# Question For Powerline Users



## xaira (Mar 21, 2013)

We know that a rock solid connection can only truly be guaranteed by direct ethernet cable, though wireless can be solid, its never as solid as a wired connection, your wireless connection speed on your server can be 300mb/s and yet you will never get over 10MB/s wireless to wireless, so i need to know about the stability of powerline, is it a viable replacement for the hastle of running cables in a small business environment (if done right)

so lets say the satisfaction of all connections on wired is 10 and all connections on wifi n 300 is 6...in your own experience, where is powerline on a scale of 1-10


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## Geofrancis (Mar 22, 2013)

im curious about this myself. my gf's farm has 4 foot thick sandstone walls that makes WiFi tricky. It just makes it though one so i had to put one of my WNDR3300 routers in as a repeater to get it through the next wall but the speed is pretty poor.


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## RCoon (Mar 22, 2013)

10. I use powerline in my house, though it is only 7 years old. Powerline is identical to copper cable, because powerlines ARE copper cable. Depends upon the quality of the power circuitry in the house. My internet is 84mbps, and on my pc upstairs i get just that. Dont cheap out on them though, i got the 500mbps set from TPLink


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## xaira (Mar 22, 2013)

thinking of going tp-link myself....thx


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## remixedcat (Mar 22, 2013)

I got a PLA2 from Amped Wireless and I just got it so I'll let you all know how it is over time...


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## jgunning (Apr 11, 2013)

RCoon said:


> 10. I use powerline in my house, though it is only 7 years old. Powerline is identical to copper cable, because powerlines ARE copper cable. Depends upon the quality of the power circuitry in the house. My internet is 84mbps, and on my pc upstairs i get just that. Dont cheap out on them though, i got the 500mbps set from TPLink



Agree with Rcoon here. I have been using the EoP for about 5 years now, before that I was trying to go through 6 double brick walls to get to the router..

It does depend however on quality of the copper and the power circuitry in the house as Rcoon said. But definitely don't stinge out, you want at LEAST the 200mbps set, I wouldn't go anything lower than that. But as far as reliability I have only ever had one drop out due to the EoP and basically turn it all off, turn it back on and all was fine. I have found it to be pretty much as reliable as a standard Ethernet cable!

I highly recommend. There are pretty cheap ones, but I use TP link as well and have never had any issues. 

Hope this gives you something to think about


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## Jetster (Apr 11, 2013)

Your statement about never getting more then 10 Mb/s with 300mbps wireless is not true. Its more like 17 Mb/s if you have it set up correctly. But latency is still an issue. 

Ive tested two Powerline adapters. The NETGEAR XAVB5201-100PAS Power line 500 and the TL-PA4010KIT AV500 Nano Powerline Adapter Starter 500Mbps

both have a 10/100 RJ45 conection so 500mbps is not posible. but 100 is. 

In a nut shell if your powerline adapter in located on the same circuit as its brother you will get the full 12 MB/s If they are on separate circuits you loose about 40% of your speed. The same goes for three phase circuits. Distance will also affect the speed but not as bad. But latency is good so for like gaming its still better even across circuits 

I actually have the Netgear XAVB5201 for sale. You can get a Powerline Adpater with gigabyte connections but they are still $140 +

Another thing about Powerline Adapters is the security issue. Not a big deal and the TP Link came with encryption software but worth mentioning

So 8/10


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## remixedcat (Apr 11, 2013)

I got on average around 7-9MBytes per second on the PLA2. I got crappy electrical in this wonky pandoras box house.

The PLA2 has buttons for encryption.


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## Mussels (Apr 11, 2013)

i've done a lot of testing with wifi and powerline tech.


neither will ever reach their advertised speeds, nor come close to ethernet cabling. both of them measure their speeds 'full duplex' meaning receive and transmit are counted together - so a 500Mb powerline adaptor can only do 250Mb each way, and then they only have 100Mb ethernet on most models which gives away they dont think you can even achieve that.

wifi is quite similar - half the advertised speed is the best you'll ever get (i've seen 14MB/s over 300Mb wifi N in a 'quiet' area at close range. same equipment in a more populated area manages 5MB/s)



an important tip for powerline users is to give them their own wall socket, preferably on an extension lead (NOT a power board). it sounds weird, but it gets them away from short distance interference and helps achieve their maximum speeds.


