Homeplugs

ukjoel

Does anyone know the realistic speed difference I would see between using 200mbps homeplugs and 500mbps ones.


I have several of the 200 ones around the house and am struggling with playing films and tv through my WDTV live and wondered if the 500 ones would make much difference.

I understand these send data via my electric cabling but have no idea how fast the cabling can send a signal, or if there is a bottleneck and where it may be occuring.

Does anyone have more info on this. I dont want to spend £100 on upgrades if it wont make any difference.

System is currently 3 x WDTV live boxes, and video is held on a WD HD attached to my PC. I have 6 homeplugs - One on each of the TV's plus 2 on PC's and one on the router.

I tried boosting wifi signal and due to old house couldnt get it robust enough so picked up some homeplugs instead.

Thanks
Thanks

macman

Are all 6 existing Homeplugs on the network 200MBps ones? If some are the older 85MBps ones (Homeplug 1.0) then they will co-exist, but all will run only at the speed of the slowest (85MBps).
Secondly, are they all plugged directly into your ring mains, and not on trailing extension leads? That tends to drag the speed down.

ukjoel

All existing ones are 200mbps (think 4 are passthrough and 2 are regular). Five are plugged into the socket with the 6th being on a trailing extension.

Reading your note your suggesting that if I replace then I will need to replace all 6 to see any increase in the speed (as otherwise the ones left at 200mbps will slow it all down.

Would the one on a trailing extension drag the speed down on the whole system or just on the single device it would connect to.

Having looked at ebay it appears I can sell my 200 mbps passthrough ones for a similar price to what I will pay for the 500mbps on todays amazon deal. Have ordered 4 and based on further responses will either pick up another couple of will stretch to a couple of passthrough 500's to get round having to used the extension cable.
Thanks

macman

ukjoel wrote: »

All existing ones are 200mbps (think 4 are passthrough and 2 are regular). Five are plugged into the socket with the 6th being on a trailing extension.

Reading your note your suggesting that if I replace then I will need to replace all 6 to see any increase in the speed (as otherwise the ones left at 200mbps will slow it all down.

Yes.

Would the one on a trailing extension drag the speed down on the whole system or just on the single device it would connect to.

Why not plug it in direct and see?

Having looked at ebay it appears I can sell my 200 mbps passthrough ones for a similar price to what I will pay for the 500mbps on todays amazon deal. Have ordered 4 and based on further responses will either pick up another couple of will stretch to a couple of passthrough 500's to get round having to used the extension cable.
Thanks

Seems like you've already made your mind up then.

aerostar

Remember that these speeds are only for your internal network, anything coming from outside will be limited to your broadband speed and the site you are on.

DevCoder

Also, your ethernet interfaces in each device must be gigabit, else if they are 10/100 then you wont see any improvement (since the 200mb/sec will handle the data bandwidth 100mb ethernet interfaces use)

The WDTV was updated in late 2011 for gigabit, have you got the updated model?

zappahey

krisdorey wrote: »

Also, your ethernet interfaces in each device must be gigabit, else if they are 10/100 then you wont see any improvement (since the 200mb/sec will handle the data bandwidth 100mb ethernet interfaces use)

It's probably less important for the client devices, as 100Mb interface is plenty fast enough for HD, and more important that the media server is gigabit.

DevCoder

zappahey wrote: »

It's probably less important for the client devices, as 100Mb interface is plenty fast enough for HD, and more important that the media server is gigabit.

Agreed, although if you exclude latency, packet overhead (split mtu?) then if the media server is streaming to one client, why does it matter if the media server is 100mb and the client is 100mb?

If there are multiple clients then yes, you should have n+1 100mb connections.

Just curious.

zappahey

krisdorey wrote: »

Agreed, although if you exclude latency, packet overhead (split mtu?) then if the media server is streaming to one client, why does it matter if the media server is 100mb and the client is 100mb?

If there are multiple clients then yes, you should have n+1 100mb connections.

Just curious.

You make a fair point. I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that he was streaming to multiple clients simultaneously. If he's only streaming to a single client, with no other significant activity on the network, then I wouldn't expect the 200mb devices to be the bottleneck and would be looking for other issues.

jamesmorgan

My experience with homeplugs is that performance can be radically impacted by which socket the device is plugged into and what other devices are plugged into nearby sockets. I used a long ethernet cable to test performance using different sockets to decide which socket to use for each PC. Often I would use a socket quite a long way from the actual PC as this gave best performance. Definitely avoid using them on extension cables.

That said, they do give much better performance than wi-fi.