Power over Ethernet

[sjh_ef]

Hi...

I was wondering if I could pick your collective brains as I am currently stumped.

In my old house, I bought "Powerline Ethernet" adaptors - I plugged them in and they just worked - flawlessly - never skipped a beat for years at a time.

I've moved to a new house - and started to find that connectivity would be periodically dropped - requiring that I unplug and replug the adaptors to get them working again. At first it was once a week - then became more frequent. I assumed my old poweline ethernet adaptors needed replacing - so upgraded to the latest versions. This did not solve the problem - it might have made it slightly worse.

Mains power in the house seems to work OK. I have not done a 'wires out the wall' inspection of the whole house... but I have removed two (improperly DIY installed) spurs. These safety improvements made no difference to the Poweline Ethernet reliability. My suspicion is that the reason I'm having difficulty with Powerline Ethernet is that something in the house wiring is introducing noise/signal-reflections - or something like that.

I'd like to know if there are any steps I can take to establish what might be causing my Powerline Ethernet reliability problem. Is there a device that will test my mains cabling - not for mains safety... but for unexpected interference? As most of my electrical appliances are the same as at the old house, I don't think it is one them... but it isn't easy to test. I might have overlooked something obvious. Most likely, I suspect, there is some ropey DIY wiring I've not yet discovered... Can anyone offer any advice about how to identify the source of the problem?

 

[Boristheengine]

Hi...

I was wondering if I could pick your collective brains as I am currently stumped.

In my old house, I bought "Powerline Ethernet" adaptors - I plugged them in and they just worked - flawlessly - never skipped a beat for years at a time.

I've moved to a new house - and started to find that connectivity would be periodically dropped - requiring that I unplug and replug the adaptors to get them working again. At first it was once a week - then became more frequent. I assumed my old poweline ethernet adaptors needed replacing - so upgraded to the latest versions. This did not solve the problem - it might have made it slightly worse.

Mains power in the house seems to work OK. I have not done a 'wires out the wall' inspection of the whole house... but I have removed two (improperly DIY installed) spurs. These safety improvements made no difference to the Poweline Ethernet reliability. My suspicion is that the reason I'm having difficulty with Powerline Ethernet is that something in the house wiring is introducing noise/signal-reflections - or something like that.

I'd like to know if there are any steps I can take to establish what might be causing my Powerline Ethernet reliability problem. Is there a device that will test my mains cabling - not for mains safety... but for unexpected interference? As most of my electrical appliances are the same as at the old house, I don't think it is one them... but it isn't easy to test. I might have overlooked something obvious. Most likely, I suspect, there is some ropey DIY wiring I've not yet discovered... Can anyone offer any advice about how to identify the source of the problem?

My experience is that these can also be a bit finicky about what else is plugged in nearby. For example, if I used one in the same double socket as my UPS was plugged in, performance was dreadful. Move one of them over to the other side of the room (same circuit) and it was much better.

You confirm try moving things around that might have filtering circuitry, like UPSs, surge protectors, computer PSUs.

For testing it, the iperf tool is your friend. You can use this to run bandwidth tests between two devices on your network. It will help figure out which combination of sockets gives the best performance, which hopefully also correlates with most reliable connection.

 

[pc1966]

My experience is that these can also be a bit finicky about what else is plugged in nearby.

Lets face it they are rubbish in many cases, marginally better than "wifi extenders"

 

[sjh_ef]

I strongly suspect that the root cause in your case and in mine is likely to relate not to wiring or anything else under our direct control, but to low-level changes introduced by recent Windows updates. I don't have enough low-level network experience to be able to trace what is going on directly - it may relate to some problem with the automatic renewal of the IP address DHCP lease time which the adapter gets from the router and we don't normally see.

While I can believe that Windows Updates caused grief (of some description) on your PC - I think it very unlikely that a Windows Update caused a network connectivity reliability fault relating to DHCP. In my case, many of my devices are (various) non-windows devices... and they are all affected by my Powerline Ethernet issue. In almost all domestic (and many commercial) networks, there must be a local router - and this router will be responsible for servicing DHCP requests. Often, it's bundled in the cable-modem or ADSL router. A change to DHCP lease times may expose a fault relating to the configuration of the DHCP service (in the router) more quickly - but DHCP lease times will work perfectly with a very wide range of settings, and - anyhow- the lease times are set by the server, not the client... so it'd be a router-firmware upgrade that would be the primary suspect if it were a DHCP issue. An unrelated fault may look like a DHCP fault... because DHCP (usually) has to succeed before you can use IP - and almost all current software exclusively depends upon IP. If there is a significant network layer fault... either DHCP will fail - or you won't get as far as DHCP trying to determine a suitable IP address.

I've set up the cheap TP-Link Deco ones at home with fairly good results - though the online reviews tend to prefer the (very expensive) Netgear Orbi - and the more 'nodes' you add the better the network will become.

Thanks for the tip - if I get nowhere with trying to resolve mains cabling for my purposes (which remains my preferred solution - if I can work-out how) I'll definitely consider trying TP-Link Deco for a mesh network. My existing Wi-Fi kit is TP-Link - though I chose routers that do both wi-fi and wired for maximum flexibility. My home-built media-centre (in my living room) only has a wired interface - for example... and I 'like' the idea that my wired devices won't be susceptible to Wi-Fi RF interference (though this is, almost certainly, not a sensible practical concern.) I also like the idea that I can have multiple independent Wi-Fi networks - that don't share Wi-Fi bandwidth to communicate back to my (external networks) router.

If it really is stone walls/floor/etc so no simple internal route for cables, how about using fibre routed round the skirting board or just under the carpet?

The downstairs floor is concrete - so I can't just lift some floorboards... cutting channels would be very messy and inconvenient. The walls are standard-issue brick and plaster... so I could install trunking in them and re-plaster. Even then, I then have to deal with getting into ceiling space (which won't be easy to do neatly... I hope not to have to replace coving and ceilings in most rooms) and I have multiple door-frames to negotiate... and all of this space is 'on-show' - rather than behind furniture - hence not wanting cables in the living space - even if tacked to the skirting board. Eventually, I intend to upgrade all my skirting boards (and possibly door frames). This will introduce an opportunity to route trunking behind them... However... as I'll be doing all this myself, it might be a decade before I've done all the rooms to get from the Study to the 'Library'.

 

[sjh_ef]

Actually the tile should be "Ethernet over power lines"

Erm - yes. Sorry for that 'brain-fart' on my part. :-S