[SOLVED] Powerline ping spikes when brother watches videos & streams

[ez4tec]

This isn't an issue with powerline reliability. I don't need to know that powerlines are less than ideal - I know, I wouldn't use them if I had another choice.

So, my powerline adapters work perfectly, I have 0 complaints with them generally. My network consists of 4 nodes. One for the router, one for the TV, one for my PC, and one for my brother's PC. The issue is, when my brother watches a stream, watches a video, or downloads something, I experience constant ping fluctuations to the router. When nothing is going on, I get a constant 3 ping to the router. We have 80mbps download speed, and so watching a video shouldn't cause such horrendous issues because there is still plenty of bandwidth available. I understand why issues may arise with streaming and downloading.

My router (TP-Link VR2100) has QoS settings, but they don't seem to do anything to help with my problems, and if anything, they make it worse.

Do powerline adapters have their own bandwidth? Is that the problem?

 

[Satan-IR]

As far as I know some of the issue that can affect the speed of Powerline Adapter networks are the age of the wiring in the walls/building. Older wires can reduce stability of the signal as it travels round.

What might also affect the singal is interference from other devices or appliances like phone charges, hair dryers, or microwave oves etc. Inductive loads and such.

Also small fluctuations in the AC mains can disrupt the signal to some extent.

If used, extension cables can affect the signal strength too. Or strips/extensions that are connected to an outlet on the path between two nodes and things connected to them etc.

 

[ez4tec]

As far as I know some of the issue that can affect the speed of Powerline Adapter networks are the age of the wiring in the walls/building. Older wires can reduce stability of the signal as it travels round.

What might also affect the singal is interference from other devices or appliances like phone charges, hair dryers, or microwave oves etc. Inductive loads and such.

Also small fluctuations in the AC mains can disrupt the signal to some extent.

If used, extension cables can affect the signal strength too. Or strips/extensions that are connected to an outlet on the path between two nodes and things connected to them etc.

Everything you mentioned is irrelevant to my case. My powerlines work flawlessly when my brother isn't watching a video or downloading or something, but as soon as he does, I get ping spikes. Once he stops, the issue disappears.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Powerline adapters are nothing more than wireless over the power wires in your walls, just without the interference from neighbors. It's single duplex just like wireless which means that when more than one station is active there WILL be delays and spikes. This is simply the nature of the beast. You want better then you need to find a way to run ethernet cables to each station.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Everything you mentioned is irrelevant to my case. My powerlines work flawlessly when my brother isn't watching a video or downloading or something, but as soon as he does, I get ping spikes. Once he stops, the issue disappears.

Literally everything he mentioned IS relevant to your issue.

Powerline is pretty awful unless your wiring is absolutely perfect. The older your house is, the worse it is. In your case your brother watching videos is causing enough throughput on the powerline system to interrupt your connection. Put simply, your house wiring can't handle the data, whether its due to interference once a large amount of data is being transmitted, to just your wiring being in poor condition.

What you are seeing is a fairly common powerline ethernet problem. Its literally one of the main reasons these things get boxed back up and returned.

 

[Satan-IR]

Everything you mentioned is irrelevant to my case. My powerlines work flawlessly when my brother isn't watching a video or downloading or something, but as soon as he does, I get ping spikes. Once he stops, the issue disappears.

You expect not see any changes in latency when another node/terminal is using router resources and bandwidth on a last resort topology that is a powerline adapters? Good luck.

 

[ez4tec]

Literally everything he mentioned IS relevant to your issue.

Powerline is pretty awful unless your wiring is absolutely perfect. The older your house is, the worse it is. In your case your brother watching videos is causing enough throughput on the powerline system to interrupt your connection. Put simply, your house wiring can't handle the data, whether its due to interference once a large amount of data is being transmitted, to just your wiring being in poor condition.

What you are seeing is a fairly common powerline ethernet problem. Its literally one of the main reasons these things get boxed back up and returned.

The thing is, this never used to happen. It also doesn't happen when I watch a video or a stream. Our house was built in 2017, I seriously doubt the wiring is the problem. If powerline bandwidth is a problem, will a newer powerline model fix this? I'm using AV600 plugs.

 

[Rogue Leader]

The thing is, this never used to happen. It also doesn't happen when I watch a video or a stream. Our house was built in 2017, I seriously doubt the wiring is the problem. If powerline bandwidth is a problem, will a newer powerline model fix this? I'm using AV600 plugs.

