WiFi vs Powerline Adapter

[Woody1999]

In my house, the internet is unusably slow. 100kB/s download speed at the majority of the time, when using WiFi from a fair distance (At least 20m, through a few solid walls). I've thought of purchasing a powerline adapter and using my computer through that, because the BT Vision box is already connected through an adapter.

Would my speeds increase with this? I mainly game on my PC, and a 100-200 ping with awful download speeds is sometimes absolutely crippling.

Woody

 

[ifreakyftw]

Definitely will see a drop in ping, I had the same problem, been using wifi with awful ping spikes, slow download etc, and the powerline adapter fixed it. BUT now i've switched to a PCI-E Wi-Fi card and it seems to work better than the wifi dongle beforehand.

 

[Woody1999]

Yeah, I'm using a TP-Link N600 USB 2.0 adapter right now, unfortunately it can only connect to the 2.4G network. I think that I might be too far away from the router for the wifi card to make a huge difference, would a powerline adapter fix some of my problems?

 

[bill001g]

Lets just say it most likely will work better. Powerline is just a radio transmission over the electrical wires rather than over the air. How well it work is dependent on how your house is built.

In general powerline is more consistent. Both wireless and powerline try to determine the maximum speed they can run when the first connect. The wireless tends to get a faster speed but it is also subject to much more random interference. So with wireless you generally get faster transfer speed than powerline but only "most" the time.

Really all you can do is try but if the powerline devices work they will likely work better than your current wireless situation.

 

[Woody1999]

Well my Grandad (who I live with) is an electrician, and is extremely meticulous about his wiring. He's retired the entire house twice, so I hope the powerline should work well.

Woody

 

[bill001g]

It isn't just the wiring. A vacuum cleaner plugged anywhere in the house tends to do bad things to powerline. It is very susceptible to things with motors. Even poor quality power supplies in you computer can causes issue.

Still they work most the time, it is a extremely rare house they do not work at all.

What is really bad is the newest houses are the ones that have the most trouble lately. There is new kind of circuit breaker required by the new building codes and many brands completely block powerline.