Powerline Network - my experience

[George Powell]

After a long personnel debate and reading through a huge plethora of conflicting reports about powerline networks I finally took the plunge and bought a Netgear XAVB2001 kit.

These adapters support the Homeplug AV upto 200Mbps standard.

Installation:

The two plugs are sited on different rings connected through a consumer unit. The overall cable length is approx 60ft. This I realise is far from the ideal setup for powerline networks where the preference is to keep the plugs on a single ring. As a result I didn't have enormously high hopes for the systems performance.
The actual installation was pretty easy - plug in, wait for green lights to come and press the secure buttons on each plug. Total time was perhaps 90 seconds!

Performance:

The first test was to see if I could watch BBC iPlayer in HD. This would likely be the most demanding actual application for the connection (and indeed the deal breaker). The result was flawless performance. So far so good.

The next test was to transfer some files to my Synology DS1511 which sits on my AV rack from my desktop. The performance when using gigabit for this (I drape a cable through the house every now and then) is about 75MB a second which when you take into account networking overheads and cheap network cable (think quite a few errors) isn't bad. The performance using the Powerline kit is 6.5MB a second which I personally think is astounding, and also goes to show why it coped so so comfortably with the streaming video.

The final test was to see if I could stream a Blu-ray over the network. With the previous result I was fairly sure it would be no, and I was absolutely right. Very jerky playback and broken audio.

Conclusions:

Pros
Very straight forward to setup.
Reasonably inexpensive.
Performance good for basic internet sharing and video streaming.

Cons
Performance while good not fast enough to stream Blu-ray or share large files over the network.

If like me you are in the situation where wireless doesn't quite cut it then powerline is a potential solution. The one thing about it though is that the performance is likely the vary enormously between installations. In an ideal world retailers would have a kit you could borrow to see if it worked for you, so short of that I would but from a retailer which has a good returns policy.

 

[Eug]

I have a bunch of Netgear Powerline HD models which are just like yours but used a competing chipset that isn't compatible. It was also "200 Mbps" and compared favourably to the AV models in head to head comparisons.

I had > 30 Mbps off one plug in one room across the house (through two breaker boxes), and then < 10 Mbps off another plug in the same room. (The plugs were on different circuits.) It was a probably a couple hundred feet of wiring between the two units.

I also put one at the end of the yard outdoors and was able to use it to stream video from my outdoor IP camera.

In the end though, I just ran CAT5e/CAT6 everywhere. It turns out that noise could sometimes make the 30 Mbps link drop down, which sometimes would make HD streaming momentarily stutter, and of course 30 Mbps wasn't so good for large file transfers. I'm not sure what did it. Appliances like a microwave? Wired Gigabit is more reliable obviously, and the speed should probably last me at least a good decade. I ran some outdoor cabling on the outside wall and drilled holes through the wall. Very easy to do - it just required purchasing a super long drill bit.

I should also mention that Powerline makes for a great way to extend your wireless network. Using WDS can be very flaky to extend the network according to people here, and so the best way is to have multiple access points with a wired backbone. That wired backbone can be powerline networking if you have good circuits.

BTW, do your models have the option of changing the password? If so, and if necessary, do it. Mine come with the passwords preset but have the option to change them, so I did. If you don't change the password, there is the small theoretical chance that a neighbour could get access to your network by simply installing the same model in his house, depending on the wiring.

 

[George Powell]

I haven't changed the password, however I think it would be extremely difficult for any of my neighbours to pick up anything, although I might take one of the plugs round try it out.

Was there any improvement using additional plugs? There is potentially one or two more rooms that could benefit, although in those wifi is adequate.

Wiring the whole house for gigabit would be my preferred final fix, but I'd get severely 'told off'.

 

[Eug]

Was there any improvement using additional plugs? There is potentially one or two more rooms that could benefit, although in those wifi is adequate.

I have 4 or 5 of them, and at one point had all them running simultaneously. Adding additional plugs did not improve the performance of individual ones in my case, but I don't know if theoretically that can help or not.

Wiring the whole house for gigabit would be my preferred final fix, but I'd get severely 'told off'.

Why? When you terminate them, you terminate in a normal low voltage gang box like this, which doesn't even need to be mounted to a stud. I personally often use screw in ones that mount to the stud, but in certain spots I also use these plastic or aluminum ones that mount right on the drywall. You then just put in normal keystone jacks with the appropriate keystone plate. Looks professionally done. In fact, for my very first one, I had a pro network installer do it. He just used the exact same stuff... and charged me $70 to do it, when the parts cost $5.