It may not be all the wiring causing this. Being your brother is in a different physical location a combo of the wire used, and some sort of device thats in between the router and his room, or plugged into the same circuit as his computer or the powerline adapter is. You can try this by swapping your powerline adapter for his. Or swap the locations of the computers, it should produce the same result based on physical location.

That is a low bandwidth model, but i hesitate to recommend spending money on another powerline device. Any chance you could splurge a bit and put some wifi adapters on your systems and get a MESH Wifi router? They are WORLDS better than powerline.

 

[gggplaya]

Yes, powerline has it's own bandwidth.

Also some of the nodes might not be same pole in the breaker if you live in the U.S.

Check the bandwidth, with no one else using it, at each node to see what the max speed is you can get.

Getting a higher AV1000 or better helps alot because it also takes advantage of the house's ground and uses MIMO.

I had AV500 adapters and the best I could achieve was about 30mbps with those. So yes, your brother watching a 4k video could cause bandwidth issues on the powerline network.

Also, most router QOS systems are worthless. You need to get a router that can use the FQ_Codel or Cake algorithm for traffic shaping QOS, which actually works very well with an 80mbps isp plan.

 

[ez4tec]

Yes, powerline has it's own bandwidth.

Also some of the nodes might not be same pole in the breaker if you live in the U.S.

Check the bandwidth, with no one else using it, at each node to see what the max speed is you can get.

Getting a higher AV1000 or better helps alot because it also takes advantage of the house's ground and uses MIMO.

I had AV500 adapters and the best I could achieve was about 30mbps with those. So yes, your brother watching a 4k video could cause bandwidth issues on the powerline network.

Also, most router QOS systems are worthless. You need to get a router that can use the FQ_Codel or Cake algorithm for traffic shaping QOS, which actually works very well with an 80mbps isp plan.

Cheers, I've been looking for an answer to this for a while. Our current network is actually 2 AV500 nodes and 2 AV600 nodes. I'm going to replace them with AV1000 or AV1300 nodes in a week's time and give those a go - if there's no improvements I'll return them.

 

[bill001g]

Are you running them as 2 different connections or are you running all 4 nodes as 1 powerline network. When you run them as 2 different powerline pairs they will stomp on each other. They both try to use the same bandwidth. Kinda like you and your neighbor using the same wifi channels.

When you run them as 1 single powerline network they try to coordinate their usage. The will split the total bandwidth and because of the overhead you will get slightly slower maximum rates but it is still much better than when the units make no attempt to avoid each other.

I am unsure if you can run the av500 and av600 on the same network. If these are tplink units then they are actually the same units with a different name on the box. When a new technology came out called AV2-600 tplink didn't want people to think their units were outdate, even though they were.
So they changed the same to av600 and hoped most people would not see that it was missing the "2". Now this messy naming just has gotten worse, they now called av2-600 av1000 and av2-1200 av2000, again because a newer technology came out that we using those rates.

What I suspect you can do is plug just 1 unit into the router and place one of the other units in each of the remote rooms. This will give you a network of 3 units rather than 4. It will cut down the overhead a small amount.

This all depends if you can get the units to pair between the different models.


...........ahh never mind I didn't read your main post well enough.

 

[ez4tec]

Are you running them as 2 different connections or are you running all 4 nodes as 1 powerline network. When you run them as 2 different powerline pairs they will stomp on each other. They both try to use the same bandwidth. Kinda like you and your neighbor using the same wifi channels.

When you run them as 1 single powerline network they try to coordinate their usage. The will split the total bandwidth and because of the overhead you will get slightly slower maximum rates but it is still much better than when the units make no attempt to avoid each other.

I am unsure if you can run the av500 and av600 on the same network. If these are tplink units then they are actually the same units with a different name on the box. When a new technology came out called AV2-600 tplink didn't want people to think their units were outdate, even though they were.
So they changed the same to av600 and hoped most people would not see that it was missing the "2". Now this messy naming just has gotten worse, they now called av2-600 av1000 and av2-1200 av2000, again because a newer technology came out that we using those rates.

What I suspect you can do is plug just 1 unit into the router and place one of the other units in each of the remote rooms. This will give you a network of 3 units rather than 4. It will cut down the overhead a small amount.

This all depends if you can get the units to pair between the different models.


...........ahh never mind I didn't read your main post well enough.

Initially, I did have 2 separate networks (one for my brother and one for myself). However, I realised it was causing me packet loss and ping spikes (in fact, similar symptoms to now) so I just created one network.