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 16, 2013)

just ordered some TP-Link AV500's to play about with after readin this. Im curious to see how well it performs.


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## RCoon (Apr 16, 2013)

FreedomEclipse said:


> just ordered some TP-Link AV500's to play about with after readin this. Im curious to see how well it performs.



500's are pointless, they have 10/100 ports but are rated at 500. that means they are 100mbps capable.
i have 3 200mbps ones in my house, and they all recieve and transmit 100mbps, and have dedicated wall sockets, otherwise signal sinks if you plug them into an extension lead.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 16, 2013)

I have two sets of powerline adapters in my house.

These: TRENDnet TPL-406E2K Powerline 500 AV Nano Adapter ...
And These: TRENDnet TPL-401E2K Powerline AV Adapter Kit - New...

All 4 work together.

I have one plugged in at my router in my basement.  I use two on the second story of my home in my office.  The fourth is in my living room with my PS3 and Xbox plugged into it.  With this setup I get file transfers in the 4-5MB/s range and pings to the router averaging 3-5ms.  I measured this by writing a script to transfer ~1GB of data files ranging in size from 1KB to 450MB back and forth between my server in the basement and my computer int he office multiple times, in between each transfer it measured the ping by pinging the router 100 times and then averaging the results.  I did the same tests with a wireless N network card and only got 2MB/s and pings to the router averaged 15ms.

My house is about 9 years old, built in 2004.  And obviously the basement and office are on two different circuit breakers.



RCoon said:


> 500's are pointless, they have 10/100 ports but are rated at 500. that means they are 100mbps capable.
> i have 3 200mbps ones in my house, and they all recieve and transmit 100mbps, and have dedicated wall sockets, otherwise signal sinks if you plug them into an extension lead.



No, 500mbps isn't pointless.  The 200Mbps kit I tested gave much worse speeds than the 500Mbps kits.  The link speed might be reported at 100Mbps, but the link between the devices with a 200Mbps kit is much weaker than with 500Mbps kits, which results in absolute terrible speeds.  In my configuration the 200Mbps kit barely broke 1MB/s transfer speeds.  It was terrible.  Plus the bandwidth is shared.  So the more devices you add the more 500Mbps becomes necessary.  I have 4 powerline adapters, so the 500Mbps shared between them, so if all 4 are active transferring data at the same time suddenly that is only 125Mbps each, if I had 200Mbps adapters it would be only 50Mbps each.  That is why they are rated at 500Mbps even though they only have 100Mbps ethernet jacks.


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## remixedcat (Apr 16, 2013)

Can you provide more details about your house's electrical.... Like how old the house/wires are and stuff?


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 16, 2013)

RCoon said:


> 500's are pointless, they have 10/100 ports but are rated at 500. that means they are 100mbps capable.
> i have 3 200mbps ones in my house, and they all recieve and transmit 100mbps, and have dedicated wall sockets, otherwise signal sinks if you plug them into an extension lead.



cancelling my order in 3.2.1....

::EDIT::

though for arguments sake they were the TL-PA511 kit, if that makes any difference at all.


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## RCoon (Apr 16, 2013)

FreedomEclipse said:


> cancelling my order in 3.2.1....
> 
> ::EDIT::
> 
> though for arguments sake they were the TL-PA511 kit, if that makes any difference at all.