For some runs outside you can hide the cabling (eg. under siding, etc.). Or sometimes you can wire this through an attic or through the basement if the wall studs and ceiling joists are still exposed in the basement.

Furthermore, you don't have to wire up the whole house. You can wire up ones to key locations. eg. One run of Gigabit to a WiFi blind spot elsewhere in the house, and then install a 802.11n access point there. Or, one run to the place where you'll be watching streaming video.

In areas where the walls are already finished, you can fish the cable behind the drywall, or you can buy surface mount molding that will hide the cables too. www.wiremold.com

I guess it really depends on what you need. If you don't get slowdowns (like when your wife turns on the clothes dryer, dishwasher, and hair dryer), and you don't need to transfer large files quickly over the network, then powerline may be more than sufficient. In my case I got infrequent but still annoying slowdowns, and I decided I wanted to transfer 1 GB files over once in a while, so ultimately I made the choice to upgrade to wired Gigabit.

 

[George Powell]

The main problem with wiring the house is that the walls are mostly solid brick. (Thank living in Britain for that) In addition the floor is concrete and I don't have a basement. While I could run everything through the attic I would have to cut channels in the plaster and brick to hide the cabling. When the time comes to completely redecorate I'll do down this route but in the meantime the Powerline is working well.

 

[Eug]

Ah yes, that is an issue. Lath and plaster too?

There is one (older) part of my house that has brick walls too, but luckily I was able to wire it through the basement for the most part (wood floor), and fortunately it had been renovated so that there was wood and drywall framing inside the brick, allowing some space for wiring.

The other option is surface mount wire conduits. These are even helpful for powerline. I found that esp. in rooms that have multiple circuits connecting the various plugs, certain plugs would get better performance than other plugs. I suspect it has to do with the location of the wiring, and the characteristics of the breakers, etc. However, sometimes that means to get the best signal, you have to use a plug that's far away from the computer. That's where the surface mount raceways/conduits come in. You put the powerline adapter in the best spot, and then run Ethernet cabling in the conduits. The small ones are not conspicuous and can be painted if necessary. Also, if you're doing attic wiring, then when you run it though the ceiling into the room you can run it through closets or behind wardrobes and the like, or along corners, to further hide the conduits. Here are some conduits running along the wall at the floor. (Click to go to website.)



However, if powerline already works perfectly as is, then great.

P.S. Personally I think powerline is often much better suited than wireless for some environments, but everyone always goes for wireless. Wireless is great for its purpose, but has huge drawbacks too, yet people just use that anyway. Maybe powerline needs to market itself better.

 

[alpineranger]

Another issue with powerline is the high cost for adapters relative to wireless. Economy of scale probably has something to do with that.

 

[JackMDS]

Well, powerline Network uses the Powerline.

The lines are not standard for these purpose and most time there are variety of electrical noise/spikes that interfere/reduces the riding Network signal.

Unfortunately there is No simple means that are withing the capacity of a prospective user to pre-evaluate the powerline suitability to server as a carrier to Network signal.

Thus the rule is, if must buy from a dealer with liberal return policy, buy, try, and be ready for ~80% probability that you have to return it.

 

[mvbighead]

Well, powerline Network uses the Powerline.

The lines are not standard for these purpose and most time there are variety of electrical noise/spikes that interfere/reduces the riding Network signal.

Unfortunately there is No simple means that are withing the capacity of a prospective user to pre-evaluate the powerline suitability to server as a carrier to Network signal.

Thus the rule is, if must buy from a dealer with liberal return policy, buy, try, and be ready for ~80% probability that you have to return it.

Judging by any comments and my own personal experience with them, I'd have to say that the return likelihood is more close to 10-20% and not the 80% you claim.

Granted, it will never be as good as good ole ethernet, but for the majority of people, it does a much better job than wireless.

 

[VirtualLarry]

P.S. Personally I think powerline is often much better suited than wireless for some environments, but everyone always goes for wireless. Wireless is great for its purpose, but has huge drawbacks too, yet people just use that anyway. Maybe powerline needs to market itself better.

I bought some powerline gear, but I ended up not using it, and keeping my wireless-N WDS setup for now, because they would have taken up too many precious outlets in my apt.

Generally, powerline needs to be plugged directly into a wall outlet, not into a surge strip, so it really eats up the available outlets.

