Pro's & Con's Powerline Adapters?

MitchMuiz

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Nov 23, 2014
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Dear community,

I'm sick and tired of having 300+ ping in CSGO competitive. And since there is no way to route a ethernet cable from the modem downstairs to my PC upstairs, I'm now thinking about getting a Powerline Adapter.

Will it be entirely safe? since the wiring in my house is pretty old... And will it reach the same speeds plugging it straight into my modem, or will it at least be faster and more stable than WiFi?

 
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I think that is the first time I have ever heard someone say wireless bridging is more stable than powerline. I don't use either in my house as I use MOCA which is generally better than powerline or wireless bridging. If powerline works in your house then I would go with that over wireless bridging. At least you are in control of what interference you get (depending on any new things you plug into your power at your house). With wireless your neighbors could put in new wireless or change channels with their current wireless and it could mess with your wireless. You don't have any control over it. That being said, if I were to use wireless bridging I would use items made for bridging that utilize directional antenna to help reduce...

MitchMuiz

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Nov 23, 2014
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It is more that I'm worried that I set fire to my house.
Well not that extreme, but you get the point.
 

These things are not designed by poor kids in an underdeveloped country. The vendors are actually worried about liability and this technology is been around for a few years. That's not to say nothing ever fails, so if you touch it and it's too hot to touch, unplug immediately, the same way you do to a Note 7.

The other guy is saying you are not guaranteed in performance. Nothing is gonna go up in flames but depending on your house, either it will work to your satisfaction or it doesn't, hence I always say buy from somewhere you can return, hassle free. To that end, don't expect miracles, no substitute will work as good as an honest-to-God ethernet cable.

Pro: Because you don't have a better option.
 

Nafryti

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Sep 26, 2008
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in technicality, you will experience higher latency with powerline networking than you would with any respectable 5Ghz wireless N solution. Yes running a wire isn't viable due to geographical restrictions, and ordinary wifi is choked and restricted from the same. And where there is a large selection of 5Ghz band routers to choose from, a lot of the cheaper brands lack the power to penetrate walls effectively. I would highly recommend getting a router you can tranform into a wireless bridge to then connect your PC into with a wire, my ASUS RT-N65U router has the ability to be either a Router, an AP, or a bridge, it really is the best choice for geographical restrictions. Sure the price is up there, but with routers, you tend to get what you pay for... and this particular router is a beast, especially on the 5Ghz band.

Back on topic...
Powerline is only out of convenience, NEVER utilize it for mission critical demands.. Many people i now have never heard of "Dirty Power" or when i mention it the uninformed individual would assume i meant power made in similarity to "Blood Diamonds" when in fact it is nothing at all like that...
Dirty Power is the AC current's frequency distortion, we all know that AC is a +-+-+-+- power source, aka "Alternating Current" but what you know about AC is limited mostly, people think that power is power and the only time it isn't what you want is when the power either browns out or goes out...
Untrue... however, in some many cases it would be more sought after for the power to just go out... Powerline adapters are HIGHLY susceptible to what is known as "Dirty Power" which can sometimes even render Powerline useless.

Dirty power is the frequency interference from appliances using that same power source... when the fridge kicks on the power dips, when the AC kicks on the power dips, you can see this in the lights of your house, usually the old filament type lights. Dirty power is also damaging to your computers, but, most mid range and above PSU's can compensate for that to keep the power delivery stable and healthy.

Now, since you now understand that the power in your house is not a perfect sine wave form, and varies slightly, we can move onto WHY, this has a detrimental effect on Powerline adapters. You see, Powerline uses the power signal in the AC current to communicate with the other Powerline adapter, when the signal is dirty the communication between powerline adapters faults due to the deviation of the sine wave. To fix this you need not just one but two more things.

Powerline filters, these are becoming more and more common from mega stores like Walmart, these filter the noise out of the AC current by use of low pass filters (basically a toroid coil and a couple of capacitors.) Really easy to make yourself for DC applications with parts from RadioShack...
But these surge protectors will mention something about noise reduction, or db filtration, or "Clean Power" if you plug your Powerline Adapter into the PowerFilter surge bar before going to the wall, your signal will be perfect and you'll never have to worry about the fridge costing you that epic 360 no scope...

However, your speed will be hurt the most on Powerline, as a reasonable speed of 100mbps on powerline is almost unimaginable for anything less than $80 PER ADAPTER... which makes the viability of Powerline rather inefficient...

This is why i highly recommend the Wireless bridging... you will have a much more stable connection and far better experience with a wireless bridge that is designed well, like the N65U i mentioned earlier, i would highly recommend having one at either point, one as a router, and the other as the bridge (connecting to the router) for $400 you are getting a far better solution, that instead of giving you one single port to use with a sketchy bit rate, (thanks to power fluctuations) you are getting five ports, yes that is FIVE ports, the WAN port on the N65U turns into a LAN port when you switch it over to Either AP/Switch or Bridge mode.

I built my own router, so i use that router as my AP (access point).
I too once looked into Powerline networking, and after several days visiting google and youtube, i went with custom wiring my house with CAT6 gigabit ethernet. But, this is not to say you should wire your house, no, this is to help you not make a mistake with powerline.

Wireless Bridging, when done with two identical routers that have the feature, is far better than connecting with a wireless adapter... far better.
Its like, the router is a megaphone, and the adapter is a carrier pigeon, sure the messages are gotten and carried out, but if both sides of the conversation had a megaphone things would communicate better, right?
 
I think that is the first time I have ever heard someone say wireless bridging is more stable than powerline. I don't use either in my house as I use MOCA which is generally better than powerline or wireless bridging. If powerline works in your house then I would go with that over wireless bridging. At least you are in control of what interference you get (depending on any new things you plug into your power at your house). With wireless your neighbors could put in new wireless or change channels with their current wireless and it could mess with your wireless. You don't have any control over it. That being said, if I were to use wireless bridging I would use items made for bridging that utilize directional antenna to help reduce interference. Examples would be Ubiquiti NanoBeam AC or a Ubiquiti Nanostation (or Nanostation Loco).
 
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