Powerline Adapters
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Hi Guys,
Can someone please recommend me a good powerline. I currently have a TP-Link AV500 powerline adapter with one upstairs and one on the ground floor and one next to the router. My router is situated in the attic, so I would need the WiFi around the house.
My current powerline adapters are not very good, the connection always drops I have spent a further £44 for a second powerline adapter for the ground floor which, still is not very effective as I would like it to be.
My house is victorian with very thick walls and with the router in the attic, the WiFi does not reach all parts of the house. Can someone please recommend me a good powerline adapter then would be ideal? Thank you
Can someone please recommend me a good powerline. I currently have a TP-Link AV500 powerline adapter with one upstairs and one on the ground floor and one next to the router. My router is situated in the attic, so I would need the WiFi around the house.
My current powerline adapters are not very good, the connection always drops I have spent a further £44 for a second powerline adapter for the ground floor which, still is not very effective as I would like it to be.
My house is victorian with very thick walls and with the router in the attic, the WiFi does not reach all parts of the house. Can someone please recommend me a good powerline adapter then would be ideal? Thank you
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Comments
Have you thought about running a proper ethernet cable instead?
Hi Moox,
Yes I have and some rooms around the house have ethernet cables, but as you know we all use WiFi and not ethernet cables.
That'll give you far better performance than powerline plugs will ever do.
I did try use a old router but I am not getting the speed I want. I could get the WiFi access point but I need the ethernet cables for the sky tv. any suggestions?
Can't agree with that, we use home plugs which work very very well.
Which ones do you use?
You can choose not to agree with fact if you like - that fact being that powerline plugs struggle to tax even a 100Mbit ethernet connection under great conditions, let alone gigabit.
I'd still urge the OP to consider proper wired ethernet and another wifi access point plugged into a proper ethernet cable to add extra wifi coverage. Powerline plugs are a very expensive bodge and not worth considering where a bit of ethernet cable is an option
And tacking ethernet round all your walls look terrible.
Not if done properly. And I struggle to think about it when I'm thinking about money saved and the much, much better performance it gives over crappy powerline rubbish.
The OP has already said that he has ethernet cables running around his house. If the cable goes anywhere near where they don't get a good WiFi signal, the simplest and best solution seems to me to just plug a WiFi access point into that cable.
Lets say if I get a wireless access point, which ones would you recommend? Can I split the incomming connection to cater for both the wireless access point and the sky tv? Another issue, I would need a ethernet connection in one bedroom to cater for the Sky box. I dont have any more ports available on the virgin media superhub. What do I do regarding that?
How old was the router? It might be that it's too old and doesn't support wireless N or wireless AC which is what you'd need for the best speeds.
You could possibly use something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/TRENDnet-TEW-750DAP-Wireless-Access-Point/dp/B00G1DNC82/ref=pd_cp_computers_0 which is both an access point and a switch - so you plug the cable into this, and you can plug the Sky box into the back so it is still on your network, while giving you wifi coverage in the area
Alternatively, you could buy any wifi access point and separate ethernet switch (which would give you more ethernet ports to connect anything you want)
An ethernet switch can split an ethernet cable to let you plug in more than one device (it's basically what the superhub has on the back).
The access point I mentioned has one built in, but you can buy them separately (they're like £10 for the cheapest) if you don't need wifi coverage too
Running ethernet cables seems a simple solution until you are high up on a ladder drilling in to Victorian Accrington brick. Even drilling through the mortar line can be awkward on some of those old houses.
I live in a house where part of it is early-1900s granite walls. I still don't, and won't use powerline networking - even if it means running cables through window frames or within the house.
I do have cables running to where I need them (and two wifi access points for full coverage). I get great network performance all the time, I don't have to deal with powerline crappiness, and I'm not spewing out tons of RF interference.
I did once try some plugs anyway (got them for nearly nothing at a car boot sale), the performance was hilariously bad (20Mbit at best) compared to the guaranteed gigabit I was getting with a simple bit of cable
I use one of these in the high speed mode making a hotspot at 2.4 GHz as most of my gear uses this band and the relay is linked to the router in the 5 GHz band and has never failed since installing it 6 months ago.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/RE200-Universal-Extender-function-Configuration/dp/B00KVD6CJY/ref=sr_1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1428860862&sr=1-6&keywords=tp+link+wifi+extender
Moox, thanks for the email. I have an ethernet cable on the ground floor in the front sitting room so will put a wifi extender there it will reach the back of the house right?. The old router I used had speed of only 40 mbs if I come correct (its the white Netgear routers that Virgin used to give out). I will have a check in Currys, that is where I bought my powerline adapters from, so will return them to Currys.
