Homeplugs: Network speed being throttled by power usage?

alexjholland

alexjholland

alexjholland

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Joined
8 Oct 2006
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322
Hey, we have a home network that starts with a Linksys wireless router in our hallway.

Whilst I enjoy having a fat piece of cat 5 cable that runs down to my bedroom under the floorboards with gigabit hardware the entire way, sadly this was not possible for our TV room upstairs.

After establishing that even a top-of-the-range Linksys router and wireless card with much channel tweaking couldn't produce acceptable results for our PC upstairs, we bought some fairly cheap Solwise home plugs.

The initial reaction was 'great', however over time (and, it now seems) a lot of media hardware added, the performance has dropped and now iPlayer on the XBox 360 and PC in that room is unusable.

I decided to get to the bottom of things by plugging in a laptop with cat 5 at every point, to find out where things were going wrong:

- The connection straight out of the back of our hallway router was 3mb. Now this isn't as good as the 6mb we were on until recently (and I'll call BT) but should still allow basic streaming.

- The reading from the Homeplug upstairs was a measly half Mb, clearly not enough for streaming - but get this:

- When I turned off all the other devices sharing plugs up there (PC, plasma TV, speakers, XBox, BR Player and a few more) the connection jumped up to 3Mb.

So, it seems the power coming in on those plugs to other devices is somehow disrupting the Homeplug's signal

Naturally the Homeplug enjoys its own plug - but we only have four plugs to share amongst perhaps twelve devices, so have a couple of big six-way splitters.

Is this interference known?

Is there any way round this? Would a different model of home plug perform better?
 
Ideally the Homeplugs don't want to share a socket with any other equipment.

The plug-through type Homeplugs have filters that help to stop connected equipment interfering. If you worked out which item(s) of equipment were causing the problem and used a plug-through adapter you might fix the problem.

You can also get filters that will prevent a lot of the electrical noise getting transmitted back to the mains. I believe that some surge arrestor extension leads tend to act as filters (which is why you shouldn’t plug Homeplugs into them).
 
Wouldn't use anything less than 200Mbps for streaming tv, I had a pair of 85Mbps, totally useless, stutter, picture break up, etc.

Changed to pair of Devolo dLAN 200Mbps AV to use DLNA on the tv, superb.

Then I upgraded to pair of DEVOLO dLAN 500Mbps AV off the bay very cheap, for connecting my sky HD box for Sky Anytime+ but I don't notice any difference in performance.

Can't you run some exterior Cat 5 or 6 up the outside wall to the tv room?
 
The Homeplug is on its own socket, but its a double socket next to a double socket and the other three all have stuff.

Right, we're on 85mbps and they do seem pretty useless. Browsing's ok, but not even streaming from my XBox works!

Cat 5 is a no-no, it's a whole different section of the house away (it's in two wings).

Looks like some 200mbps connectors it is then! I presume I'll need gigabit router then as well? (no point have 100mbps bottleneck!)
 
alexjholland said:
The Homeplug is on its own socket, but its a double socket next to a double socket and the other three all have stuff.

Right, we're on 85mbps and they do seem pretty useless. Browsing's ok, but not even streaming from my XBox works!

Cat 5 is a no-no, it's a whole different section of the house away (it's in two wings).

Looks like some 200mbps connectors it is then! I presume I'll need gigabit router then as well? (no point have 100mbps bottleneck!)
Click to expand...

Have you tried just swapping the socket it is on? Just in case the sockets are wired a bit oddly/badly...
 
Naturally, I've tried each socket and they varied each time, but similarly. And all of them were better when I turned off other devices.

So is anyone going to recommend me a cost-reasonable upgrade?
 
bremen1874 said:
Save your money, AV200 adapters don't even get near to 100Mbps speeds.
Click to expand...

Whatever the claimed speed is, Homeplugs will only deliver upto 30% of that in actual throughput.

I did some research and a few tests of my own.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18375205



alexjholland said:
Naturally, I've tried each socket and they varied each time, but similarly. And all of them were better when I turned off other devices.

So is anyone going to recommend me a cost-reasonable upgrade?
Click to expand...

Try plugging the other stuff into filtered extensions - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=46&catid=2146&subid=2148 - and the homeplug directly into the wall socket. You might see an improvement (see my 'review' thread, post #5)
 
Cat 5 is not an option. There is no attic in the hallway - not gonna happen!

Bearing in mind home plugs have dropped in price, I think we can get a couple of filtered extensions (are the basic Belkin Surgemasters filtered?) and a set of decent home plugs..
 
alexjholland said:
Cat 5 is not an option. There is no attic in the hallway - not gonna happen!

Bearing in mind home plugs have dropped in price, I think we can get a couple of filtered extensions (are the basic Belkin Surgemasters filtered?) and a set of decent home plugs..
Click to expand...

I'd get the filters first and see if they improve things. If the issues are as bad as they seem then you may have very similar problems even with the newer homeplug products.
 
You say your room has a cat 5 cable in? Is your room closer? You could, if its closer, moved the homeplug from the hallway to your room, thus making the distance between homeplugs smaller.
 
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