What effect has ePlugs on broadband speed

aylesby

Currently the PC hard wired to the router, speed checks at 11 and the one in the bed room that is hard wired through ePlugs and the house electrical wires speed checks at 6.
If I change to fibre the company has checked the distance from the exchange and claims the PC on the router should speed check at 60 or more.
What could I expect the one in the bedroom to achieve?

bod1467

Depends on the eplugs themselves, and the house wiring between them. But also depends whether you're testing to the same speedtest server on each computer and doing so at the same time of day.

Lum

There are 3 completely separate things to consider here.

1) The speed of the connection between your PC and your router. If you are cabled directly to it then this will be either 100 or 1000 mbps
2) The speed of the connection between your router and your internet provider, currently this is probably somewhere between 0.5 and 24mbps and you are looking to increase it to 60mbps
3) The speed of the connection between your internet provider and the speedtest site. This is beyond your control and varies according to the time of day, network congestion etc.

The speed you get will be whichever if the 3 is lower.

What you need to do is ensure that whatever method you use to connect your PC to your router is at least as fast as your shiny new 60mbps fibre link. These homeplug things will get you speeds of 0-200mbps depending on the distance and the quality of your electrical wiring amongst other things. It is impossible for anyone on an internet forum to say what speed you will get.

However if you have two computers you can put them at either end of this link and run NetStress to measure the speed. Make sure that you ask it for results in Mbps not MBps. This is a subtle but important difference that will screw up your comparison otherwise.

nickcc

I get the same speed when either plugged directly into the fibre home hub or into the eplug in the lounge. With wireless I get max 20 Mbps and with Ethernet 38 Mbps.

bod1467

Lum wrote: »

There are 3 completely separate things to consider here.

1) The speed of the connection between your PC and your router. If you are cabled directly to it then this will be either 100 or 1000 mbps, or something else via eplugs (homeplugs) but will be a maximum of the router LAN port speed (10/100/1000) and the eplug throughput)
2) The speed of the connection between your router and your internet provider, currently this is probably somewhere between 0.5 and 24mbps and you are looking to increase it to 60mbps
3) The speed of the connection between your internet provider and the speedtest site. This is beyond your control and varies according to the time of day, network congestion etc.

The speed you get will be whichever if the 3 is lower.

What you need to do is ensure that whatever method you use to connect your PC to your router is at least as fast as your shiny new 60mbps fibre link. These homeplug things will get you speeds of 0-200mbps depending on the distance and the quality of your electrical wiring amongst other things. It is impossible for anyone on an internet forum to say what speed you will get.

However if you have two computers you can put them at either end of this link and run NetStress to measure the speed. Make sure that you ask it for results in Mbps not MBps. This is a subtle but important difference that will screw up your comparison otherwise.

Fixed for you.

Lum

Not fixed. The OP stated that they had their PC hard wired to their router, but are considering moving to eplugs.

They also state that they are currently seeing speeds of 11mbps via speedtest.net so they do not have a 10mbps Ethernet card in their PC.

Their LAN speed will be either 100 or 1000 currently.

bod1467

No. The OP says the PC in the bedroom is ...

aylesby wrote: »

hard wired through ePlugs and the house electrical wires

So, yes fixed.

Lum

and I wrote

"If you are cabled directly to it then this will be either 100 or 1000 mbps"

The bedroom PC is not cabled directly to it, and is addressed further down in the post.

"These homeplug things will get you speeds of 0-200mbps depending on the distance and the quality of your electrical wiring amongst other things."

They need to run netstress on these two computers to determine how well the eplugs actually peform. If it is the eplugs that are running at 6mbps then the fibre upgrade will achieve nothing for the bedroom PC.

kwikbreaks

It's worth noting that the ePlugs/Homeplugs pull the same sort of stunt with the specifications that WiFi does.

We all should know that 54Mbps 802.11g will only actually deliver just over 20Mbps. What some don't seem to realise is that the 200Mbps Homeplugs only have a 100Mbps ethernet connection - that should act as a bit of a warning that there is some smoke and mirrors involved.

Maybe they'll manage 60Mbps and maybe they won't. There is no certainty here.

Lum

It's a bit much to say that all homeplugs only have a 100mbps ethernet connection. I'm sure someone makes one that has a gigabit connection on it, especially since the price difference is negligible.

You are, however, correct to say that 200 is the theoretical maximum and you probably won't get it unless you connect the two homeplugs together using nothing but a 6 inch long extension lead made out of supercooled graphene.