Trading In-Home Wi-Fi for Powerline Networking

u.huth (apparently) - 02:53am Jul 12, 2007 PST
via email

Thanks for that interesting article...

However, my experiences with Powerline Networking differ somewhat.

I tried to establish a connection from my computer room on the first floor
to the living room on the ground floor. My first tries resulted in a
transfer rate of around 20 kBit per second. Compared to an ethernet cable
conection running at 1000 kBit per second, this was disappointing in the
extreme.

Nowhere in the "documentation" of the powerline adapters one was told that
the electrical outlets have to be on the same phase. After being told, I
tried with another outlet on the first floor and got a connection speed of
around 600 kBit per second.

As a result I had an electrician re-wire the circuit breakers in the fuse
box so that the outlets in the computer room and the outlets in the living
room where on the same phase (but still on different circuit breakers).

This setup resulted in connection speeds of around 130 kBit per second. Also
very disappointing.

Still more annoying is that the collision LED on my Ethernet hub is lit
almost constantly when a transfer between the two powerline adapters is
taking place. I think this might attribute to the unsatisfying connection
speeds as the packages have to be constantly re-transmitted.

In short: I'm very disappointed with Powerline Networking as it doesn't live
to the promises made by the companies manufacturing and distributing thosw
powerline adapters.

Udo