapters
and/or other devices several times a week, etc.). Eventually I started to
notice patterns, like speed always dropping when we ran the washer or dryer. I
ended up deciding that our apartment wiring just wasn't good enough to do
powerline networking reliably (not shocking, we've had issues on other
fronts).

Since I wasn't in a position to get the landlord to upgrade our wiring, I went
looking for a powerline alternative. Fortunately for me, by then 802.11ac was
just ready enough for me to jump onto the bleeding edge. 802.11ac has had its
own issues, but I can reliably watch Netflix, Amazon and YouTube in my bedroom
and that's what counts.

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jajajajaja
Microwaves run at 2.4GHz and mostly interrupt wifi in that band. This means
they mostly impact b,g and n, but not a or ac. Upgrading to ac should help his
wireless experience considerably.

~~~
EwanG
OP here - Yes, I am aware that ac should take care of the interference issue.
Of course if you run 5Ghz n that should as well, but distance is a real PITA
for 5GHz. I've read that the 5GHz on ac uses beam forming to increase
distance/throughput. But that would be just as much an experiment at this
point as the Powerline adapters were. And ac routers and adapters are rather
expensive right now, particularly compared to the Powerline equivalents.

~~~
bobdvb
I upgraded to 11ac from an early generation powerline adaptor because it
wasn't reliable. It is much more reliable over the short distance, but as my
house is brick/block construction I find the range at 5GHz drops off quickly.
So when I am in the lounge I get 135Mbit/sec at 5GHz but outside barely a
sniff of 5GHz, however the 2.4GHz still works.

My old powerline adaptors are now in service feeding my workshop with network,
but I only get 40Mbps on my gigabit network. Currently contemplating fibre
just because of the small size and low loss.

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sliverstorm
I've actually switched from a ~200Mbps effective 450N link to 200Mbps
powerline adapters which provide ~90Mbps effective.

I've been pleased with the results. It is slower for single, large data
streams. However, I primarily use my home network to access a NAS, and it
seems to be smoother and faster over powerline- perhaps because there are far
fewer lost packets, and it is supposed to be full duplex (?) so it behaves
better in a random-access situation. In theory there is also more headroom for
other devices, while WiFi generally sucks up all the available spectrum for
just one device.

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alextingle
Or he could just run some CAT-6 cable.

~~~
jdoss
Or he lives in an apartment and running CAT6 isn't really an option.

~~~
tzs
He lives in a house.

I base this on two things.

(1) Apartments usually only have one floor. The article says he was having
trouble with wifi between floors. That is not proof, but it is suggestive
enough to warrant looking harder.

(2) He links to his Google+ stuff, and one of the things there is a photo of a
house with Christmas decorations, which he describes as "Christmas lights near
our house", and he links to Google maps for that lighted house. That house is
in the middle of a vast sea of houses, with no apartments within a kilometer.
All the apartment buildings with 6 km only offer units with one floor of
living space (some do have a second floor, but it is a garage).

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gambiting
We live in a terraced house in the UK, and using the new Virgin SuperHub 2 and
its 5.0GHz connection I can get full speed of our Internet - 125Mbps, even on
my phone(HTC One). Powerline(using TP-Link 200Mbps adapters) maxes out at
80Mbps in every room of the house.

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mrigor
If you're thinking about doing this, make sure your 500 plug comes with a
gigabit port. Some of them are only 10/100.

