Powerline and Pass Through

Carrot007

arciere wrote: »

Not true, it all depends on how you set up your WiFi. The problem is 'repeaters' rather than 'all WiFi'.

No, it is true. WIFI is not a good as wired and introduces latency. This is no matter how good your set up is.


I will agree a lot of people won't care or notice. But because it is good enough for some people does not make it as good as a wired conenction.

Linton

With two different PCs in two different houses with kit from different suppliers I have found Powerline to be poor with loss of connection several times a day. Connection could only be restarted by turning the Powerline adaptor off and on. It may be because in both houses the end points were on different rings. Now I am using tp-link wifi extenders with very few problems. The speed is only marginally less than the broad band connection.

arciere

Carrot007 wrote: »

WIFI is not a good as wired and introduces latency

Ok, that's slightly different than saying 'all wifi is useless'. I never said that WiFi is as good as wires, of course it can't be.

bouicca21

I'm still using the 200 mbs ones that I bought a decade ago when I had a bigger house and wifi wasn't strong enough. Had to replace one recently but have seen no reason to upgrade to faster ones. Use for my pc and TVs. Of course I'm not on fibre ... but the speed I get is plenty fast enough.

DoaM

Carrot007 wrote: »

Presumably because;

Speculation is all well and good, but utterly irrelevant ... my post was aimed at the OP, as only THEY can say why THEY want powerline.

burtons

DoaM wrote: »

Let's tackle the unasked question ... why do you think you need powerline adaptors?

The wifi speed is rubbish so I want to connect my daughters laptop to an Ethernet cable but I don't want to run cables around the room so I thought I would try a powerline adapter. My line rate show upstream (kbps) 9995 and downstream (kbps) 39998 but over wifi I'm getting anything from 12.9 up to 22.8.

neilmcl

Unfortunately not all powerline plugs are created equal, some are prone to random disconnecting and quite often this is more prevalent the higher the speed you go for. I had an old set of BT Comtrend 200Mbps plugs that worked perfectly for years until they eventually gave up the ghost. Replaced them with some Trendnet 500Mbps that have been nothing but trouble with them constantly disconnecting, I've heard the same for some Netgear models too.

The main place I needed them was in my office which has a bit of deadspot with the onboard Wifi on my laptop but I've since purchased an external dual band wifi dongle and have not looked back. Much cheaper than getting a set of plugs and I'm reaching near my maximum on speed tests, ie, 38Mbps whereas I used to get only around 10Mbps in that room.

This is what I bought last year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wireless-Upgraded-High-gain-Complies-Standard/dp/B075Q82QJD/ref=lp_9582949031_1_5?srs=9582949031&ie=UTF8&qid=1537456650&sr=8-5&th=1

DoaM

It's the external aerial that gives the improvement. When I had an old desktop PC connected via WiFi I used an external aerial on a flying lead that sat on the corner of my computer desk ... WiFi connection was great.

Carrot007

burtons wrote: »

The wifi speed is rubbish so I want to connect my daughters laptop to an Ethernet cable but I don't want to run cables around the room so I thought I would try a powerline adapter. My line rate show upstream (kbps) 9995 and downstream (kbps) 39998 but over wifi I'm getting anything from 12.9 up to 22.8.

OK, neither of which are "bad" speeds.


What is it that she wants to do that needs more?


I mentioned games becuase that is a latency issue.


Unless there is a need for 4K streaming or a lot of downloading then speed really is not an issue.


People seem to focus on getting maximum speed where there is no reason to.


As much as I hate WIFI I would ask are you connecting on the 5G bandwidth, that is what you need is you just want speed but care little about latency. Of course latency is what you should be caring about (as it is what actually improves thigs one you have enoguh speed, but...).

Carrot007

DoaM wrote: »

Speculation is all well and good, but utterly irrelevant ... my post was aimed at the OP, as only THEY can say why THEY want powerline.

Or why they "think" they want powerline. But it seems it was a speed thing which without clarification means nothing.