I've tried searching around for these questions but I unfortunately haven't found the answers, so i'll ask here and hope for some answers. Questions:
1) Would a powerline adapter decrease my upload/download speed significantly depending on the wiring in my house (compared to wifi), or does it barely affect upload/download in most situations?
2) Do powerline adapters always have less latency than wifi, in most situations?
3) Would using powerline adapter to connect a server to a modem be a bad idea?
4) Who here uses powerline adapters, and how is it? Is it easy to setup and use? Is it worth it? Tell me the good and the bad of your experiences with powerline!
I'll probably come up with more questions later on, but if these get answered soon i'd be really grateful!
1) Depends on the signal you have right now, if you have a weak signal now it might (refer to this for speeds http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C3%A4gerfrequenzanlage (it's German I know - just scroll down and you'll see a table you should be able to read)). Speeds up to 300Mbit/s are achievable with the wireless N standard so if you are close to the source upgrading your sender and receiver is possible too if you have worse than that bandwidth (bandwidth here is not your internet bandwidth but rather the max throughput between sender and receiver, referring to 300 Mbit/s here). AC (latest wireless standard) might be worth looking into too, maybe it's cheaper than Powerline.
I lived in a very old house with crazy wiring and poor internet service, and I had absolutely no problems with them and found them far better than wireless. However, I've read other posts of people living in newer houses with modern wiring who have found them to be meh. I think if you have crappy internet as I did, you may notice a bit of a boost; but if you have decent internet speed and are close to your router, you may as well stick with wireless.
And yeah, they're easy to use. Took about 2 mins to set them up.
No BS plug and play I literally plugged the into wall (one at the router and one at my pc)and boom internet worked no questions asked
The reason I switched from wifi is im on a different floor and on the opposite side if the house. Also when ever i used the microwave oven it killed my wifi.
1 with my experience no speed increase or decrease but latency was slightly lower ( I have 6 up 1 down with wireless or wired)
I use them, they work. Definitely faster than wifi (can't speak for AC wireless though).
They really are hit and miss from a performance perspective though. Your house wiring matters greatly and there's a chance you may get different performance from two sockets in the same room.
Still with that said, I would use them over wifi any day.