I am big into online gaming, I mostly play the well known Moba League of Legends, which requires a steady and reliable internet connection in order to perform well. I have a few problems with this. My router is in my basement while my computer set up is in the 2nd floor of my house. There is no way I am able to run a wired connection throughout my home, and I am sick and tired of a wireless connection. My question is, would the ZyXel PLA5405kit ( a powerline adapter I have picked out after extensive research ) work with my homes wiring. The ground floor and 2nd floor of my home are currently operating on wiring from the late 1960's early 70s, and the basement is operating on wiring that was recently redone close to the year 2010. I was just wondering if a set of powerline adapters would work on these wires and provide me with a more stable internet connection for gaming. Thanks.
Questions about Powerline Adapters.
- Thread starter jasabe
- Start date
Solution
The main advantage to powerline is once you get them working the speed is very consistent and does not fluctuate much. They tend to not be quite as fast as wireless since wireless starts out with more bandwidth. Games though do not care about bandwidth they care about consistency.
So IF you can get them to work they will work well for games....until someone vacuums the floor
.
It is unpredictable if you can get them to work in any particular house. They work best when the path is as simple as possible between the 2 units. The very newest powerline units, which I think include the ones you list, also use the ground lead for signals so it improves your chances since the grounding for a building tends to be all attached...
So IF you can get them to work they will work well for games....until someone vacuums the floor
. It is unpredictable if you can get them to work in any particular house. They work best when the path is as simple as possible between the 2 units. The very newest powerline units, which I think include the ones you list, also use the ground lead for signals so it improves your chances since the grounding for a building tends to be all attached...
The main advantage to powerline is once you get them working the speed is very consistent and does not fluctuate much. They tend to not be quite as fast as wireless since wireless starts out with more bandwidth. Games though do not care about bandwidth they care about consistency.
So IF you can get them to work they will work well for games....until someone vacuums the floor.
It is unpredictable if you can get them to work in any particular house. They work best when the path is as simple as possible between the 2 units. The very newest powerline units, which I think include the ones you list, also use the ground lead for signals so it improves your chances since the grounding for a building tends to be all attached.
All you can really do is try it..... good news is they work well in most houses.
The ones that actually work the worst are some of the very newest houses with certain brands of the now code required arc fault circuit breakers. I forget the exact brand but they completely make powerline network devices unusable.
So IF you can get them to work they will work well for games....until someone vacuums the floor
. It is unpredictable if you can get them to work in any particular house. They work best when the path is as simple as possible between the 2 units. The very newest powerline units, which I think include the ones you list, also use the ground lead for signals so it improves your chances since the grounding for a building tends to be all attached.
All you can really do is try it..... good news is they work well in most houses.
The ones that actually work the worst are some of the very newest houses with certain brands of the now code required arc fault circuit breakers. I forget the exact brand but they completely make powerline network devices unusable.
bill001g :
The main advantage to powerline is once you get them working the speed is very consistent and does not fluctuate much. They tend to not be quite as fast as wireless since wireless starts out with more bandwidth. Games though do not care about bandwidth they care about consistency.
So IF you can get them to work they will work well for games....until someone vacuums the floor.
It is unpredictable if you can get them to work in any particular house. They work best when the path is as simple as possible between the 2 units. The very newest powerline units, which I think include the ones you list, also use the ground lead for signals so it improves your chances since the grounding for a building tends to be all attached.
All you can really do is try it..... good news is they work well in most houses.
The ones that actually work the worst are some of the very newest houses with certain brands of the now code required arc fault circuit breakers. I forget the exact brand but they completely make powerline network devices unusable.
So IF you can get them to work they will work well for games....until someone vacuums the floor
. It is unpredictable if you can get them to work in any particular house. They work best when the path is as simple as possible between the 2 units. The very newest powerline units, which I think include the ones you list, also use the ground lead for signals so it improves your chances since the grounding for a building tends to be all attached.
All you can really do is try it..... good news is they work well in most houses.
The ones that actually work the worst are some of the very newest houses with certain brands of the now code required arc fault circuit breakers. I forget the exact brand but they completely make powerline network devices unusable.
