Gigabit Powerline

Simmonz

2[H]4U
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May 14, 2008
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So I have had to endure wireless in my new house since August. Moving expenses have finally been paid down. I want my gigabit back but running cable all over the house that we rent without drilling holes would be a nightmare. I have settled on powerline as my next best option. Gigabit powerline seems to be available. I was looking at the D-Link PowerLine AV2 2000. Can anyone think of better options ?
 
How old is the house and how dirty is the power?

Odds are "powerline as my next best option", is only because you haven't considered how IRL it may well be worse than what you have now.
 
I'm not really into drilling holes either. I just use a staple gun and have the Ethernet along the top corners of the ceiling. It's been going strong for over a decade. It took about 15 minutes to install and you hardly even notice it.

What do you use as your ISP? Can you simply move the gateway closer to you? Where exactly in your house do you need to transfer data to and from?
 
I have a pair of 1.3Gb powerline adapters. My house was built in 1999. I get like 60Mb/sec between them. Fine for streaming to the HT but not overly pleased with it....
 
How old is the house and how dirty is the power?

Odds are "powerline as my next best option", is only because you haven't considered how IRL it may well be worse than what you have now.

The house is about 60 years old give or take. I'm not sure how dirty the power is, all I can say is no power issues so far.

Moca?

IMO: Ethernet > moca > power line > wireless

I haven't heard of moca but i'll do some research on it. UPDATE: WON'T WORK. I ONLY HAVE ONE COAX PORT IN THE HOUSE. Thanks for the idea though, neat tech.

I'm not really into drilling holes either. I just use a staple gun and have the Ethernet along the top corners of the ceiling. It's been going strong for over a decade. It took about 15 minutes to install and you hardly even notice it.

What do you use as your ISP? Can you simply move the gateway closer to you? Where exactly in your house do you need to transfer data to and from?

My girlfriend wants to see no wires at all. It would require about 200ft of cable minimum and would be snaking up stairs and along ceiling to have to be hidden. There is only one spot to plug the gateway in and it's at the way opposite end of the house near the back door. The only room that's wired for cable and it was an addition some time after it was built. My ISP is Start Communications. I mainly want to download torrents and games on my PC, stream netflix on the HTPC and be copying possibly 5-30GB files from my PC to the HTPC.
 
Fwiw I was die hard antiwifi. Acquiring high quality wireless makes it far more liveable.
 
Its all going to depend on the house. I have a pair of Netgear Gigabit Powerline adapters. I can get about 12-13MB/s which is a bit more than 100Mbit. I much prefer them over wireless. Just buy from Amazon so you can return them if they don't work. 2 story house built in mid 80s. I use it to get OTA HD TV from my HDHomeRun and Amazon OTA Antenna because upstairs is the only place I can get 100% reliable signal for all channels(the important ones)
 
I ended up going with the D-Link powerline adapters I mentioned as they seemed my best option. I have a couple of questions for those with experience.

1. My girlfriend's PC, which is downstairs maybe 40 feet from the modem, got a 30% increase at speedtest.net compared to what she got on wireless. My PC, which is located upstairs, got a 27% decrease in speed compared to my wireless speed. Does that seem normal ? Does the extra distance matter that much with powerline ?

2. My next question is whether there is anything I can do to further increase performance ? Switching to a PCI-E NIC over the onboard ? Better router ?

I should mention that I am using a Belkin router that supports GB ports and I am using Cat-6 cable at every point.

Maybe i'm being over dramatic. I have been using it all day and can still get 2 MB/sec on torrents and 5 MB/sec on Steam so it's not so bad. If anyone has any tips though let me know.
 
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Well, as far a 1 goes, that's basically normal as far as powerline goes. Results vary greatly depending on if you're on the same circuit and quality of house wiring. (in short: it sucks)

2: Run network cables, that's about the only other thing that'll "increase performance" There's tons of ways to hide cables from sight, many of which have already been mentioned.
 
Smallnetbuilder.com has some good articles about AV adapters. Been wanting to get AV2, and instead I have been waiting for the best choice. Basically, I have not purchased any because I prefer an integrated switch like the AV1 that i have has, and so far none of the AV2's do.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tags/homeplug-av2
 
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