Powerline that doesn't need periodic rebooting?

[JonJ678]

I have a couple of tplink powerline adapters. They broadly work but periodically fall over and need to be power cycled. Some time with Google suggests it's crappy design, not a faulty unit.

That's intensely annoying. Can anyone recommend a version that works reliably? Review sites don't tend to run the things for several months before publishing.

Running ethernet has been vetoed. WiFi bridge does actually work, but it's not fast and I doubt it'll be more robust. Fallover is proving tedious to set up.

 

[Radox-0]

I brought a kit by a brand called Tenda, their PH5 AV1000 Wi-Fi Powerline Adapter Kit on a whim to be honest. Works pretty great, was plug and play, not got the WiFi bit to work though, but the power line element works fine and there is a cheaper kit without the WiFi bit.

Ordered in in February and worked great since. Had two occasions in all that time where it showed a red status for 30 or so seconds, but reconnected fine after that.

 

[Avalon]

Vetoed? What are you doing, snaking it from door way to door way and draping it over the furniture like some sort of fairy light set-up?

We live in a world where flat cable exists, it may not conform exactly to the standard, but it’s easy to install with minimal disruption under the edge of a carpet and little, if any mess, fits easily behind skirting, under door frames and even under laminate. If going internal is too difficult, go external, it can be pinned, ducted or even buried. Either way powerline should be the last resort.

I recently did my parents place, parts date back 200+ years and some of the walls are ridiculously thick, I still managed to loose two boxes of purple 5e in it over the course of an afternoon with nothing on show and no mess using nothing but basic hand tools and child labour - the only issue was I realised I need to stop using the eldest for this, she’s getting a bit bigger now and starting to understand financial compensation a little too well, still got a few years in the youngest where a McFlurry on the way home solves everything so it’s all good

 

[BigT]

I recently did my parents place, parts date back 200+ years and some of the walls are ridiculously thick, I still managed to loose two boxes of purple 5e in it over the course of an afternoon with nothing on show and no mess using nothing but basic hand tools and child labour

This made me chuckle. Most of my house is 500+ years old and it too was considerably easier than new builds I've done. They may have thick walls but you sure can lose cable in amongst the horse hair wadding and when looking carefully there's all sorts of gaps and cracks in non-visible beams and places where things don't fit as snugly as in modern precision constructed buildings. And those gaps are great for poking cables through.

Also, I'm not sure if this is the best idea ever, but I noticed when cleaning my gutters that the previous owners ran an awful lot of TV coax and phone line extensions in the guttering to get from point A to point B in the house. It's never caused a issue in the years we've been there and it would make a pretty convenient method of external cable routing for ethernet and mitigates my wife's aesthetic concerns about external cables being visible.

 

[Avalon]

Soffits, guttering and PVC cladding are great places to hide cables, i’ve also been known to either attach cable to drainpipes, never tried running in them though - more than a few feet away you don’t notice a black cable with black cable ties securing it down the back of a black drainpipe, air bricks also make non destructive entry points.

 

[Spyhop]

I had Netgear PL1200 units and they also pooped the bed and needed power cycled every so often.

Might just be the nature of the technology. I'd be wary of people saying so-and-so Powerline units are bulletproof, because it could just be that their building has more favourable conditions than yours or mine, for whatever reason.

WiFi has had massively more industry investment into implementation quality. I would not rule out WiFi extension/bridging as the best overall tradeoff.

 

[Scott C]

I used some Devolo dLAN 1200+ adapters for about 10 months straight and I never needed to power cycle them once

I did apply a firmware update to them before I started using them though...that may have helped

 

[Semple]

Soffits, guttering and PVC cladding are great places to hide cables, i’ve also been known to either attach cable to drainpipes, never tried running in them though - more than a few feet away you don’t notice a black cable with black cable ties securing it down the back of a black drainpipe, air bricks also make non destructive entry points.

Hiding them directly within drainpipes is a good idea (assuming you seal entry and exit holes). This was my worry for our newish build house, as I don't want to run just a single cable between downstairs and upstairs. New builds are notorious for filling and blocking up any gap! But I did notice with ours that we have ventilation ducting in most corners of the house from loft to ground floor, so I'll be using those for routing cable.