Powerline Kits

Begbie · 27 May 2017 at 19:07

So I'm moving into a rented house tomorrow, still waiting for the line to be installed. But I can't imagine the wifi up the stairs being great. Sadly due to it being rented, running cat5 would be problematic. Are any of these kits any good now?

And any recommendations, or are they all very similar?

TheVoice · 28 May 2017 at 00:02

Devolo ones tend to get good reviews, they're quite expensive though. Go for the fastest ones you can really, you'll never get anything close to the speed they're rated for but they do tend to be faster nonetheless. Passthrough versions mean you don't lose the socket either.

DIABLO · 28 May 2017 at 00:58

Generally you'll be doing well to get 100Mbit speed.

IT Troll · 28 May 2017 at 19:13

DIABLO said:
Generally you'll be doing well to get 100Mbit speed.

Especially as many only have 100Mb ports. But yes, another vote for Devolo here. It is just a shame that the faster ones have the ports positioned on the top.

Avalon · 31 May 2017 at 02:12

Rather than drill holes at antisocial hours, I dragged a pair of TP Link Nano 500's into service tonight from my emergency box, sync speed is a claimed 156Mbps (we're taking plugged into extensions at both ends, so not ideal) and they're easily capable of maxing my WAN while being more reliable/faster in real world usage than wifi. The retail is £25-30, I'd happily recommend them.

*edit*
Today (before drilling holes) I decided to have a closer look at my powerline kit, it's always been for emergency or temp use when a cable would cause a trip hazard or is impractical to run for short term use and cost me the grand total of £10 back in the day to replace the ancient COMTREND kit BT used to give away years back, so here in lies some highly dubious and anecdotal sync speed numbers:

Two extensions, same circuit 168Mbps
One extension, same circuit 221Mbps
No extensions, same circuit 337Mbps

OK, extensions are bad. Now powerline kits love to quote full duplex speeds, also my kit comes with a 10/100 port so realistically 12.5MB/s max, but the sync speed comes out at over 42MB/s. Either way for general use as my WAN is profile limited to 52/10, i'd not want to move a few TB about over it, but it's quick enough for what's needed. If you need gigabit speeds, buy a gigabit product with gigabit ports. Personally if it was rented i'd consider flat cables if possible, never had an issue working them under skirting or down the edge of a carpet.