 

[Eug]

I bought some powerline gear, but I ended up not using it, and keeping my wireless-N WDS setup for now, because they would have taken up too many precious outlets in my apt.

Generally, powerline needs to be plugged directly into a wall outlet, not into a surge strip, so it really eats up the available outlets.

They don't work well on surge suppressors, but they can often work well on an extension cord / non-suppressed splitter.

I didn't do this. What I just did was use a surge strip in one of the two plugs of a circuit, and put the powerline adapter on the other one. I never had problems with the number of plugs available with this setup.

 

[Emulex]

powerline is great for lossy udp - it runs at 80-90&#37; packet loss - for tcp this is crippling. for udp - not so bad. it's great solution but now that you can buy a client-AP router and plug that into your pc @ 300mbps (2.4) - that is faster than powerline.

ask the powerline folks how much they insure your equipment for - since you can't plug it into a surge suppresor. the answer is usually NADA. zip. too bad if it fries.

 

[Eug]

powerline is great for lossy udp - it runs at 80-90&#37; packet loss - for tcp this is crippling. for udp - not so bad. it's great solution but now that you can buy a client-AP router and plug that into your pc @ 300mbps (2.4) - that is faster than power line.

The benefit of powerline is that it can work over distance, since it's a wired solution after all. I actually was streaming video with it from an IP camera ~200 feet away from my house. I have a big yard, and my gazebo is wired for electricity, connected to the house breaker. I could never get any sort of usable WiFi at the gazebo with any WiFi units in the house, but I could get consistent DSL-level speeds or faster from powerline, enough to stream low frame rate H.264 HD raccoon-cam video. However, while it worked 99.5% of the time, it wasn't 100% of the time, so I eventually strung (outdoor) CAT6 all the way there.

Wireless without uber-focused antennae is good over shorter distances but slows down significantly with walls and distance. That's why I said earlier that powerline can be a good way to extend a wireless network.

 

[Sephire]

Spent $150 Powerline adapters to see if blu-ray ISO can stream with no stuttering like a wired network.

Fail.

No current solution powerline or wireless to make this work.

 

[JackMDS]

I think that it is more of a Abstract Thinking issue than Technology.

When you build computers, it does not matter were you built it, you can compare the outcome with others as long as you use the same (or very similar) components.

Wireless and Powerline Network has a large contributing variance of the specific individual environment that they are used in, and thus the personal experience as relatively of low value.

If you use Wireless or Powerline in very quit environment (signal wise) the outcome is completely different than when used in electrical noisy environment.

The problem is that most users have No clue about the electrical environment, and even if they are understand the concept they have no means to evalute it.

Example about Wireless, http://www.ezlan.net/wbars.html

The fact that most people have No clue about the following topic does not mean that it is Not the Way analysis is done.

A matrix of Multiple correlation R (one of the ways to predict complicated outcome) is computed for all variables involved in the analysis.

http://www.visualstatistics.net/visual%20statistics%20multimedia/multiple_regression_analysis.htm

 

[airdata]

When I tried it years ago it didn't work and I'd never suggest anybody waste their money.

Be better off running some ethernet and actually having a good connection.

 

[Eug]

When I tried it years ago it didn't work and I'd never suggest anybody waste their money.

Powerline networking has matured significantly in the last several years, and it also depends on the wiring and electrical noise in the house.

It worked reasonably well for me, giving me faster than internet access speeds reliably, and more stably than WiFi. However, I could not stream double-digit Mbps bitrate HD video reliably on the circuits I wanted to. (I could on other circuits, but I didn't the powerline networking there.)

Be better off running some ethernet and actually having a good connection.

That's not a very useful statement, since the whole point of powerline networking is to provide network capabilities when ethernet is not a viable option.

 

[PCTC2]

Powerline is also good for renters. I rent an apartment, and I have a loft which I use as a home office. The Wi-Fi can get to the living room fine, but once you get to the bedroom, a wireless bridge to the HTPC in there was useless. It barely got any signal. I got the Netgear '500Mbps' kit and it can't stream blu-ray, but it can play 720p videos and stream Netflix on-demand. That's good enough for me, since it's better than no internet. And there's no way I'm going to run a 100ft cable to the bedroom or attempt any kind of wiring job. Especially because I'll probably end up moving in 8 months again anyways.

 

[Eug]

AnandTech review - 2011-09-01

They got a low of 12 Mbps with one setup, and a high of 50+ Mbps.