Yes it does, the 411 is 1/100. the 511 is 1/100/1000 so it does have a gigabit port. But again, your router needs a gigabit port to to plug into the first adapter, otherwise it wont transfer at 1gbps.



newtekie1 said:


> No, 500mbps isn't pointless.  The 200Mbps kit I tested gave much worse speeds than the 500Mbps kits.  The link speed might be reported at 100Mbps, but the link between the devices with a 200Mbps kit is much weaker than with 500Mbps kits, which results in absolute terrible speeds.  In my configuration the 200Mbps kit barely broke 1MB/s transfer speeds.  It was terrible.  Plus the bandwidth is shared.  So the more devices you add the more 500Mbps becomes necessary.  I have 4 powerline adapters, so the 500Mbps shared between them, so if all 4 are active transferring data at the same time suddenly that is only 125Mbps each, if I had 200Mbps adapters it would be only 50Mbps each.  That is why they are rated at 500Mbps even though they only have 100Mbps ethernet jacks.



My transfer speeds are 12.5MB/s with 3 200mbps adapter.


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 16, 2013)

regardless of the speeds - I just wanted to have something to play around with. My net only goes upto 20meg but if transfer speeds are ound 12.5MB/s its probably not worth the effort.

I was gonna ask for a refund after i was done with it but nevermind lol


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## RCoon (Apr 16, 2013)

FreedomEclipse said:


> regardless of the speeds - I just wanted to have something to play around with. My net only goes upto 20meg but if transfer speeds are ound 12.5MB/s its probably not worth the effort.
> 
> I was gonna ask for a refund after i was done with it but nevermind lol



20meg internet is what, 2.5MB/s download? both 100, 200 and 500 would do fine, go for 500 with gigabit port if you want to transfer files between multiple computers. But for broadband less than 100meg, TP 500 is pointless.


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 16, 2013)

I dont care for transferring files, Just to get better router or extender placement around the house.


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## Aquinus (Apr 16, 2013)

My 5Ghz network will top out at about 13-14MB/s with Windows claiming a link speed of 243Mbit.
For Wi-Fi it's pretty tolerable. Responsive and quick and 100MBit lan-like speeds aren't too bad.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 16, 2013)

RCoon said:


> My transfer speeds are 12.5MB/s with 3 200mbps adapter.



With all 3 transferring files at the same time?  I find it hard to believe you are even getting 12.5MB/s unless the adapters are extremely close to each other on the same circuit.



FreedomEclipse said:


> regardless of the speeds - I just wanted to have something to play around with. My net only goes upto 20meg but if transfer speeds are ound 12.5MB/s its probably not worth the effort.
> 
> I was gonna ask for a refund after i was done with it but nevermind lol






FreedomEclipse said:


> I dont care for transferring files, Just to get better router or extender placement around the house.



You internet is rated in Mbps, he is talking MBps.  If you are just looking to extend internet speeds and not worried about LAN file transfers then powerline is the way to go, it won't limit internet speeds at all unless you are on a 100Mbps+ internet connection.


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 16, 2013)

I find Wireless connections to be very deceitful, I have a USB dongle here that says it can handle 300MBPs but the link speed hovers around 72-150MBPs and Im within clear line of sight from my access point. It tops out at around 8-12meg which is rather disappointing. 

Id go for a PCI wireless card but i dont really have any room for expansion unless i want to obstruct a GPU fan or 2.


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## remixedcat (Apr 16, 2013)

What WLAN adapter u use?? Also what speeds do u get on that SR10000 freedomeclipse???


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 16, 2013)

Ive not used it to transfer files if that's what you mean


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## remixedcat (Apr 16, 2013)

Aww ok..


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## Aquinus (Apr 16, 2013)

FreedomEclipse said:


> I find Wireless connections to be very deceitful, I have a USB dongle here that says it can handle 300MBPs but the link speed hovers around 72-150MBPs and Im within clear line of sight from my access point. It tops out at around 8-12meg which is rather disappointing.
> 
> Id go for a PCI wireless card but i dont really have any room for expansion unless i want to obstruct a GPU fan or 2.



That's because wireless bitrate is not measured as total bandwidth in any one direction. Wi-Fi doesn't work like that.

