Powerline adapters worth it??

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tambeshakunt

tambeshakunt

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Jun 5, 2013
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Hi everyone,

Recently I have been experiencing extremely slow wireless speeds with my internet and so thought of going wired. Since physically running cable through the house isn't possible, I thought of powerline adapters.

Firstly, if I use a PLA (powerline adapter), can I still use the wireless feature on my router for all the other devices such as phones that aren't connected to the PLA??

Secondly, Are PLA's that much better than usb wireless adapters (I have an N600 dual band)? If so, I play a lot of online gaming (battlefield 4), so which would you recommend ??

Lastly, I have Fiber Optic BT infinity 2 with speeds up to 76 mbps down with the Home Hub 5. Will PLAs not be able to keep up with this/ restrict this speed or should it still be able to produce the speeds of wired Ethernet??

Note: My house is less than 2 yrs old so has new wiring and not very thick walls.

Thanks so much everyone,

 
Solution
Onus
Like anything else, there are low and high quality PL adapters. The speed ratings (200mb/s and 500mb/s are most common) are also "best case" scenarios and may not be realistic. For myself, I had very poor results with a 500mb/s pair, but great results with a 200mb/s pair I am still using. I live in a manufactured home with two sections, and mine are working across the halves; this means the signal is passing through an additional junction box. They are MUCH faster than USB adapters, and very close to wired speeds.
OTOH, since you have a nice, dual-band router, you may want to consider better wireless adapters. USB adapters typically have poor antennas, but PCIe and PCI adapters have better ones.
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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These devices are still radios they just transmit the signal over the cable rather than the air. They are very susceptible to interference just not as bad as wireless.

In most cases you will find these device are more stable and have less random loss than wireless. But there are those stubborn houses they just don't work in.

Speed wise you of course get nowhere near the magic rated speeds. The so called 500m ones you will likely get a little over 100m/sec on these but again it really depends on the house layout.

Gaming is not bandwidth intensive. It requires very consistent traffic rates with no packet loss. The powerline devices do better than wireless at this mostly because you do not get all the random slowdown because of packet retransmission you see in a wireless network.

If you just look at data transfer using thing like 802.11ac wireless the wireless will tend to be able to do file transfer faster than the powerline. It is that the data transfer programs have no issues stalling for short periods of time.

It is much harder call for things like web pages that like fewer errors and moderate data use.


 
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Onus

Onus

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Jan 27, 2006
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Like anything else, there are low and high quality PL adapters. The speed ratings (200mb/s and 500mb/s are most common) are also "best case" scenarios and may not be realistic. For myself, I had very poor results with a 500mb/s pair, but great results with a 200mb/s pair I am still using. I live in a manufactured home with two sections, and mine are working across the halves; this means the signal is passing through an additional junction box. They are MUCH faster than USB adapters, and very close to wired speeds.
OTOH, since you have a nice, dual-band router, you may want to consider better wireless adapters. USB adapters typically have poor antennas, but PCIe and PCI adapters have better ones.
 
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enemy1g

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Oct 3, 2013
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I have used a powerline adapter for ~3-4 years (before the unit finally died), and made the change to PCI-E wifi adapters, and now back to wired directly into the router.

I will say that the powerline adapter, when you have a good one, works fairly well, and better than wifi (obviously), but nothing will beat a straight wired connection.
 
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tambeshakunt

tambeshakunt

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Jun 5, 2013
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Thanks everyone.... now I just need to choose between a wireless card or PLAs.
Which of these do you think I should go for?

TL-WDN4800 wireless card or TP-Link PA411KIT PLAs?? Just want to see what you guys think will probably be a better choice based on experience.

Thanks
 
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Onus

Onus

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I have a TL-WDN3800, and it is much better than the cheap $12 PCI adapters I used to buy. It isn't in use though; the 200mb/s setup has a 1-port adapter at the router, and a 4-port in the other room, so I can just plug in to that and it works quite well. I don't need to move systems around though. If you might move the PC in question, the better wireless is probably good, but if it will be in one place, near an outlet, then the PL adapter may be more consistent. Consider whether you have a free outlet available. PL adapters may not be plugged into surge protectors.
 
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tambeshakunt

tambeshakunt

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Ok thanks.. I keep my pc in one place so looks like I will go with the PLA and see how it goes.

Just one question, what do you mean by surge protectors and why cant they be plugged there?? Does a MCB for all the sockets count for this or are you only talking about the surge protection in extension leads?

Thanks so much
 
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