 

[Emulex]

dyson = 0mbps

 

[freegeeks]

I have a couple of 1Gbps netgear powerline, if it works then it works great but unfortunately it's very flaky and unreliable for me, went back to wireless

 

[mbahr]

I've been wondering about this technology also.

Can you clarify if "Rings" mean different phases of the incoming power? if so, do you have to use a bridge to connect both sides of the phase?

I'm also wondering how you block the signal from leaving your hosue. The signal should flow in and out until it hits a transformer, and so is available to anyone else that is on the same line betwen your load center and the transformer... and vice versa. Is this an issue for you?

And, finally... I presume that powerline adapters insert a signal into the AC current and therefore change the shape of the sine wave. Does this impact the performance of any of your other devices in the house? (again, theoretically, this could cause problems with motors).

I'm really curious about this and so any light that you can shed would be great!

 

[Gryz]

I'm also wondering how you block the signal from leaving your hosue. The signal should flow in and out until it hits a transformer, and so is available to anyone else that is on the same line betwen your load center and the transformer... and vice versa. Is this an issue for you?

From what I've understood, the signal is encrypted by the ethernet/powerline adapters. I think you can not control how far the signal is carried. But if the encryption is good, that doesn't matter much. The only problem I see is that users will "forget" to change the default passwords.

Speaking of circuit breakers, now's as good a time as any to discuss security. Don't worry about your next-door neighbor accessing your LAN if a transformer is in-between your respective street-side power connections. On the other hand, there's a tangible possibility that multiple powerline networking users sharing a common transformer feed (such as, for example, in the same multi-apartment building) could tap into each others' equipment. That's where encryption comes in. HomePlug 1.0 and 1.0 Turbo harness 56-bit DES encryption, while HomePlug AV leverages even more robust 128-bit AES. And altering an adapter's password requires access to a 16-digit unique password stamped on the unit. Just change your equipments' passwords from the 'HomePlug' or 'HomePlugAV' default, and other folks on the same transformer feed won't subsequently have access to them.

Maybe others can answer the other questions.

 

[mbahr]

Thanks for the encryption information. Sounds good.

 

[Eug]

I've been wondering about this technology also.

Can you clarify if "Rings" mean different phases of the incoming power? if so, do you have to use a bridge to connect both sides of the phase?

I'm also wondering how you block the signal from leaving your hosue. The signal should flow in and out until it hits a transformer, and so is available to anyone else that is on the same line betwen your load center and the transformer... and vice versa. Is this an issue for you?

I haven't gone to my neighbour's house to try, but I've read that the signal generally doesn't reliably make it beyond their own electrical panel, to the telephone pole, back to the neighbour's house, past the neighbour's panel, and then to their wall outlets. However, it's a definite theoretical possibility. In my house on one circuit, I could get a reliable signal with decent double digit Mbps speeds through one panel and then through a sub-panel (although that's not as much of a surprise, since a subpanel is directly connected to the main panel). It's more of a risk in an apartment building though.

However, it's always encrypted. Basically, the only way for someone to get access in the real world is if you don't change the encryption, and your neighbour buys the exact same model of powerline network adapter with the same password. Without doing that they'll never even know you're running powerline networking, unless you tell him.

This is in stark contrast to wireless. Wireless is easily seen by everyone, and open wireless is extremely common.

And, finally... I presume that powerline adapters insert a signal into the AC current and therefore change the shape of the sine wave. Does this impact the performance of any of your other devices in the house? (again, theoretically, this could cause problems with motors).

I'm really curious about this and so any light that you can shed would be great!

I have never ever seen any impact on any of my electrical equipment. The opposite can be true though. Certain electrical equipment can create noise on the line and impact a powerline network signal.

I could imagine something like a microwave oven or a 30A AC unit cycling on and off wreaking havoc on some setups.

I don't know if it was just coincidence or something, but I did wonder if I had slightly more issues with one particular line when my GF was home than when she was not. That particular circuit was on the same electrical subpanel as the microwave oven. The line always worked, but I suspected my minimum speeds dropped when she was using the microwave.

This page lumps wireless and powerline together, but states stuff like vacuums, hairdryers, and microwaves can affect the signal. It also states powerline networking can affect certain lamp dimmers.

http://www.docs.sony.com/release/FAQNetworking.pdf

I did have some problems with some dimmers, but I attribute that to the dimmers themselves. The problems existed before I had powerline, but after I replaced the dimmers, the dimmers worked fine, even with powerline networking active. So, maybe powerline networking will only interfere with marginal dimmers. (And surprisingly, dimmers go bad not that infrequently.)