Powerline no good? Need a stable connection in room far from router

Robbo

Robbo

Robbo

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Ahoy.

I have BT Infinity (70mb~, the cabinet one) to my main phone line that's in my front room. The computer room is quite far away, through fairly thick walls, and the wifi signal from the HomeHub5 is quite weak.

I'd like to have a significantly better signal/connection in the computer room, so thought a 1200mbps powerline adapter would be a good bet. Then I can just plug an old (but good) router into it, using it as a switch, and connect the relevant computers.

However, many people say the powerline adapters tend to provide about a tenth of the rated speed, which sounds pretty bad? Am I going to have to run a wire to the computer room? :(
 
With the Powerline adapters you've got a fair chance that they'll connect fast enough to not slowdown your broadband connection.

A cable will give you a reliable and fast connection, but if you only need 70Mbps, and the cable would be difficult to route, then Powerline adapters are worth a try; just get them from somewhere with a flexible returns policy.
 
It is true you'll get no where near the advertised speed but in my experience a good 500Mpbs (and therefore I suspect even more so 1200Mbps products) are plenty fast enough to fully utilise a domestic internet connection - even Virgin Media.

If you're going to hang an old router on it my guess is it might not have gigabit ports on it anyway and a 1200Mbps power line should max out 100mbps ports on the router acting as a switch.

There is no substitute for an ethernet cable of course but unless you're going to be transferring hundreds of GB of files day in and day out I think you'll be very happy with a couple of quality power line adapters.
 
Got the DEVOLO dLAN 1200+ Powerline Adapter Kit, Twin Pack - sounds probably the best, if most expensive. Will see how it goes.

The router I'm connecting as a switch has gigabit ports (it's a Linksys E3200).
 
Is it possible to add a phone line extension to the comp room and plug the router into that ?
 
tnx said:
Is it possible to add a phone line extension to the comp room and plug the router into that ?
Click to expand...

No unless you move the entire home hub through there.

If you're going to the trouble of running a phone extension just run cat5 or 6 instead.

Rich
 
if you have bought the devolo make sure to check the cockpit software for regular updates, recently added the ability to switch off the LED's on mine aswel as gaining around 20Mbps throughput
 
We've got the dodgiest wiring you can imagine in our house but a cheap £12 powerline adaptor has been serving 45mbps to me ma's laptop for the past 6months pretty much without fail (where she keeps it is in a wifi black spot)
 
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