PowerLine Plugs and there true speed help. 500mbs impossible?

[flyinmunky]

I have been happily using a tp-linkTP-LINK TL-PA7010KIT AV1000 1-Port Gigabit Powerline Starter Kit for few years.

I went from standard fibre to 150mb fibre , now i have upgraded to 500mbs fibre.

Wired connection gives me just over 500mbs.

My Powerline maxes out around 200. (220 at my friends house where router and pc next to each other)

From looking online and seeing a few reviews am in right in saying the way Ratings are listed (600,1000) etc do not = close to actual speed even in best case?

Best option run a 50m CAT6 cable? I can do this for under £30 , although pain it would mean if my speed went up to 900mbs in future id be covered.

Or could i actually get powerline plugs that would hit my fibre cap?

 

[sandys]

You are unlikely to get powerline to hit those speeds, but it is very house wiring dependent, I have AV2000 and it manages about 350.

I switched to AX3 Wifi 6 router/APs and now see 1Gb between machines across that house that are wired into them with a wifi link between the AX3s but again wifi is very house dependant too.

Wired is best generally, though I noticed no improvement after wiring vs running on AX3s.

 

[bremen1874]

The rates quoted for Powerline aren't the rates you're used to seeing as an end-user. They aren't wrong, just potentially misleading (in the same way wireless speeds are) and best case. If you care Google 'phy rate vs throughput'.

If you do decide to run a cable, use solid core Cat5e or Cat6 and faceplates rather than buying a pre-terminated cable. Running cables externally (using suitable external grade cable) can often be easier than trying to route internally.

 

[GloriousMess]

I've got some Solwise 1200Mbps powerline adapters and they reach about 40MB/sec at most, so my actual rate is about 320-400Mbps. It's dodgy advertising but because someone, somewhere, can get those speeds I guess it's ok.

What may not be obvious is that some brands have a disconnection problem where the link between adapters drops for minutes on end. Haven't quite figured out why that happens yet.

 

[g67575]

As others have commented, I think for Homeplug AV2, the actual data throughput is about 1/3 of the hypothetical speed mentioned on the box, which reduces significantly over distance. The Devolo Magic homeplugs have an option, which I think avoids affecting VDSL2 performance by ensuring that only frequencies higher in the spectrum are used for the powerline signal, but since you are using FTTP, this shouldn't matter.

I may just pay someone to professionally install ethernet cables, when FTTP becomes available in my area.

 

[g67575]

Another thing you could try is this:

Dual ethernet or WIFi bridge setup in Windows (presumably, you can use more than 2 connections if needed)
"The second method applies only to two LAN/WAN connections and it basically bridges both connections for dual-bandwidth. Here’s how to set it up:

1. Navigate to Control Panel, select Network and Internet, then click on Network and Sharing Center and select Change adapter settings.
2. Press and hold CTRL and click both connections to highlight them.
3. Right-click on one of the connections and choose Bridge Connections."

From here:
https://windowsreport.com/combine-internet-connections/

I think because of the transmitting throughput limit on your WIFI Router, you would need a 2nd Wifi Access point to connect the 2nd WIFI connection to (wired to the router via ethernet, if you use WIFI). It depends how much throughput you can achieve over a single connection.

I'd be curious to know if this would work, maybe someone can advise on this?

 

[jaybee]

Most I've ever got in houses I lived in has been 280mbps measured using iperf. To be fair this is fine for almost all applications currently even including 4k streams. It's the latency and stability that is worth it over wi-fi.

 

[g67575]

Another thing about powerline adapters, is packet loss, I get somewhere between 2-5% packet loss when testing via mLab's speed tester. This problem first occurred about 6 months ago, before that, it was fine.

This was enough to convince me to use 5ghz WIFI instead, which in my case has less packet loss.

 

[Janesy B]

You're lucky you're getting 200mpbs out of them tbh.