Powerline Confusion

Puzzled

Puzzled

Puzzled

Soldato
Joined
9 Jul 2003
Posts
9,642
Hi

Trying to plan a network in my new house and getting myself mixed up.

Now I'm renting so putting cables through the walls is out of the question so looking at powerline adaptors as the best option.

Say I had 3 600Mbps powerline adaptors with gigabit ports.

1. Connected to my plusnet router (10/100 connection)
2. Living room - connected to gigabit switch
3. Office PC - gigabit

Due to the plusnet router only being 10/100 will all of my powerlines be restricted to that speed or could the ones in the living room and office connect at a higher rate?

I'm planning on putting a NAS in the office for the HTPC but if the plusnet router is going to limit everything to 10/100 then I might as well get the cheaper powerline adaptors.

Hopefully that makes sense :D

All help appreciated.
 
The 10/100 connection will make no difference to the speed between the adapters.

Despite the Gigabit ports and 600Mbps claims you aren't going to see anywhere near that in actual use. Have a look the reviews on SmallNetBuilder.com.
 
So say theoretically I manage to get over 100Mbps between the powerline adaptors, the fact that the plusnet router only has 10/100 ports won't slow the connection down between the living room and office?

Its a new build house so I'm hoping the wiring is good but I appreciate what your saying as I've had issues with the older adaptors in my previous place.

The other option I'm looking at a AC1900 wireless router but I'd like to use a wired method to the office if possible for wake on lan.
 
The only part that'll be limited to 100Mbit will be the connection between the router and the Powerline adapter it's connected to. Everything else will run as fast of the Powerline connection allows.

WOL over Powerline could be a problem. I've never actually tried it, but Powerline adapters tend to sleep to save power and I don't think it can be disabled.
 
MonkeyMan said:
So say theoretically I manage to get over 100Mbps between the powerline adaptors, the fact that the plusnet router only has 10/100 ports won't slow the connection down between the living room and office?
Click to expand...

There won't be a direct connection between the living room and office, all the data will go via your router first.
 
Why would all the data go via the router? The connection between the living room and office would continue to work even if the router was completely removed.
 
TheVoice said:
There won't be a direct connection between the living room and office, all the data will go via your router first.
Click to expand...

This is what I'm getting hung up on, usually everything goes though the router but as mentioned powerline adaptors can talk to each other.

So can it go straight from living room to office (2 -> 3) or does it have to go back to router first and then up to the office (2 -> 1 ->3).
 
It'll go direct.

From a LAN point-of-view the router is just a switch. If you replaced the router with a switch you wouldn't imagine for a moment that all the traffic would have to go via it.

If all the traffic magically had to go via the router we wouldn't have to bother setting gateway addresses on the PCs.
 
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