Instead of getting a dual wifi access point can I use a ethernet splitter? or will that drop down my speed?
Brings me to my second issue, how will I get an ethernet cable to the second room that requires a cable? or will the wifi access point cover majority of the house? sorry for the 101 questions.
SkipTracer, thank you for the reply. I was looking at the exact thing you posted a few weeks ago, but was still in two minds. How does this WiFi relay thing work? Might give it a try if it gets wifi all around the house.
Anthony, thanks for the reply. All adapters are plugged into actual sockets, at first I only had one powerline adapter. But while speaking to someone from TP-Link online, I was told I would need more then one as the powerline adapter is only designated for one room use. As you cannot purchase these singular I had to buy another pair of powerline adapters and still have the same issue.
Everything is paired ok, lights are flashing as they should and still the same
The old router is very likely a wireless G one so it would not give you great speeds these days. You need N or AC for that (AC is better but considerably more expensive and not all laptops/phones have it built in).
How far an access point can reach depends on a lot of things - distance, number of walls, type of walls, how good the access point and device (phone/tablet/laptop/whatever) are, etc. If you've got a few granite walls in the way it's not going to reach as far as having some hollow interior walls or no walls at all.
The ethernet switch won't lower your speed just because you've plugged it in, it's like a splitter but it doesn't just lower speeds - the way it works is a bit like a water system in your house - you could have pipes going to 50 taps in your house, and if you only have a couple of taps on you get full water pressure, but if you turn on all 50 you're probably only going to get a dribble. The same is true here but with bandwidth.
I'm not sure what you mean by using it instead of an access point. If you want to extend your WiFi coverage, you'll need an access point. If you can deal with just plugging stuff in and not need to improve WiFi coverage, then you could just use an ethernet switch and plug all your devices straight into the switch.
If your two rooms are nearby you could just plug in a switch to cable you already have installed, and run another cable from that switch to your other room
Yes, the old router is very old! I would imagine the access point to cover a fair bit, if the superhub 2 can cover half of the house I would imagine the access poin to cover the other half.
The 2 rooms are no where near eachother. But, if the access point is perfect it should be ok working on the wifi.
It works in a few modes but the two main ones are the high speed mode that I use all the time as noted above where you set up a hotspot using 2.4 GHz wifi band and the relay sends your data back to the router in the 5 GHz band and this keeps the ping and data through put at a high rate were the data goes through like an express train whereas in the normal mode it has to stop at the station collect the data and then send the data on to the router be it at high speed but not as fast as the direct route.
This mode can be swopped around the other way and you could have a 5 GHz hotspot and the connection back to the router would be at 2.4 GHz.
The other main way is just to use it as a dual band relay so you have a 2.4 and 5 GHz hotspots but it slows things down but would still work well in most situations.
I’ve not done any speed test over the relay but I’ve had a couple of HD streams to my Roku boxes and an IP camera plus the usual phones and computers working over the network at the same time with no problems.
One thing though the unit has to be placed somewhere where it gets a good signal from your main router so the idea of boosting the signal through wooden floors to get around thick walls works well for me but thinking about how your house is laid out and looking at floors as if they were not there, unless of course there made of concrete, so for instance you may need two unit with one at the front and one at the back so getting around any supporting walls that go from the ground floor to the roof if you see what I mean.
I used to use one of the Netgear wifi single band relays that are cheaper but I used to get slowdowns and drop outs from time to time but I have this TP-Link RE200 AC750 plugged into the same mains socket and it’s never failed. One more thing though the unit has a LAN socket but this is not for connecting to the router over cable or HomePlug but is just for connecting any networked gear that does not have wifi.
http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-10_RE200.html
Any 600Mbit ones as they use the earth and MIMO they work much better. Im using these and they are the best i have had http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/?model=TL-PA6030KIT
Rubbish.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/powerline/view