HomePlugs + House Electrical rewire

SpitfireTT · 23 Aug 2020 at 19:30

Hello,

I have been using the Develo 1200+ AC Wifi Homeplugs for years now without any issues , We have just had the house electrics completely rewired with a consumer unit with RCD's

If i use the homeplug downstairs(wired) I get full speed from them 200Mbps from Virgin

If i connect the homeplug to my PC upstairs(wired) , which is on a different ring main from downstairs i get a 90% speed drop and only achieving at best 20Mbps

What's the best way of solving this , i presume the comsumer unit is causing the speed drop ?

Thanks for your help

bremen1874 · 23 Aug 2020 at 20:45

SpitfireTT said:
What's the best way of solving this

Don't use Powerline adapters. That may sound flippant, but if your wiring doesn't suit Powerline adapters there's no good way to make them work well.

If you are using Powerline adapters make sure you are plugging directly into the wall.

If the house has been rewired that was the time to get some network cables installed.

robj20 · 23 Aug 2020 at 20:48

You had the house completely rewired but didn't get network cable installed.

SpitfireTT · 23 Aug 2020 at 21:39

bremen1874 said:
Don't use Powerline adapters. That may sound flippant, but if your wiring doesn't suit Powerline adapters there's no good way to make them work well.

If you are using Powerline adapters make sure you are plugging directly into the wall.

If the house has been rewired that was the time to get some network cables installed.

Powerlines worked a treat before we had the house rewired , ive always plugged them directly into the wall

robj20 said:
You had the house completely rewired but didn't get network cable installed.

If i was to lay Ethernet cable next to the electric cables will there be any interference between the too , that could impact the internet/speed throughput?

robj20 · 23 Aug 2020 at 21:42

SpitfireTT said:
Powerlines worked a treat before we had the house rewired , ive always plugged them directly into the wall

If i was to lay Ethernet cable next to the electric cables will there be any interference between the too , that could impact the internet/speed throughput?

Not in domestic situations no. I have lots that go close to mains and get no issues.

opethdisciple · 23 Aug 2020 at 21:43

I've juts solved a similar problem using Wi-Fi extenders and plugging the device I needed an ethernet connection for in to the Wi-Fi extender.

bremen1874 · 23 Aug 2020 at 21:44

Powerline adapters only tend to work well if they're on the same circuit. Modern wiring, with many separate circuits, works against you.

There should be some separation between the mains wiring and network cables. You're only talking about a couple of inches, but if they're nearer for short distances (or cross over) it won't matter.

pp111 · 27 Aug 2020 at 21:23

Circuit Breakers have an inductance in them. This represents an extremely high resistance to the frequencies that a homeplug works at. The old fashioned fuses worked better. The only way to get past this is to wire both ring-mains in to the same circuit breaker. You can discuss options with your electrician. These days it is more common to wire the kitchen as one and the rest of the house with the second.

It's actually often not that difficult to change the breaker zones in a house. But, like I say, ask your electrician.

Caged · 27 Aug 2020 at 23:08

If the house has been wired as separate ring final circuits for each floor then rather than paying for an electrician to try and put something together to make your powerline devices work, you're better off paying someone to run network cabling.

WJA96 · 28 Aug 2020 at 07:38

Caged said:
If the house has been wired as separate ring final circuits for each floor then rather than paying for an electrician to try and put something together to make your powerline devices work, you're better off paying someone to run network cabling.

Yes, first loss, least loss. Any proper electrician will have wired your house up to the current regulations and you don’t want to mess with that. Ethernet cables are ludicrously easy to run once you get the hang of it.

Caged · 28 Aug 2020 at 13:05

The issue of having loads of devices on a single circuit in a modern setting is far less to do with the total current draw (you could probably run an entire house outside of the kitchen off 20A as long as that didn't have to include heating), and more that the amount of earth leakage from all the switch mode power supplies is likely to cause nuisance tripping. Keeping some diversity in what loses power in the event of a fault is a good thing.

pc-guy · 29 Aug 2020 at 22:47

I am using power line adaptor with modern fuse box. I get 400mbps sync speed between different rings.

I don’t see any issues of using power line adaptors. If you can run cat6 cable it is ideal however bear this in mind that today cat6 is the standard, what about next decade? You can’t be ripping cables out every 10yrs.

bremen1874 · 29 Aug 2020 at 22:57

pc-guy said:
You can’t be ripping cables out every 10yrs.

As Cat6 will handle 10GbE at normal domestic distances it's future proof enough. Not using a wired network now because there might be a future standard that'll require different cabling is daft.

A 400Mbps Powerline sync will only translate to roughly 133Mbps of actual throughput. That's a fraction of what a wired network will offer.

pc-guy · 30 Aug 2020 at 12:52

bremen1874 said:
As Cat6 will handle 10GbE at normal domestic distances it's future proof enough. Not using a wired network now because there might be a future standard that'll require different cabling is daft.

A 400Mbps Powerline sync will only translate to roughly 133Mbps of actual throughput. That's a fraction of what a wired network will offer.

Most of my hardline connected devices are 100mbs (hue hub, old tv, etc.). So power line is more than enough.

it really depend on what you are wiring together. I see lots of people giving advice here for people to rip out walls and ceiling to get cat6 in and not even bother to find out what speed people’s devices can do. Additionally most internet connections are sub 100mbps so having a gigabit internal connection benefits nothing other than having faster transfer between your hardlined pc and NAS drive.

there is probably more an argument about latency still it is not enough to justify the cost of putting in a cat6 line when the power line can do the job.

also before anyone says anything about reliability of power line adaptor, I have had mine installed for 5 years now. All devolo and not missed a beat. Not dropped sync once. I even got those pest control things plugged into the same rings which people often say adds noise etc which it doesn’t.

bremen1874 · 30 Aug 2020 at 13:23

Powerline is fine if:-

The main thing the network is used for is allowing the connected devices to connect to the Internet.
The internet connection isn't too fast, or you're happy to not get the full bandwidth to all devices.
You accept that the bandwidth is shared, the more adapters in use at any one time the slower it will be.

For everyone else (admittedly a minority) running network cables is worthwhile. I wouldn't advocate for running masses of cables unless there's other work going on. Just adding a few cables between key devices can make a massive difference without having to trash the entire house.

WJA96 · 30 Aug 2020 at 17:46

You almost never have to cut plasterwork to run a CAT6 cable.

Two 8mm holes and a big bag of 7mm cable clips (and maybe two cable modes) will do very nicely thanks. Sure, if you’re running 4 cables into every room you can end up making the outside of someone’s home look like a plumber has gone plastic conduit crazy, but you don’t have to do anything to plasterwork other than maybe cut a hole for a patten box to sit in to take a faceplate.