Will power line adapters destroy my ping?

jubei · 30 Aug 2015 at 10:15

Hi guys,

Moving house this weekend and having sky fibre put in on the 15th but it's not an engineer install and the only socket in the house is in the living room. Short of running a network cable all up the house my only option really would be power line adapters. As gaming is my primary hobby, do these adapters increase pings and packet loss etc? I assume there has to be done overhead but how bad is it?

Am getting 40mb fibre so any recommendations for good adapters?

Thanks all

nichorob · 30 Aug 2015 at 10:17

Depends on the quality of your electrical wiring. If it's of a good quality then they can be just as good as Ethernet for things like gaming.

currob · 30 Aug 2015 at 10:22

I'm on Sky Fibre and use cheapo tp-link av500 powerline adapters, I've got 3 standard av500 adapters and a dual ethernet with wifi boost adapter, all running 24/7 with constant streaming from 6 ip camera's across them and never had any problems, been running for 1 year+

vodkacokebloke · 30 Aug 2015 at 10:29

I get the full 100mb from mine, a bit over in fact. Get a half decent set from argos and then you should be able to return them if they dont suit your needs.

jubei · 30 Aug 2015 at 10:45

Thanks for replies. The bandwidth doesn't bother me so much as the latency/packet loss. Anybody use adapters and play fps games online?

Randall8686 · 30 Aug 2015 at 10:52

I live in a 5 year old house with very good wiring, However i found them to be OK, not great just OK. I got more ping from them as hardwired i get 8-11ms but on powerlines it jumped to 19ish (make sure you do a ping test through command console on your PC for a true reading as speedtest.net ping is from your router to the test location not your PC. the best thing to do is test you ping from your router to your pc. open CMD and "ping 192.168.1.1" or what ever your router is and that will tell you what your powerlines introduce into the equation.

I found a decent wireless to have far better bandwidth and ping (i used a decent asus router) i could achieve not far of gigabit speeds with a good wireless card. however i bit the bullet and ran Cat5e round the entire house and now my ping to my router is 0ms and never drops obviously.

some people swear by powerlines but by their nature they have to introduce Lag as they need to process the data at both ends.

nichorob · 30 Aug 2015 at 10:56

I would suggest your wiring isn't as good as you think. I get under 10ms via Ethernet and under 10ms via powerline. No difference.

jubei · 30 Aug 2015 at 11:16

Doesn't the fact my phone socket is downstairs and I want connection upstairs cause a problem with power line as they would be on separate circuits? (I assume they are, I am no electrician). I could run a cable around the walls if I could secure it neatly I guess?

bremen1874 · 30 Aug 2015 at 11:34

If you can run a cable do it.

How well Powerline adapters will work is just down to luck. People making judgements on the age and quality of their mains wiring is irrelevant. The wiring will either suit the adapters, or it won't.

As long as the circuits are connected to the same consumer unit Powerline adapters should work to some extent.

Tealc · 30 Aug 2015 at 12:50

I saw a 3ms latency between my PC and the router over powerline so was not significant for me, especially given Sky's propensity for interleaving the crap out of their lines.

I did find the reliability of the connection a bit hit and miss though. Before I stopped using them they required a power cycle at both ends once a week or so to maintain connection.

If you can run an ethernet cable. They just work.

r7slayer · 30 Aug 2015 at 15:23

I also get a rough 3-5ms added latency to my ping from communication from my pc to router. Although when people tend to use the microwave and kettle in the house, stuff that uses a lot of juice it seems to add about 30-40ms of latency!

The router is down stairs where the local powerline is and the remote powerline for my pc is upstairs at the back room.

Just make sure the powerline is in the socket and not in any sort of extention even the multisocket square expansion thingy that you plug into the socket. I also found that with dual socket mains that just having the powerline in one socket and leaving the other socket unoccupied gave me a higher speed went from 28 Mbps to 38-39 Mbps.

Seems what ever is using the power in the house, appliance wise can have a impact on your ping and speed. But it's usually speed more than your ping. Unless its a big power consumer! But i could just have poor electrical wiring in my house lol.