Powerline Ethernet Giving me slow speeds?

MassimoT

Reputable
Jul 29, 2015
36
0
4,530
Alright so, I have a TP-Link 500Mbps Powerline adapter kit, and my current TP-Link PCI Express card gets me 82mbps download and 92 upload, which is great. This is what I would get if I plugged an ethernet cable directly from my pc into the router. Problem is, when I use the Powerline adapters, I only get 25 down, and 18 up. I have no idea why this is happening. I thought that Powerline Ethernet should be faster than Wifi no matter what. Am I doing something wrong? I read something online about if the router and powerline adapters are plugged into a different circuit, then there will be a great speed reduction. There is one more outlet in my room that I can try, I will give it a go, but I doubt I will see any differences. The only other thing I saw online was someone saying that they flipped their adapters upside-down, and it doubled their speed. Don't understand how that works, and haven't tried it yet. Please let me know if you know a fix or have any suggestions. Thanks in advance :/
 
Solution
Powerline is not necessarily faster than wireless this all depends on the house. In theory wireless should be faster since it has more bandwidth to start with before you account for the loss due to walls and interference.

Powerline tends to be more consistent in the speed since wireless is subject to random interference.

Which you choose tends to be related to how tolerant the application is to random delays in the traffic. Web surfing and file transfers can tolerate loss very well so they tend to be better on wireless. Games and things like voice or video calls can tolerate no loss and tend to be better on powerline. Video from say netflix or youtube is somewhere in between because it has a small buffer to fix some...
Powerline is not necessarily faster than wireless this all depends on the house. In theory wireless should be faster since it has more bandwidth to start with before you account for the loss due to walls and interference.

Powerline tends to be more consistent in the speed since wireless is subject to random interference.

Which you choose tends to be related to how tolerant the application is to random delays in the traffic. Web surfing and file transfers can tolerate loss very well so they tend to be better on wireless. Games and things like voice or video calls can tolerate no loss and tend to be better on powerline. Video from say netflix or youtube is somewhere in between because it has a small buffer to fix some variations in traffic speed.

There is not much you can do other than the standard suggestions of plugging directly into the wall and try not to be on the same circuit as device with a motor like a refrigerator or ac unit. Outlets in the same room tend to be on the same circuit but its worth a try.

You also have to look at why do you really need 82m or whatever. 25m should be enough for most things you do so if you can't get it to work faster then it may not actually have any noticeable effect.
 
Solution

MassimoT

Reputable
Jul 29, 2015
36
0
4,530


Hey, thank you for replying so fast, today I actually tried flipping both the adapters upside down , and I was surprised to find it actually did double the speed. Still slower than my PCI express card, but it's better. Also thank you so much for the info given in your reply, it was very helpful.