We were talking about Powerline adapters recently; I wanted to share what I've learned recently.

I've got 4 TP-Link TPL-406Es in my house on separate floors. One unit is connects to my cable modem downstairs, one to an XBox and to an access point, one to my desktop and one to the BBS.

TPLink has a nice utility that lets you see the quality of signal between the local and remote units. I was able to move my desktop and router units onto the same phase by running an extension cord for one of the units, and saw the quality on the utility app jump. My desktop throughput using speedtest jumped from 40 to 60 mbps.

While typing this I found another tool at http://forum.ethernetovercoax.eu/index.php?topic=126.0 that looks interesting for viewing the health of your powerline network.

Doing some legwork doesn't hurt; As a prevantative measure I took a handful of wall warts we had for a charging station and replaced 2 warts with one wart and a multi-connector cable.

I'd seen occasional dropouts that would cause my wireless network to reset and telnet connections to the BBS to drop. After doing a little legwork, I haven't had a drop yet and saw 100,000 packets without a dropped packet to devices connected to all of the adapters.

My next project will be to replace my Linksys E3200 with a Linksys AC1900 MU-MIMO router to cover my upstairs and pick up a couple of 802.11AC adapters for my laptop/desktop.

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I'd seen occasional dropouts that would cause my wireless network to reset and telnet connections to the BBS to drop. After doing a little legwork, I haven't had a drop yet and saw 100,000 packets without a dropped packet to devices connected to all of the adapters.

With my powerline ethernet adapters, I've seen some instances where the outside occasionally can't seem to connect to one of my servers on my home network.. I'm
not sure if there's anything I can do about that but switch one of my servers to
wi-fi (which might not have as high of a connection to my router as with the powerline ethernet adapter).

Nightfox

Poindexter Fortran wrote to All <=-

TPLink has a nice utility that lets you see the quality of signal
between the local and remote units. I was able to move my desktop and router units onto the same phase by running an extension cord for one
of the units, and saw the quality on the utility app jump. My desktop throughput using speedtest jumped from 40 to 60 mbps.

Cool, well done. :) Yes, it is worth experimenting with powerline adapters. In my previous house, I was getting poor performance, until I switched powerpoints, then I got excellent transfer speeds. In this house, I couldn't get the speeds I wanted, and switching powerpoints wasn't an option, so I replaced the powerline link with a Cat 5 cable. :)

Another potential trap is some switchmode supplies can interfere with the powerline adapters. I had this with a friend's laptop, which took the Internet offline, every time it was plugged in.

So now, my network backbone is fully Cat 5, with 3 wifi APs for mobile devices.


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Nightfox wrote to Poindexter Fortran <=-

With my powerline ethernet adapters, I've seen some instances where the outside occasionally can't seem to connect to one of my servers on my
home network.. I'm

I never had those issues. The link was as transparent as a Cat 5 cable.


... Logic and practical information do not seem to apply here.
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Re: Re: Powerline adapters
By: Vk3jed to Nightfox on Thu Jul 28 2016 08:06:00

With my powerline ethernet adapters, I've seen some instances where
the outside occasionally can't seem to connect to one of my servers
on my home network.. I'm

I never had those issues. The link was as transparent as a Cat 5 cable.

The link is indeed transparent, just like I'm using a Cat 5 cable straight to the router; it just seems like occasionally (not too often), the connection between powerline adapters drops momentarily.

Nightfox

Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-

I never had those issues. The link was as transparent as a Cat 5 cable.

The link is indeed transparent, just like I'm using a Cat 5 cable
straight to the router; it just seems like occasionally (not too
often), the connection between powerline adapters drops momentarily.

I never had any issue with dropouts, just slow links if the powerpoints were on different circuits. :)


... Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
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Re: Re: Powerline adapters
By: Nightfox to Vk3jed on Wed Jul 27 2016 09:46 pm

cable.

The link is indeed transparent, just like I'm using a Cat 5 cable straight to the router; it just seems like occasionally (not too often), the connection between powerline adapters drops momentarily.

if you own your house, drill some fucking holes like me and string some ethernet cable. just go through the floor in the back of the rooms.

makes things so much easier.
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Mro wrote to Nightfox <=-

if you own your house, drill some fucking holes like me and string some ethernet cable. just go through the floor in the back of the rooms.

Well, I'm renting and I managed to run a Cat 5 cable over the top of a few internal doors, behind some shelves and through a window. Out of the way and no damage to the house. :)


... Wow! Short runway....but look how WIDE it is!!
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Re: Re: Powerline adapters
By: Vk3jed to Mro on Fri Jul 29 2016 05:26 pm

Well, I'm renting and I managed to run a Cat 5 cable over the top of a few internal doors, behind some shelves and through a window. Out of the way and no damage to the house. :)

i also saw some baseboards that you can hide cable in. it was on some website so it's not something you can order on amazon or whatnot.
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