Will a faster Powerline adapter increase my speed?

[mark66]

Hi,

I currently have three AV200 TP-Link Powerline adapters. One by my router, one in a study and one in a bedroom. In the study I see around 35Mbps, which is just a little shy of our max internet speed. However in the bedroom upstairs I only get a slow 4Mbps.

I have downloaded the TP-Link Utility and this is reporting a link of 181Mpbs to the study and 56Mpbs to the bedroom. I have read online that one should not take these values for gospel and instead divide by 3, or even in my case divide by 7 or 8. However it does confirm that the powerline connection to the bedroom is not as good.

The question is, would upgrading the adapters from these relatively old AV200's to something newer such as a TL-PA7010 (1 Gigabit) stand any chance of speeding things up? Or would I likely see the same performance as I am clearly not maximising the current ones?

Thanks

 

[Quartz]

Bite the bullet and run proper cables.

 

[Avalon]

By any chance are the sockets upstairs on a different circuit breaker to the downstairs ones? If so then you’re always going to struggle. Running a cable is your best/cheapest option, the other option is to use some form of mesh set-up.

 

[233]

just made the switch to a basic mesh setup Tenda 3 unit setup from the indian resteraunt place on boxing day sales at £60

went from 30 mbps on homeplugs to 150 meg/second on wireless up stairs through concrete walls

happy with that short of running cables round the house based on a 300mpbs virgin line

 

[mark66]

Thanks for the inputs.

I think first option will be to try and run an Ethernet cable to up through the ceiling into the bedroom upstairs. Failing that, the Tenda MW5 does look very tempting, especially at its current price. I like the fact I can run an Ethernet from one of the bubs to the PC in the bedroom, meaning that I wouldn't also have to buy a wireless antenna for that PC. It also looks like it offers some sort of internet control, such as limiting a devices usage at certain times of day which we have been wanting for a while now and which I'd assumed I would need to buy a new router for.

Back to my original question though, would a 'faster' Powerline plug boost the numbers we are currently seeing?

 

[WJA96]

Back to my original question though, would a 'faster' Powerline plug boost the numbers we are currently seeing?

In theory, yes. In practice, it's impossible to say. You'd need to try it.

 

[Avalon]

Back to my original question though, would a 'faster' Powerline plug boost the numbers we are currently seeing?

How about answering the question about being on separate circuits? If the answer is yes, then that is why you see only 11% of the speed on the upstairs circuit. Will 11% of a bigger number potentially be faster? Obviously. But it’s a mugs game, you’ll spend a lot to get next to nothing back as already explained.

Also if you run a cable costing a few pounds, you have the option to fit what you like on the end of it at gigabit speeds, want a NAS, server, CCTV, AP, games console or streaming device? Then you can. Replacing powerline with cheap mesh Wi-fi is replacing one technically poor solution with another technically poor solution, both of which cost more than the 15 mins and few quid it would take to do it properly.

 

[WJA96]

I suggested this to someone else in another thread. It’s a 60GHz solution, so totally outside the normal home 2.4/5GHz WLAN morass. It does actually give you the same speed and most of the reliability of a cable.