While the 30-35Mbps sucks, In my house at least the connection is rock solid. No drops or disconnects at all. In that sense at least, it’s worked way better than wifi. With 802.11ac wifi I can get much higher speeds (in bursts anyway), but I get frequent disconnects and drops, even with a small antenna.
$300 is a lot to invest in the AV2000s, only to get sub-Base100TX speeds. I may try some other inexpensive ideas first, like maybe different outlets and what not. Maybe moving one of the AV1000s into the kitchen, and using my old DD-WRT router would work better.
Erm, so you basically have all the equipment to make UTP connection?. You just need few meters of cable, reconfigure WRT as AP, and connect it to your modem/router?
A few other people have mentioned a MOCA adapter, but what they have said sounds much more complicated than what I did.
I bought a pair of these adapters off Amazon and ran Ethernet from my switch to one adapter, plugged that adapter into the coax, then went to the other room and plugged the coax into the other adapter and connected my Ethernet devices. It worked exactly the same as power line adapters, just plug them in and forget. I didn’t plug it in directly to my modem or anything.
MOCA 2.5 is capable of 2.5 Gb/s and my speed tests through my adapter match the speed tests connected directly to my router. Also, those adapters still allow TV to come through and I’ve haven’t noticed any reduction in speed when running both.
I have used powerline for a while the old 400mb ones, I have found that if you run them not direct from socket then they drop loads, ALSO I have foudn that if you live in a flat and/or there is two loops from the breaker in the house (front of house /back of house) then it doesnt play nice, sometimes doesnt work. UK houses have dogpoopen wiring as well so that contributes!
I think it may be worth just buying a cat6 and running it along skirting bords etc. Thats what I did in the end. If my mrs pisses me off sometimes I pull on the cable to trip her up
Well, that would probably work but would create what we would call an “OSHA hazard” at work. Don’t want to kill myself tripping over wires running all over the house. On the other hand, I might be able to get a cable run close enough to the living room without creating a danger. I’d have to mount the DD-WRT router on the wall or something…
Honestly, the Moca adapter sounds like the cleanest solution, whether I have to get a filter or not. I’ll have to do a bit more research on that option. It might also pay to try the powerline adapter on a few other outlets, even if they’re not in the living room itself, but an adjacent room, and then drop the DD-WRT router off that…
I’m travelling right now, so I can’t try any of that at the moment. Once I get back I’ll post my results…
Found this info about Moca and my ISP, but not sure how it plays into this discussion. It sounds like Moca may not even be possible with my modem hardware (yes, I have an Ubee modem, but I have my own router)
I also have been running TP-Link TL-PA9020PKIT for about 4 years in 2 different houses with no problems (the previous house was old with bad wiring / bad circuit breaker - but the adapters still worked perfectly between 2 different floors)
I would still get a long ethernet cable & try various different wall outlet combinations near the router. In the last house some sockets were better than others. Run a speedtest on each combination. Compare to hard wired speeds to eliminate your NIC as the issue.
As noted above get CAT6 cables to remove them as the issue from the equation. I had an issue recently & it turned out to be a bad cable. These double shielded CAT 6A cables are good.
Extra performance notes (costs $50 - $100):
You could also make your network more efficient with VLANs. HP procurve switches are cheap & have a lifetime warranty. The previous generation HP 1810 switches are also good (cheaper but L2 only). You could put your router in modem only mode & use the L3 functionality on the HP 1910 switch instead. This would eliminate your router as the issue.
For a smaller switch that can sit on your desk Zyxel GS1900-24E (L2 only) are also good, fanless with a lifetime warranty & cheap used on ebay (due to people upgrading to a L3 switch).
Using a BSD based router for L3 will give the best performance (Netflix use FreeBSD for this reason) - I currently use a L2 switch with port based VLANs + OPNsense firewall running virtualized on a Dell WYSE thin client (low power & fanless) - I use the onboard NIC for the LAN & a Realtek RTL8153 based USB3 ethernet adapter for WAN (it has better driver support in FreeBSD). One nice OPNsense feature has is the ability to restart all services from an ssh login rather than reboot. Pfsense may be a bit more stable (it’s what I use in production - they never need rebooting) - but a bit less secure (with OPNsense you can use LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL).
The reason powerline doesnt work well between branch circuits is due to how breakers actually work. Theres a coil inside that is acting like a choke for the high frequency carrier signal.
The alternative that would work better imo is going right for mesh wireless with multiple APs.
i was thinking they may be under a surge protector also, or a GFCI outlet on one end?
I have one in use at a shop i do IT work for, they are able to get 60Mbps thru it but would see 300-500 with a cable :-/
that being said, its an old building that used to be two next to one another, so its 2.5 ~ 3FT of brick and mortar that they were using wifi with before the powerline.
they have a cloud POS system on the otherside of that wall, 1-2 Mbps with full packet loss at times. they are over the moon with the 60Mbps. power line is really a lot better then nothing in a lot of the solutions it finds its self
There are less-involved ways to run ethernet cables. If you’ve got wall-to-wall carpet, the edges pulls up easily and can fit ethernet no problem.
If you’ve got duct-work (HVAC), it’s often possible to fish cables through that from one room to another, though you need to buy more expensive “plenum” rated cables.
A bit more unsightly, stapling ethernet cables along the walls keeps it off the ground. The big issues is making sure you have clearance around doors that close. If you (later) paint the cable (and staples) to match the walls, it blends-in reasonably well.
Thanks everyone, I’ve finally hit on an acceptable solution though it took some blind trial and error. By trying different outlets both upstream and downstream, I finally found a ‘good’ pair of outlets. I’m now getting almost 110Mbps throughput through my old DD-WRT router (now basically a dumb AP.) Certainly not blinding speed, but a heckuva lot better than 30Mbps.
EDIT: Found this handy chart with some powerline test results. Not sure how thorough their test methodology is, but TP-LINK seems to generally come up as best-in-class. Looks like the maximum you can expect with AV1000/1200 gear is about 160Mbps.
Actually had a chance to check the interconnect speed between the downstream and upstream outlets, and it’s now nearly 400Mbps. The reason I was only getting 110Mbps from Speedtest.net was probably because my Internet connection tops out at about 130Mbps. That’s pretty good news for my future adventures in wireless VR.
So it seems Powerline has some real potential, but in an older house like mine the wiring makes throughput highly variable. I wish I could go the Gigabit ethernet route, but I’m not good at running cable nor do I want to be tripping over wires. This will do until I can sell my house in the hopefully not-too-distant future…