Half of that bitrate is for transmit and half is for receiving. So you'll never see more than half of what your bit rate is in any direction. So 300mbit is the total amount of traffic the wireless can serve up, not how much in either direction. Ethernet would behave this way too if it where to run in half-duplex mode, however half-duplex and how Wi-Fi work are not related and only gives you half if you're using 50 in both directions, so it might be a bad comparison.

That is why I don't see more than 13-14Mbit at 243Mbit, I'm only getting ~121Mbit upload.

It's not misleading, it's just how Wi-Fi works and how it's measured.

So all in all, you get half of what it says you do in whichever direction the data is going. That's really the end all.


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## Jetster (Apr 16, 2013)

Here's my Wifi. Its a 450 mbps router  Netgear WNDR4300 and a Linksys USB AE2500 adapter


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## remixedcat (Apr 16, 2013)

How far are you from your router?


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## Aquinus (Apr 17, 2013)

remixedcat said:


> How far are you from your router?



The adapter is probably 40-50 feet away from the AP (in a straight line) however the signal is traveling through the floor. I also has an AE2500 but I'm using a Linksys E4200 as the wifi AP. The other end is samba share on my gateway server.

I've had to crack the case off my AE2500 to keep it cool. Before it would regularly become unstable. Damn thing gets too hot.


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## Jetster (Apr 17, 2013)

Mine is 15 ft threw one wall


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 18, 2013)

Powerline is pretty useful i have to say. I ordered AV200 nano's but i may end up just keeping them.


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## remixedcat (Apr 18, 2013)

If you got em allready... Hows your throughput with file transfers? Also please provide some details on your electrical as well if you can.


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 18, 2013)

yeah it arrived this morning but local post didnt deliver due to the box not being able to fit through the letter box (and they wonder why they are losing money and business) so I had to run out and pick it up.

Errrr as far as electricals goes im not entirely too sure, but we had the entire house rewired a few years ago so the cables should be virtually new. 

gonna get some file transfer tests done and see how it is


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 18, 2013)

This is what i got...

test was run using both my PC & laptop with SSDs installed for that tasty bandwidth. laptop was down stairs in the living room while my PC sits in my room


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## remixedcat (Apr 18, 2013)

That's about how my PLA2 did. Around 9.5MBytes/sec.

Both PCs I did the test on did have SSDs as well


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 18, 2013)

well, Having had trouble with TP-Link products in the past, I hope this one doesnt give me any trouble,


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## remixedcat (Apr 18, 2013)

Also do some tests with other stuff plugged in and also plug it into a power strip and let us know if it works.. my Amped PLA2 worked thru a surge strip.


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 18, 2013)

well Ive ran it on a surge protector with other stuff plugged in. I dont think there was much noticeable different but I will give the transfer tests a run later.


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## remixedcat (Apr 18, 2013)

Ok..


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## Mussels (Apr 19, 2013)

try extension leads. doooo iiiit.


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## xaira (Apr 19, 2013)

you guys are getting some good speeds, the highest i get is 5.0 MB/s but the wiring in my house is ancient, average is 2.5 - 3.5 MB/s

i got the tp-link av500 nano


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## newtekie1 (Apr 19, 2013)

remixedcat said:


> Also do some tests with other stuff plugged in and also plug it into a power strip and let us know if it works.. my Amped PLA2 worked thru a surge strip.





FreedomEclipse said:


> well Ive ran it on a surge protector with other stuff plugged in. I dont think there was much noticeable different but I will give the transfer tests a run later.



When I tested mine on surge protectors I had varying results.  On the cheap surge protector I got from Wal-Mart, one of these POSes, it worked fine with no performance degradation.  But then again that makes sense, considering when you open one of those up you'll see that calling them surge protectors is laughable since they are really just a power splitter with a fuse.  The only protection they have is hoping the fuse pops when there is a surge...

However, when I plugged it into my $100 rack-mount surge protector designed to protect server, something with a little more than just a fuse for protection, the speed dropped dramatically.


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## remixedcat (May 11, 2013)

My review is up for the Amped PLA2. Needed some more testing on the pair...

Still doing really good and still recommended.


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