Thanks a bunch for the help, I decided to pick myself up a zyxel PLA5405 Kit, and it was working great until i started getting ping spikes at the night time when the majority of my family is online and using the internet, is there anyway you know how to fix this?
It is likely the ping spikes are caused by over utilization of the intent and not related to the powerline units. It tends to be hard to tell since most routers do not tell you much about usage...some do though.
You can do little to fix this, some very advanced QoS settings (normally you must load third party firmware) can partially solve this issue. It tends to not always work though. Even if you get it to work what you are in effect doing is telling some other person in the house they are going to get less performance than they have been getting so you can get better response on your game. This tends to override the technical ability to do this.
Third party firmware can not be loaded on dsl routers.......I would not go the third party firmware route unless you are willing to invest significant time into the project.
You can do little to fix this, some very advanced QoS settings (normally you must load third party firmware) can partially solve this issue. It tends to not always work though. Even if you get it to work what you are in effect doing is telling some other person in the house they are going to get less performance than they have been getting so you can get better response on your game. This tends to override the technical ability to do this.
Third party firmware can not be loaded on dsl routers.......I would not go the third party firmware route unless you are willing to invest significant time into the project.
Is there any way to fix this at all? I am having the same problems as I was, and it is worse. I have one question, is it possible that someone watching Netflix on an Ipad on the wireless internet be completely worsening the internet for every other device? I really need help with this, for I have just dropped $90 on this thing and really need a way to get it to work. I know that it may not be the powerline causing the problems, but is there anyway I can make it so the router is not affected as greatly by something like netflix? Thanks again for the quick reply I appreciate it greatly.
It depends how much bandwidth from your ISP you are starting with. If you have say 20m then 1 person watching netflix would likely have no effect. If you have 2m then 1 person can use all the bandwidth easily.
The second case is not easily fixed someone is not going to get all the bandwidth they need and be mad.
If you have a large internet connection and you are on wired/powerline a wireless connection should have no impact. It might if there was a bug in the router but even that is highly unlikely since the chips that talk to the wireless users is a different chip in most routers and the main cpu is not involved in the details of the wireless.
The second case is not easily fixed someone is not going to get all the bandwidth they need and be mad.
If you have a large internet connection and you are on wired/powerline a wireless connection should have no impact. It might if there was a bug in the router but even that is highly unlikely since the chips that talk to the wireless users is a different chip in most routers and the main cpu is not involved in the details of the wireless.
richb-hanover
Distinguished
- Dec 21, 2013
- 34
- 1
- 18,540
@bill001g: Yes, you're right about the total bandwidth available from your ISP. Netflix will consume a considerable fraction of a 2 mbps link, but things should work fine for others with a higher (5+ mbps) link.
@jasabe: Ping spikes like you report can also be caused by "bufferbloat" - unwanted latency/lag that's caused when your router is handling other traffic.
Here's how to get a definitive test... Go to www.dslreports.com/speedtest Not only will it give you accurate down/up speed measurements, but it measures latency *during* the big data transfers.
Do this from your computer (on the powerline extenders) and also from other computers at home. Be sure to make the measurements one at a time, when the network is otherwise quiet. I'd be interested to see the results of the test (click the Results+Share button to see a nice summary.)
If the measurements all seem about the same and the grade for bufferbloat is C or worse, it's likely your router that is doing it. If it's only your computer on the powerline extenders, it could be that they are bufferbloated.
If it seems like bufferbloat, you should read, What to do about Bufferbloat? for more details.
@jasabe: Ping spikes like you report can also be caused by "bufferbloat" - unwanted latency/lag that's caused when your router is handling other traffic.
Here's how to get a definitive test... Go to www.dslreports.com/speedtest Not only will it give you accurate down/up speed measurements, but it measures latency *during* the big data transfers.
Do this from your computer (on the powerline extenders) and also from other computers at home. Be sure to make the measurements one at a time, when the network is otherwise quiet. I'd be interested to see the results of the test (click the Results+Share button to see a nice summary.)
If the measurements all seem about the same and the grade for bufferbloat is C or worse, it's likely your router that is doing it. If it's only your computer on the powerline extenders, it could be that they are bufferbloated.
If it seems like bufferbloat, you should read, What to do about Bufferbloat? for more details.
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