Netgear PowerLine kit

MarcLister · 20 Jun 2007 at 14:31

My brother and I have a broadband account each which we can no longer justify. The plan is to somehow connect my brother to my router since my broadband is faster than his.

We were thinking of running a Cat5 cable from my room to his, over 3 floors. But we've decided this would be too hard work and would make the house look crap. So we looked for the network over mains electricity kit and found the Netgear kit. We were going to get the XE102 kit but having looked at http://www.netgear.co.uk/home_powerline_adapters.php it seems that Netgear recommend the 200Mbps kit for online gaming which we need as my brother plays BF2.

So we'd like to know if the 200Mbps is overkill for online gaming or do we really need it? Also does the QoS on the 200Mbps kit allow us to split bandwidth between my PC and my brother's? He's quite paranoid about me not stealing his precious bandwidth so I don't interfere with his online gaming.

If the QoS doesn't do this, what hardware/software could be buy that would sort this out for us. We have a Netgear DG384PN if that helps.

Dark88 · 20 Jun 2007 at 14:42

wow didn't know you could do that, v.interesting. However says that sockets have to be on the same 'electrical ring.' Are different floors of a house on different ring mains or whatever it's called? Now possibly looking into this to get a good connection upstairs in my bedroom (current router is downstairs at the opposite end of the house)

MarcLister · 20 Jun 2007 at 14:43

I think as long as you are in the same residential building it should be OK. I think its a similar philosophy to those plug in intercom things.

mike1210 · 20 Jun 2007 at 14:47

I've heard the best ones to go for are the Devolo Homeplug AV dLAN 200 AV Starter Kits as the netgear is based on older technology

mike1210 · 20 Jun 2007 at 14:48

Standard Ethernet Connection: Draytek 2600G Router

2 Devices connected using Cat 5e Ethernet cable to a switch

Size of file

4,571,424 KB

Time For Wired

7 miniutes 12 seconds

10,582Kbyte/Sec Average transfer

85Mbit/Sec average speed over time

average network utilisation 92-94% of LAN adapter

Ping results

Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
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Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
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Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
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Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Ethernet Over Power using Netgear HDX101 adapters

1 Device connected using Cat 5e Ethernet cable to a switch, the other device connected downstairs using 2 Powerline adapters into a switch

Size of file

4,571,424 KB

13 Minutes 20 seconds

5714KB/sec average over time

45.7 MBit/sec over time

Network utilisation at most 53%, at worst 30%, varying over time, less stable than wired.

Ping results

Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=128
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Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.1.11: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

Dark88 · 20 Jun 2007 at 15:11

any idea what the difference between these 2 is apart from the price?!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-113-NG&groupid=46&catid=800&subcat=

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-124-NG&groupid=46&catid=800&subcat=

also do they have to go straight into the wall socket? could you put into a socket on a four plug adaptor and run other stuff off it too/

MarcLister · 20 Jun 2007 at 15:25

Darkmage88 said:
any idea what the difference between these 2 is apart from the price?!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-113-NG&groupid=46&catid=800&subcat=

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-124-NG&groupid=46&catid=800&subcat=

also do they have to go straight into the wall socket? could you put into a socket on a four plug adaptor and run other stuff off it too/

The first has a max of 14Mbps whereas the second has a max of 85Mbps.

Regarding extension sockets etc, Netgear say not to put the kit into them but to put them directly into the mains. However I've read reviews where people have put them into extension sockets without any problems.

The_KiD · 20 Jun 2007 at 16:30

I have the netgear ones at home and in answer to your first question "do you need 200mbps" for the internet gaming?

Do you have a 200mbps internet connection?

Also I would probably go for the Devolo ones as my netgear one packed up a couple of weeks ago for no reason what so ever

They did work very well though when it did work (about 6 months).

MarcLister · 20 Jun 2007 at 16:33

The_KiD said:
I have the netgear ones at home and in answer to your first question "do you need 200mbps" for the internet gaming?

Well I ask only because the Netgear page implies that the 200Mbps is needed for online gaming.

The_KiD said:
Do you have a 200mbps internet connection?

Nope. We think the Netgear 14Mbps would be fine for us.

wij · 20 Jun 2007 at 19:59

I personally would not buy the Netgear ones, they are not standards complient with HomePlug as far as I know they use some funky chips or somthing.

Solwise/Devolo are supposed to be the best ones.

I have a pair of Solwise 200mbit ones linking my office in my garrage to the router in the house, speeds are about 55Mbit effective which is in line with what I was expecting, still much better than WiFi.

They also only have 100Mbit/sec ethernet ports on them, so you would never get 200Mbit through the actual plug to your computer anyway

MarcLister · 20 Jun 2007 at 20:02

wij said:
I have a pair of Solwise 200mbit ones linking my office in my garrage to the router in the house, speeds are about 55Mbit effective which is in line with what I was expecting, still much better than WiFi.

Ah. So 55Mbit off the 200Mbit kit? Do you game with this? If so what are the pings like compared to normal Cat5 wired gaming? And lag also? My brother wants guarantees on these before we move ahead.

wij said:
They also only have 100Mbit/sec ethernet ports on them, so you would never get 200Mbit through the actual plug to your computer anyway

So Netgear telling a bit of an untruth in order to market the product better then?

So surely that means that the 14Mbit kit will run a fair bit slower then? We need it to run at at least 10Mbit I'd say.

wij · 20 Jun 2007 at 20:45

You woulnt notice any difference between that and a bit of cat5, gaming uses hardly any bandwidth it just relises on being low latency and no packet loss, which is somthing that wifi is prone to.

Main reason I went for the 200Mbit rated ones was that I like to send files around between my office machine and the ones in the house as it were and wanted the fastest possible rates over the mains.

Its not just the netgear ones that only have 100Mbit ports, afaik they all do. The 200mbit is a theoretical limit of the current homeplug standard, and that is only concerned with what goes between the actual power lines if you get what i mean. Also given the fact that the real world results are never going to get close to 200Mbit/sec there is no need for anything over a 100mbit/sec port.

If you want some good comparisons between the differnt plugs have a look around, I know theregister did a good set of reviews of just about all of the 200Mbit rated kits available.