powerline or wi fi

denwyn

Moving to new house soon, in house now we have Bt Master socket next to pc, and network cable from this to smart TV, all works perfect. In new house at present there is no actual master socket, its a bungalow buitlt in 1974 so very basic phone socket in the hall.So will have to pay BT to fit new master socket for use with phone and fibre Not at all easy to get network cable to room were computer is or lounge for TV. roof space is really so well insulated with lagging its impossible to run cables, plus at my age the days of crawling through roof spaces are over. TV has wi fi connection, so it may work with wifi from Plusnet router, although it was very hit and miss were we live now. Computer is good spec and a year old, built by PC specialist, no wifi connection. Im not a great lover of wi fi, for me its never been really succseful in this house. I am looking at Power Line adaptors, never used them at all, are they suitable and amore reliable than wifi. Would only need two outlets for tv and desktop. Mobiles and tablets will have to use wifi. Or should i buy expensive better wi fi router, we will probably stay with Plusnet fibre, and not sure if they allow you to use own router. All i want is good connection for TV, and as i do a fair bit of downloading on PC, watching you Tube and films etc a reasonable speed. Any advice appreciated

wongataa

I use powerline adaptors to connect my desktop PC to the router as running cable would be difficult. It works fine in my experience. Occasionally they go funny and you have to power cycle them to get the network running again but that is rare and takes seconds to do. They have a tendency not to like being on extension leads so plug them directly into the wall for best performance.

Alexd52

I have used powerline adapters for some time and have found them much better than wifi in both speed and consistency. The only thing to bear in mind is that the speed will not be as good as a direct ethernet connection from the router. Mine is about 70 to 80%.

Spelunthus

I use both. WiFi for phones, tablets, PCs, printers around the house. Powerline for iPlayer on television. That way, the high-bandwidth TV signal does not kill the other WiFi users around the house. All this on a 8Mbps copper line with BT - works fine except that iPlayer on HD struggles a little, as you might expect.

grumpycrab

These should do the job; good make, cheap, 2 sockets, should be fast enough - send them back if not good enough.
£25 bargain.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Powerline-Homeplug-Internet-Ethernet-Technology/dp/B00C5IA4XI/

Stoke

Why not both? Use PowerLine for things which require a cable. WiFi for everything else.

Neither are that expensive these days.

neilmcl

I don't understand why you want to pay BT to fit a new master socket as long as it a socket to plug your phone line in, and it's not an old GPO phone connection boxes, then you'll be wasting your money.

bouicca21

How fast is the connection? My Plusnet router gives me something in the order of 15mbps. I already had powerline doodahs from my previous house so I use them for 2 TVs and my desktop. But the wifi is strong enough that connecting via my laptop or iPad is fine.

Linton

Having used powerline in 2 separate houses to connect my main Desktop to the router in another room. I would never use the technology again. Loss of connection sometimes several times a day. I tried with different adaptors, a different router, a different PC and a different connection to the PC. Made no difference. Now I just use powerline to connect the router to a Humax TV recorder in the same room which does work well - there are no problems streaming TV.

WiFi isnt perfect either. Some cheaper routers may not provide sufficient signal strength if you have a moderately large house. Even with a BT HomeHub 5 which apparently has unusually powerful WiFi and using a high gain antenna to connect to the PC I have to position the antenna to minimise the number of walls the signal has to pass through to get a high quality connection from one end of the house to the other. On the plus side, I have no problem now getting 50Mb/s connectivity.

The real answer is to have cat-5 cabling throughout the house but...

Heedtheadvice

I echo grump's and neil's advice.

Those power line units look fine, good price and faster than WiFi.
Edit as corrected by others below:[Another possible advantage is that you could access router admin that way which is sometimes unlikely over wi-fi. -not as originally wrote implying it impossible; I have been corrected by others in subsequent posts!!] [ Sentence deleted as it did not make sense! :-( ]
If you do not go with the extenders and you need [ router] admin access just buy a long ethernet cable for temporary connection [ added: if WiFi access is screwed up!]

Do not be confused about what a master socket is? It is the first socket connected to the openreach cable. As Neil posts, provided you have a socket (rather than the very old terminal block for a hard wired phone) it ought to be fine with an external filter plugged in. Plusnet should provide you one (if you do not already have one) as part of the router kit.

Linton

Heedtheadvice wrote: »

I echo grump's and neil's advice.

Those power line units look fine, good price and faster than WiFi. Another advantage is that you could access router admin that way which is unlikely over wi-fi. There are times es you may wish to check connections or alter WiFi etc so that ought to be possible.
If you do not go with the extenders and you need admin access just buy a long ethernet cable for temporary connection.

Do not be confused about what a master socket is? It is the first socket connected to the openreach cable. As Neil posts, provided you have a socket (rather than the very old terminal block for a hard wired phone) it ought to be fine with an external filter plugged in. Plusnet should provide you one (if you do not already have one) as part of the router kit.

Router admin by wifi works fine with my BT HomeHub5.