Powerline - slloooowww

[Peter Cashen]

Hi All,

I've posted in the relevant IT techy forums... I'm one myself, but got no answers.

Basically just moved into a new build (no Ethernet wiring unfortunately), but was going to use powerline adapters.

In my old house they worked fine and I'd get 150mb/s or more, but in this house they wont go over 70mb/s, so thinking that it must be to do with the electrics or RCD things.. I know nothing about electrics. Is this a known issue? Anything I can do/try?

 

[Marvo]

The tests on the earthing and neutral-earth voltage is something you'd have to get a sparky in for, you need special test equipment as well as the obvious hazards of having to make live tests on the incoming supply.

 

[Peter Cashen]

225 megs a second....Jesus.... are you serious? I don't think our national backbone network runs at that speed. I just upgraded to 2 meg ADSL at home and that took some pulling of strings.

Yep, 200mb Virgin Broadband!

 

[LeeH]

225 megs a second....Jesus.... are you serious? I don't think our national backbone network runs at that speed. I just upgraded to 2 meg ADSL at home and that took some pulling of strings.

Think he's talking transfer speed.

EDIT: shit the bed, that's quick. I'm connected to the www by wet string.

 

[Peter Cashen]

Unless you have serious noise on the line then yes I would say it rules out the fixed wiring.

What adapters are they?

Netgear PL1200

 

[Andy78]

@Andy78 I've had good success, I wired a garage 120m away from the residence, it synced fast enough to browse/ YouTube etc.

I use them at home extensively as all my walls are solid so wifi drops out very quickly.

I too have had good success with them. I have also had frantic rages when they decide to go ---- up. I'm currently using a bit of CatVe I have clipped up the stairs and to all the doorframes and skirting boards after I walloped the adapters into submission.

 

[Peter Cashen]

The tests on the earthing and neutral-earth voltage is something you'd have to get a sparky in for, you need special test equipment as well as the obvious hazards of having to make live tests on the incoming supply.

Ok, I guess its something I could speak to the developer about

 

[LankyWill]

You have to remember that's it's fibre coming into the router, hence the fast speeds. A powerline adapter can't produce the speeds that fibre optics can. You would be lucky to hit above 60mbps, unless your running servers I can't see the need in a domestic property for +60 speeds.

 

[Octopus]

This is a well known problem, when using powerline adaptors in houses with RCD's and / or RCBO's

Best results are installations without RCD's or RCBO's

Before I connected my hard wired LAN, I had about 7 powerline adaptors around the house - they are Devolo units and their "dashboard" would show the speeds between different units.

All our circuits are on RCBO's so we had some slow links and some ultra fast links.

The powerline manufactures deny the issue exists but it does.

My FIL's house has 2 x CU's, each with an upfront RCD - its not possible to get a decent connection across the 2 fuseboards...

 

[Peter Cashen]

You have to remember that's it's fibre coming into the router, hence the fast speeds. A powerline adapter can't produce the speeds that fibre optics can. You would be lucky to hit above 60mbps, unless your running servers I can't see the need in a domestic property for +60 speeds.

Hmm, its not fibre. Its copper. Virgin only use fibre to the green cabs.

Without homeplugs, I can easily get 200mb/s.

PS. I do run servers in my property... I'm an IT consultant.

But I also stream a lot of TV so need the higher speeds.

 

[Peter Cashen]

This is a well known problem, when using powerline adaptors in houses with RCD's and / or RCBO's

Best results are installations without RCD's or RCBO's

Before I connected my hard wired LAN, I had about 7 powerline adaptors around the house - they are Devolo units and their "dashboard" would show the speeds between different units.

All our circuits are on RCBO's so we had some slow links and some ultra fast links.

The powerline manufactures deny the issue exists but it does.

My FIL's house has 2 x CU's, each with an upfront RCD - its not possible to get a decent connection across the 2 fuseboards...

No idea what a CU is or whether I have upfront Rcds.. but I've attached a photo?!

 

[Octopus]

CU = Fuseboard

You have 2 x RCD's

With this set up I would expect decent performance between the top floor sockets and the middle floor sockets...

 

[LeeH]

Let's think about this..

You have a 200 MB/s connection.

Even the Devlo 1200 Mb/s adapters top out at under 400 in real world testing which is 50 MB/s

So they seem to be working fine.

MB internet speed, Mb file transfer speed.

You're the IT bloke, is that correct?

 

[LeeH]

Your units are also 1200 Mbps so they would max out at 150 MB/s but they would only achieve that in a lab. NEVER in the real world.

 

[Peter Cashen]

Mb/MB... Tomato/Tomato.... lets not get into the nitty gritty ha.

Using speedtest.net without homeplug - 225
Using speedtest.net with homeplug - 70

In my old house, I used to get around 150/160 with homeplug so double what I'm getting now.

 

[Octopus]

We've got hard wired connections now so its down to the incoming BT infinity speed....