Wireless vs Powerline Adapter vs Ethernet

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
N

Nokturnl1

Honorable
Jun 29, 2013
145
0
10,690
Wireless adapter : 35-40 Mbps DL & 2.5 Mbps UL – 10 - 15 Ping

Powerline Adapter 500Mbps : 21-23 Mbps DL & 2.82 Mbps UL – 12 - 23 Ping

Ethernet : 58 - 62 Mbps DL & 3 Mbps UL - 10-15 Ping

I have 60mb Virgin Media Connection.

I use wireless adapter but was told by the guy in store to forget the wireless and buy a powerline adapter,he told me my speeds will be maxed,i did and did tests on all 3 ways i connect and these are the results. I can get a refund but want to know if there is something i have to do to max connection as he said.

Did he lie to me?



 
Sort by date Sort by votes
USAFRet

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Mar 16, 2013
171,442
17,908
184,590
He didn't 'lie'...he 'made a sale'.

There is no way to predict Powerline adapter performance in any given house. Wiring quality, other interference, etc.

Powerline would be my absolute last suggestion, only if nothing else was available.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
P

Phinbar

Honorable
Mar 31, 2013
4
0
10,510
what speed did the powerline adapter say? it is a common mistake to read the --mbs as 'megabytes per second' but its actually 'megabits'. for reference, 8 megabits is 1 megabyte every second. So getting one that says 300mbs will limit you to 37.5mbps.
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,318
2,754
125,640
If all you care about is raw speed then wireless is often faster than powerline. If you talk about the quality of the signal though powerline tends to be more stable. You will get much more random short term performance variations in wireless.

The key here is what are you doing with the connection. In most cases speed means nothing. Web surfing using fairly low bandwidth and tollerates errors well so it doesn't matter.

Streaming video uses more bandwidth than surfing but still not a lot but it has some issue with errors in the stream. Games use almost no bandwidth but do not tolerate much if any variation in the data stream.

So the sales guy likely assumed you are like most people who post to these forums and plan to run your games on the network. Wireless many times is unusable for games where powerline tends to work much better...of course nothing is better than ethernet cables.

So you have to look at what your intended use is.

Most times the speed of a connection is pure bragging rights. Almost nobody really uses more than maybe 10m even streaming multiple movies. Only the torrent guys downloading the collection of illegal movies they will never watch tend to be using huge bandwidth 24x7
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom