Ethernet Powerline adapters

[Harrison]

Does anyone here use Ethernet Powerline adapters in their house?

I'm about to move into a rented house for 6+ months and have been thinking of a way to connect up by broadband and network around the house.

In my own house I have the BT Infinity extension running straight into my office, with a switch connected to everything in there, and other devices around the house connected via WiFi.

However in the rented house the BT master socket is at the very front of the house in the living room, and the room I will be using for my office is on the first floor at the rear, so it won't be possible to easily run an extension in the same way. I'm therefore thinking of keeping the BT hub in the living room next to the mastersocket and then using a couple of powerline adapters to connect that through into my office and running to a switch with everything connected at that end.

Has anyone encountered any limitations using these devices? The rented house is an older property so I'm not sure how good the internal electric wiring is. Also do they work if you have one downstairs and one upstairs if they are on a separate ring circuit from the consumer unit in the house?

My other option if this won't work is to setup a spare router in bridge mode and connect that to the Bt hub, but that is a last option because I'm trying to avoid wifi for my main computers and consoles because it won't allow the full download speed of the broadband.

 

[scrappysphinx]

I use some adapters by a company called devolo. I have one master plug that connects to the router in the back bedroom upstairs and then I have one plug in the kids bedroom which has a single Ethernet socket for running their wdtv streaming box. I then have another plug in my room that has 3 Ethernet sockets which runs my desktop PC, boxee box and xbox 360. Finally I have one more plug in the living room downstairs which again has 3 Ethernet ports and runs another boxee box, ps3 and original xbox.

They are advertised as 500mb but usually they connect at around 200-250mb upstairs and around 150-180mb downstairs.

I can stream 1080p hd content from a WD nas drive to anywhere in the house though and haven't seen any problems even with all devices connected at the same time.

The PC software shows the full connection diagram and current connection speeds of all devices connected and there are regular firmware updates.

Finally they have a pass through plug so you don't end up losing a socket.

Hope that might help.

This the kit I use

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0065V32DU/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?qid=1389057403&sr=8-8&pi=AC_SX110_SY165

I just bought two of them although they were quite a bit cheaper than that.

 

[Harrison]

Cool. Thanks for the info. I definitely want one with pass through so I don't lose a socket.

These will also not go unused once we move back to our own house because I'm planning on using them to connect the sky box and smart TV in the living room via ethernet instead of WiFi because the TV can't handle all HD content streaming from my server over wifi, and I'm sure the Sky box would be downloading faster over ethernet compared to Wifi.

 

[ptyerman]

I'm using 5 of these myself both upstairs and down, replaced all wireless dongles with them. Mine are mixed makes and can be fussy to connect the first time but are fine once connected. I get download speeds of about 1mb a sec on average anywhere in the house, they are only 200mb ones but are fine for what I use them for and better than wireless.

 

[protek]

I've got Devolos set up in a few places where I don't or won't have RJ45 ports. When we renovated, I had the opportunity to put CAT6 cabling into living room, kitchen and the current master bedroom. I've got it ready for upstairs also but we haven't yet renovated so no ports there yet. In the meantime I use the powerline adapters. They're pretty old so the max speed is only 85 MBit/s but it'll do.

 

[johnim]

i use 2 singles for connecting 1 of my folding machines in the back bedroom to my router in the living room at the from and so far its working great i cant comment on speed tho i haven't checked

 

[thecellartroll]

I've been using some for around six months now. Utterly hassle free and to be honest I don't notice any difference with download speeds etc between the machines connected directly to the router and the one on the powerline adapter.

 

[AndyLandy]

I've got them scattered all over the place. They aren't nearly as fast as advertised, but they outperform WiFi comfortably.

 

[Harrison]

Would they be able to allow full Infinity download speed, or would they bottleneck it? At the moment, connected directly from the Hub I can get 10MB/s (80Mbit) download speed. Would powerline adapters reduce this?

I'm hoping not as these are in the realm of older 100mbit (12MB/s) Ethernet speeds and so don't touch Gbit speeds. Are the more expensive Gbit rated powerline adapters worth it over the lower rated ones? I've seen a lot rated at 500Mbit and some at 600Mbit. The think is, even on my wired Gbit Ethernet network I've never seen the theoretical maximum of a 1000Mbit network speed. It's normally more like 75MB/s between machines.

 

[ElectroBlaster]

Got an old pair of Linksys 200mb's. I got them used, one had to be rebuilt as the case disintegrated on me!

I was not expecting much from them but they work well, infact they appear to have been rock solid ever since I installed them, which was a few years ago now.

I basically made sure they were on the same ring mains, I was told not to put them on extensions but I was forced to.

 

[scrappysphinx]

On the devolo 500 I have hit 14MB without issues when downloading torrents but usually steadies out at about 10MB

 

[Harrison]

Hmm, I might need to rethink my house network. I don't know if power line adapters will work. Someone with mains electric knowledge might have a better idea.

The cottage is very old that we've just moved into, and has a recent large kitchen, dining room and extra bedroom extension. The electric wiring in the cottage is really confusing and I think a lot of the older plug sockets in the original part of the house are not connected as they are historic and not safe as they are all dead expect for newer sockets (just a guess as having house owner coming this weekend to explain the idiosyncrasies of the property).

The problem is the property has 2 electric consumer units. One in the original part of the cottage in a cupboard in the lounge, and another one in the extension bedroom. The original one has a trip labeled auxiliary junction box, which I assume is the second consumer unit, and that has trips just for the extension rooms. Therefore I'm guessing if the router is connected in the old cottage but I want the powerline adapter to connect from there to the extension bedroom it won't work? Or might It?

Other option is to try and get the bt engineer to run an extension from the master socket into the extension bedroom. Would they agree to do that if it means running the cable around the outside wall and back in? I know they won't do lofts but not sure about outside walls at ground floor gutter level. Anyone know?

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[adsboel]

I used net gear 500nbit powerplug.

They are very stable around 10mb a a dec.
I think it's a better investment to go wireless ac using quality components like asus latest offering.




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[Starteck2002]

I must be lucky

I have three in the house and one in my office (Log cabin in the garden). I get around 30 meg speeds (thats from speedtest.net) depending on what the others are doing... eg if one of the kids is watching a movie from the fileserver I do take a hit but it's barely noticable. All three bedroom machines can comfortably watch movies with no issues - thats two PC's and a raspberry Pi.

I was always dead set against powerline adapters and only ended up with them after a supplier sent me the wrong network cable so was in a hurry to get internet to my new offce. I never bothered ordering the proper network cable and have stuck with the powerlines as they are so convenient.

 

[adsboel]

I might have a wireless n bottleneck, as only from router to server is the plug. However, my old WD edition ( older tech) gave me 8mb a sec in another place so I think it's normal.


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