Powerline network is slower than my internet :(

Hey peeps,

<edit>I resolved this by spending the money. See post 29 for details: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=30396878&postcount=29 </edit>

So I just upped my internet speed to 100mbit and with direct-to-router ethernet it's showing 106, which is magnificent (and possibly excessive)!

But it turns out my budget powerline network adapter is only managing about 30-35mbit, and thus bottlenecking my mancave It also tends to drop the connection every few days and require a power off/on to re-establish it.

Is there any point in springing for a set of premium gigabit plugs? Are they likely to deliver anything better than the 100mbit budget kit, or is it slow and disconnect-y because there's something in the house electrics that's causing a lot of interference and nothing will make it better?

Thanks for any advice!

For the cost of new powerline adapters in the hope they increase your speed I'd look at running a cat5 cable from your router to the man cave.

This is what powerline is like.. a waste of money and time. Run a cable. It will never drop and you'll have a solid 1000mbit connection.

Buy cheap, buy twice.

I have a set of netgear powerlines which only achieve 50mbps which is 1/4 of the 200mbps internet I have, I doubt spending more money will improve things much or at all so I've just accepted it as being in a rental running a cable is not an option.

It's fine for gaming and everything else, it's just downloads take longer.

bledd said:

This is what powerline is like.. a waste of money and time. Run a cable. It will never drop and you'll have a solid 1000mbit connection.

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Not always massively convenient though is it.

I run a powerline - Netgear top of the range - and have no problems. Downloads are fast and i average 38ms ping when during online games.

Powerline depends on the quality of the electrical installation and whatever else is on the ring main. What works for one person may not work for another or may work better/worse by a significant margin.

Run a cable, no excuses, flat ones go under carpets and if you can build a PC then you are capable of lifting one edge run on a carpet and running it back under the skirting board after.

I recently replaced my 200mbps tplink ones which maxes out at 50mbps with netgear gigabit ones which hit at least 100mbps but I dont have a 2nd PC/laptop with 1gb on to test how much higher it goes.

i have the tp-link ones with 2.4 and 5gz wifi, gigabit lan and 3 lan ports.

i only have the 80 mbs fibre and get it all through the powerlines.

they are about 32 metres apart, one in house and other in the garage.

get some better ones with gigabit lan, sit back and enjoy the 2 mins it
takes to set them up.

are you also getting M/bit and M/byte mixed up. ??

Gigabit said:

Not always massively convenient though is it.

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/Looks at username

Consensus seems to be that I won't do any better then. Dang :/

Oh well, I mean, it works 99.999% of the time, I just wish it would be its proper speed...

Tbh, I really don't want to wire up the house. It's just a massive pain pulling the carpets off the grippers and they'll never go back quite right - and I really don't want to end up with the spider's nest of cables that marked my student years. Then again, my desk is next to the chimney, and the router is directly downstairs; if I could make a little hole in it... ¬_¬

Oh... well that's embarrassing. I had a wireless-N dongle in my drawer, and it's getting 58mbit. Not perfect, but twice as good as the powerlines...

Downloading from steam via wifi-N at 9.4mbytes/sec... or 75mbit. I'm basically ok with that, it's faster than it used to be, and the headroom should stop the TV from disconnecting when there's a game update happening

Decent Gigabit Powerline adapters should give you speeds in excess of if not close to your broadband speed.

I have Denovo adapters and as well as giving a rock solid connection they give me that sort of throughput despite going across rings which is known to lower speeds. I doubt you'd have much problem reaching the same speeds but if in doubt you could always buy some and return them if they don't give you a decent speed boost.

Of course laying cables is the ideal but not always practical.

Wireless on the other hand I've always found to be dreadful with speeds fluctuating massively so I steer clear for anything other than browsing.

Cheers for the suggestion, I'll have a look at some reviews.

I'm sort of lucky in that I can position my wifi receiver almost directly above the router in the room below, which might be why it's working quite well. But I guess time will tell whether it falls apart as soon as the neighbours start using their internet. Christmas holidays are probably the hardest test it'll ever face

Have a look at the new NETGEAR Orbi.

Gigabit said:

Have a look at the new NETGEAR Orbi.

Click to expand...

£396 :'(

Looks glorious though

I never understand this, the amount of people who post on here saying speeds are poor either through power adapters or wifi. You suggest running a cable and 9 times out of 10 people are not interested.

NOTHING will beat cat5e or cat6 its more reliable then wifi or power adapters, and for the sake of one cable from the router no matter where the router is its a no brainer!

I never understand this from some people, I would never dream of using anything but a cat5e or cat6 cable no matter if it was on the other side of the house.