Any decent powerline adapters?

[jnojr]

I ordered a pair of TP-Link AV200 powerline adapters. In the tool that came with them, it said they were talking at ~40Mb/s I couldn't get over 3, though, and the throughput was worse than the wi-fi I'm trying to work around! Are there any that I might have better luck with, or is this just one of those things that sounds better in theory than practice? 🙂

 

[captaincharisma]

it may not even matter how many MB/s the adapters promise. another issue could be the quality of the power current going throughout your house/apartment

 

[Spectre694]

40Mb(bits) with overhead would be about 3-5MB(bytes) sure that's not what you are seeing?

That said powerline adapters are very much affected by the quality and topology of the wiring even the quality of power coming in could affect them in your house so ya it's completely possible they barely work in your house but work fine in someone else's.

That's a homeplug set so if that doesn't work you can also try a G.hn based set or a higher end set if you can return and experiment

 

[theyeti87]

They can be beneficial and work well for you, or they can not work very well at all and give you poor bandwidth.

I use powerline adapters to give wired access to a desktop away from the router. I have 100mbps down 10mbps up cable. I get the full bandwidth through my powerline. However, if I connect the modem to the router through the powerline, it crimps my bandwidth to 1/3 of what I'm paying for. It works well for a single connection but running all communication between your modem and router can be bad.

My home was built in the 1950's and uses wiring from that decade. Impressive by my reckoning, but powerlines aren't always a good option.

The best you can do is to buy a pair, try them out, and if they don't work well for you, return them for full refund.

 

[InvalidError]

The performance of powerline networking is heavily dependent on house wiring, whether the adapters are on different circuits, different legs of the incoming feeds for countries that have split-230V like USA/Canada, noise that appliance and devices in the house put on the electrical wiring, noise filters increasing signal attenuation, etc.

The top speeds are typically only achievable between adapters on the same breaker circuit. Once the signals have to go through the breaker box, mileage varies greatly.

 

[jnojr]

40Mb(bits) with overhead would be about 3-5MB(bytes) sure that's not what you are seeing?

Nope, bits. I'd have been THRILLED with 3MB/s!

That's a homeplug set so if that doesn't work you can also try a G.hn based set or a higher end set if you can return and experiment

Never heard of it! I just Googled, newegg has a couple by "Comtrend". never heard of 'em, but I'll give it a shot!

Thanks!

 

[bill001g]

The av200 models are very old technology now. The newer ones based on av2 standard use the ground as well as the 2 hot leads to carry signal. They work better in most houses and they also use newer data encoding methods so they carry more data. The tplink 1200m models tend to be the most popular because the are inexpensive but also seem to get the best ratings on many testing sites.

 

[RealBeast]

The av200 models are very old technology now. The newer ones based on av2 standard use the ground as well as the 2 hot leads to carry signal. They work better in most houses and they also use newer data encoding methods so they carry more data. The tplink 1200m models tend to be the most popular because the are inexpensive but also seem to get the best ratings on many testing sites.

^THIS. AV200 are paperweights. AV1200 or don't bother.

HERE is a good site for comparing PL adapters that will give you some accurate real world information.

 

[jnojr]

Thanks for all the responses! I ordered a pair of PA2000s, they came today, and now I'm getting full speed, or at least much, much faster 🙂 Link reports 126 Mb/s I had bought the old PA200s because I figured I didn't need gigabit speed when the Internet connection was maybe 30, max. Maybe someone on eBay or craigslist will give me a buck or two for the old ones! Way too late to return 'em...