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Not good.
Still got mine wrapped and sealed,wondering if worth me bothering with them if gonna be that bad....
BELKIN HD GIGABIT POWERLINE - LIMITED TIME OFFER @ JUST £67.99
- Thread starter Fortune
- Start date
Not good.
Still got mine wrapped and sealed,wondering if worth me bothering with them if gonna be that bad....
I've got four of these running in the house since my walls have metal in them and wireless running across 8 devices across the house was getting pretty sluggish.
The first batch that arrived I had to return one set since the ethernet port on one was kaput.
For something that only has one button they are a touch fiddly to setup (of course reading the instructions properly first time round would have helped). I ended up plugging all four into one room, and synching the encryption that way, rather than running round rooms and hoping it worked.
Unfortunately in my case they are not much better than wireless - 1Gb takes about 10 minutes to copy from my office down to my home cinema system downstairs - although the culprit could be the RCD installed in my mains box, unfortunately it's not something that can actually be removed. The wiring itself should be fine though - the house is only a year old.
With encryption enabled I was getting terrible drop outs, requiring the units to be restarted several times every day. Since resetting encryption things are a bit better stability-wise, although speeds have not improved noticeably. At best I get a blue 'good connection' light for 15% of the time, the rest of the time it is yellow 'bad connection'. Im following all the best practices (not plugged into extensions etc.).
As has been previously mentioned these require a good environment to run at anything approaching full speed, and personally I have acted like kryptonite to every single home networking setup I've ever done.
The first batch that arrived I had to return one set since the ethernet port on one was kaput.
For something that only has one button they are a touch fiddly to setup (of course reading the instructions properly first time round would have helped). I ended up plugging all four into one room, and synching the encryption that way, rather than running round rooms and hoping it worked.
Unfortunately in my case they are not much better than wireless - 1Gb takes about 10 minutes to copy from my office down to my home cinema system downstairs - although the culprit could be the RCD installed in my mains box, unfortunately it's not something that can actually be removed. The wiring itself should be fine though - the house is only a year old.
With encryption enabled I was getting terrible drop outs, requiring the units to be restarted several times every day. Since resetting encryption things are a bit better stability-wise, although speeds have not improved noticeably. At best I get a blue 'good connection' light for 15% of the time, the rest of the time it is yellow 'bad connection'. Im following all the best practices (not plugged into extensions etc.).
As has been previously mentioned these require a good environment to run at anything approaching full speed, and personally I have acted like kryptonite to every single home networking setup I've ever done.
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I'm getting the same symptom: drop-outs lots of the time. (I can't even ping my router, which is a "direct" connection via the plugs.)
Please could you explain how exactly you reset the encryption? I've tried pressing the button on all my units (I have four), but maybe I didn't do the procedure quite right?
Is it possible to disable encryption, once it's been set up? I wouldn't mind trying without, to see if that is to blame. Thanks!
EDIT: Just RTFM'd and found out how to reset the network password to the default. (Apparently, encryption is always enabled, then; it's just that you can change the password from the default?) I'll try this now and let you know if it helps with the drop-outs.
Last edited:
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OK, to update my earlier post...
I unplugged all four of my plugs and took them to one room, so that I could monitor all four at once. I would recommend doing this when setting up the encryption, because the process took about two seconds when the plugs were near each other. When I had them in different rooms (on different floors, actually), it took quite a while -- and I have less confidence now that, even though the units reported success, all went completely smoothly.
So, I had them in the four corners of the same room. Then I started out by pressing the encryption button on each of them for over 10 seconds. (Hold the button until you see the lights change, something like a reset.) At this point, each of the units had a random and (unless I was very unlucky) different password. (All of the middle, "connected", lights were off.)
Next, I paired two of the plugs. Do this by pressing the power button on the first for ~2 seconds ("more than one but less than three", according to Belkin), and then the same with the second. It seems to me (although this isn't documented) that you can tell which is considered first and which second by the speed at which the "setting up encryption" light flashes: the first is slower; the second rather rapid. After a few seconds, these two units will be paired (the middle light will be on).
If you have more than two plugs, do the previous step again, using one of the already connected plugs as the first and the new one (currently with the random password) second.
After doing this, I put all plugs back in their proper homes. I've since been monitoring the connection between my PC (upstairs) and my router (downstairs), and, over about three hours, things have been perfectly stable (no dropouts). I don't know why setting up the encryption afresh (and with the units in close proximity) should have made a difference, but it seems to have done. Of course, three hours isn't exactly a very long test, so we shall see...
I unplugged all four of my plugs and took them to one room, so that I could monitor all four at once. I would recommend doing this when setting up the encryption, because the process took about two seconds when the plugs were near each other. When I had them in different rooms (on different floors, actually), it took quite a while -- and I have less confidence now that, even though the units reported success, all went completely smoothly.
So, I had them in the four corners of the same room. Then I started out by pressing the encryption button on each of them for over 10 seconds. (Hold the button until you see the lights change, something like a reset.) At this point, each of the units had a random and (unless I was very unlucky) different password. (All of the middle, "connected", lights were off.)
Next, I paired two of the plugs. Do this by pressing the power button on the first for ~2 seconds ("more than one but less than three", according to Belkin), and then the same with the second. It seems to me (although this isn't documented) that you can tell which is considered first and which second by the speed at which the "setting up encryption" light flashes: the first is slower; the second rather rapid. After a few seconds, these two units will be paired (the middle light will be on).
If you have more than two plugs, do the previous step again, using one of the already connected plugs as the first and the new one (currently with the random password) second.
After doing this, I put all plugs back in their proper homes. I've since been monitoring the connection between my PC (upstairs) and my router (downstairs), and, over about three hours, things have been perfectly stable (no dropouts). I don't know why setting up the encryption afresh (and with the units in close proximity) should have made a difference, but it seems to have done. Of course, three hours isn't exactly a very long test, so we shall see...
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To be honest, I haven't measured speeds -- but others have, in this thread (I think) and at least one other. The most bandwidth-hungry thing I'm streaming (at least right now) is FLAC audio. So I was far more concerned about the dropouts than maximum transfer speed. 