Powerline

Bassmansam · 31 Jul 2019 at 12:06

Hi

I am moving my ps4 into my pc room which is directly next to the living room I will be playing a-lot of fifa so i need a good connection, the wifi is fairly solid but i want something better so was thinking of powerline?

Any recommendations in the £60-70 range?

Edit: living in a 2 year old flat if that helps.

bremen1874 · 31 Jul 2019 at 12:49

No chance that you could drill a 6mm hole through the wall?

For adapters, Develo always had a good reputation. For something cheaper look at TP-Link. Look for adapters that are AV2-MIMO. There are a limited number of chipsets in use so performance will be similar across brands.

If you buy some make sure you follow the instructions to set your own encryption keys. You don't want to be accidentally connecting to a neighbouring flat.

Bassmansam · 31 Jul 2019 at 13:09

bremen1874 said:
No chance that you could drill a 6mm hole through the wall?

Its not just drilling a hole. I would have to remove all of the furniture and bring up the carpet to lay the cable, seems like a lot of hassle to me.

bremen1874 · 31 Jul 2019 at 13:13

It'd be a lot cheaper than a decent set of Powerline adapters and would provide a better connection than wireless or Powerline.

The cable can be clipped to the top of the skirting. If there's a lot of furniture you'd hardly see it.

Psycho Sonny · 31 Jul 2019 at 13:16

Bassmansam said:
Hi

I am moving my ps4 into my pc room which is directly next to the living room I will be playing a-lot of fifa so i need a good connection, the wifi is fairly solid but i want something better so was thinking of powerline?

Any recommendations in the £60-70 range?

Edit: living in a 2 year old flat if that helps.

first of all fifa has the worst servers known to man. just use wifi. it will make zero difference in that game.

ea already have acknowledged server issues and their incompetence means they will never be fixed.

Avalon · 31 Jul 2019 at 15:52

As above, gaming in this scenario is about latency, not bandwidth. Powerline and Wi-Fi will add to that, but nothing like as much as the fact that it’s an EA game and EA suck at pretty much everything. Ever. If you care, run a cable.

Bassmansam · 31 Jul 2019 at 16:15

Avalon said:
As above, gaming in this scenario is about latency, not bandwidth. Powerline and Wi-Fi will add to that, but nothing like as much as the fact that it’s an EA game and EA suck at pretty much everything. Ever. If you care, run a cable.

Too much hassle to run a cable. Is powerline at least better for latency than wifi?

Semple · 31 Jul 2019 at 16:23

Bassmansam said:
Too much hassle to run a cable. Is powerline at least better for latency than wifi?

If your electrical wiring is of good condition, then yes you might see slightly better latency over wifi, but this is likely to be marginal.

Have you actually measured your latency whilst running the game over your wifi connection? You need a baseline to do some comparisons against.

Psycho Sonny · 14 Aug 2019 at 17:09

Bassmansam said:
Too much hassle to run a cable. Is powerline at least better for latency than wifi?

Its fifa it won't make any difference

pcfarrar · 14 Aug 2019 at 17:16

Bassmansam said:
Any recommendations in the £60-70 range?

You don't even need to spend that much you can get a pair of cheapo Tenda PH3 AV2 homeplugs for £25

Bassmansam · 14 Aug 2019 at 17:30

Psycho Sonny said:
Its fifa it won't make any difference

Hmm maybe but i got a pair of tp link ones and the ping is around 10-25 usually. On wifi its 40+ so at least its an improvement.

Bassmansam · 1 Sep 2019 at 12:31

I have been using the powerline for a few weeks now and generally its pretty decent for online gaming and download speeds are really good, although not quite as good as an ethernet connection.

Anyway, i had a look at the TP link software and i'm a bit confused. It says powerline rate is 50mb but the connection between the two plugs is normally in the 600's. What is the difference between these two ratings?

Also, is there anyway to see which devices are connected?

bremen1874 · 1 Sep 2019 at 13:23

The 648 Mbps is the physical layer (PHY) rate.

There are many overheads to be taken into account before you get to the actual TCP/UDP data rate.

It's the same with all networking technologies. It just happens that the difference between the two rates is much more extreme with Powerline and wireless compared to Ethernet.

Powerline adapters are transparent as far as the connected devices are concerned (the same as an unmanaged switch is). They don't have connected devices as such (not at the TCP/UDP level anyway).

Bassmansam · 1 Sep 2019 at 14:26

cheers @bremen1874

So what does the 50mb bit in the bottom right mean?

bremen1874 · 1 Sep 2019 at 14:34

What does clicking on or hovering over the ? icon tell you?

I'd assume it's telling you that you're getting greater than 50 Mbps in one direction and less than 50 Mbps in the other. Powerline is always guesswork to some extent.

Actually it's just a key. Your arrow between the adapters is in yellow so > 50Mbps. If it was in red you'd have less than 50 Mbps.

Bassmansam · 1 Sep 2019 at 14:36

bremen1874 said:
What does clicking on or hovering over the ? icon tell you?

I'd assume it's telling you that you're getting greater than 50 Mbps in one direction and less than 50 Mbps in the other. Powerline is always guesswork to some extent.

Actually it's just a key. Your arrow between the adapters is in yellow so > 50Mbps. If it was in read you'd have less than 50 Mbps.

well yeah but when i do a speed test its reporting around 160-190mbpbs.

Sorry it's all a bit confusing to me.

bremen1874 · 1 Sep 2019 at 14:38

160-190 Mbps is greater than 50 Mbps so the arrow is in yellow.

Getting around a third of the PHY rate is pretty typical.

Bassmansam · 1 Sep 2019 at 14:50

bremen1874 said:
160-190 Mbps is greater than 50 Mbps so the arrow is in yellow.

Getting around a third of the PHY rate is pretty typical.

Ah sorry yes it makes sense now, cheers.

I wasnt reading those arrows as greater and less than, just thought it was speeds up and down.

~cw · 2 Sep 2019 at 00:17

Done the usual things to minimise chance for interference? Make sure they're not plugged off extension cables, keep the adapters away from other mains cables and make sure there's nothing with noisy power supplies on the same circuit.

I use TP-Link adapters to connect one room in my house and have deployed various models of them at the parents' house. As they call conform to the Homeplug AV standard you can buy mismatched models and just pair them together. They work pretty seamlessly as long as you accept you'll never get multiple gigabits per second over most house wiring. Throughput is still pretty good considering how it works.

Shoutout also to TP-Link web support, I also had some pre-purchase questions when buying new units to add to an existing network - they were well informed and very helpful when I threw a barrage of questions at them.

Bassmansam · 2 Sep 2019 at 17:33

~cw said:
Done the usual things to minimise chance for interference? Make sure they're not plugged off extension cables, keep the adapters away from other mains cables and make sure there's nothing with noisy power supplies on the same circuit.

I use TP-Link adapters to connect one room in my house and have deployed various models of them at the parents' house. As they call conform to the Homeplug AV standard you can buy mismatched models and just pair them together. They work pretty seamlessly as long as you accept you'll never get multiple gigabits per second over most house wiring. Throughput is still pretty good considering how it works.

Shoutout also to TP-Link web support, I also had some pre-purchase questions when buying new units to add to an existing network - they were well informed and very helpful when I threw a barrage of questions at them.

Kwv
One adapters plugged on to a 4 slot mains panel next to the router with the other three slots in use, the other in a two slot unit and the other slot is used for an extension lead.

To be fair, its working really well for my needs, my pc and ps4 are plugged into the extension lead and when both are on i’m still getting 192mb on speedtest.net with Virgin. In game ping on a game like Battlefield is usually under 10.