Ethernet over 2 CU's

[T i m]

Hi All,

I mentioned here a while back about a friends place that has two CU's one for the old part of the house and one for the new (both connected to one meter).

I put a pair or the Delovo dLan 14M units in for them and think I can remember them working, all be it at less than full speed.

I happened to be there again today and basically they hadn't been bothering with the 'remote' PC as they had a netbook but they could do with it again so I had a look again for them.

The connection utility seemed to see both units ok but the throughput was dire, so I plugged the remote one into a long extension lead and into the old house wiring (so on the same CU as the local unit) and away it went at 14M. ;-)

So, I think I remember talk of something that could 'bridge' the CU (hv caps or somesuch, assuming it was some of the active stuff in there causing issues) but is there an official solution like that please?

Cheers, T i m

The back story: The building is (now) long and thin and they have PC's at opposite ends of the building. When they had ADSL I put the router in the middle and with some jiggery pokery (long / active USB leads and WiFi dongles near the windows etc) managed to give both machines reasonable service. Now they have gone to cable and it's at one end of the (listed) building it's made things much more difficult. The router is 'n', as is the Netbook but the signal is still pretty weak (it hardly makes it through two walls).

[Nitro®]

[Nitro®]

[dennis]

Put a wireless repeater in the middle, its easier.

The other obvious way is to plug another two adapters in to the separate circuits and connect them with a twisted Ethernet cable (unless the adapters do auto polarity).

>

[T i m]

Hmm, that's a thought, although I was happy to get away from wireless in that particular house.

Another good thought. ;-)

I'm not sure if they have 'easy' access for a cable between the two mains ccts but I can find out (assuming the units will work like that etc).

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

RCDs seem to have some influence - although even going through several it should be possible to get some throughput. One option to look out for was there were some higher power output homplugs produced for "difficult" circumstances. Solwise used to do them, but discontinued them due to lack of interest IIRC. Not sure if they still have stock.

[T i m]

And I think we have at some point (when I first installed them) but it seems not to be the case now or that's it's marginal.

Shame.

Can't see any mentioned but it did give me some other ideas, seeing how cheap their Homeplug Wireless AP is.

If we replaced the upstairs Homeplug (currently running from the 'old house' mains) with their AP version there is a chance that the upstairs PC would see it as most of it is clear line_of_sight (~20m). However, there is also the bit where the two parts join through an upstairs landing before you can get to the old house wiring and that's another ~10m of walls and rooms etc.

I guess I could stick a std AP / Router in there temporarily and see what the signal is like at their furthest away PC.

Rather than extending the mains from old to new as we are doing now (on a long extension lead) we could run Ethernet back the other way but there is still this landing that needs to be traversed and that's not going to be easy (or desired by them).

Do we know if units of the same spec from different suppliers are interoperable? Like the Solwise and Devolo units?

We went for the 14M twin pack as at the time their broadband was only ~6M (BT) and they didn't do ant inter PC stuff. We also went for those on the grounds that there might be a better chance of them working than the faster units if the environment was 'difficult' but then they stopped doing the 14M Wireless AP. ;-(

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

Email [e-mail] and ask - I bought some a few months back for a similar circumstance.

I wanted a link to an outbuilding where that means traversing three CUs, three RCDs, 2 MCBs, and one HRC fuse. When I tried previously, the standard infineon homplugs seemed to work ok, however when deployed in anger the actual throughput was very unreliable even though the reported data rate was not too bad. Swapping in a pair of high power units did not improve the reported speed, but made a massive improvement to the reliability.

Would it be possible to drag through a length of cat5 somewhere to make a bridge? (even if you did it outside the building?)

Loft space etc?

Another option to consider is the use of the new one gig homeplugs. These use meshing technology, so that if you have more than two, they actually aid each other to achieve better throughput. You can station a third unit midway between two end points and it will act as a bridge. With more on a net, a greater number of potential signal paths that can be exploited.

If they use the term "Homeplug" then they should. Although its worth noting that the various standards can not always talk to each other, although they can share a set of wires. For example the 14 and 85 Mb units are based on the 1.0 spec and don't have[1] to interoperate with the "AV" (200Mb) and AV2 (600Mb) spec units. (the latter can talk to each other).

[1] its optional in the spec

With all things being equal, that is sound logic, however as is often the case, not all things are equal! As the speed ramps up on new generations of device, so does the other associated technology, so a higher spec unit will often perform at least as well or better than the slower spec.

[John Rumm]

Following on from that, you may find this interesting:

[T i m]

Ok, I'll see how it goes before I disturb them yet.

That's the sort of thing I was seeing.

Ah, ok. Maybe I'll drop her a line. ;-)

Outside yes but I'm guessing they wouldn't like it. I mentioned the loft myself but that was also not possible for some reason (but I can ask again and possibly look myself).

Indeed, I'll try again.

A bit like 'n' of the airwaves? ;-)

Ok, thanks.

Ah right.

Tell me about it.

Ok.

Another thought then (and I did consider this when I first installed these units but as the Stage1 'seemed' to work at the time I didn't go on).

The old building is quite deep front to back. Going f/b, l/r ...

Front = Lounge and study. Middle = Recptn, hall towards the back, stairs, downstairs loo. Back = Kitchen, store room.

The new bit is built off level with the hall and back but going off to the right about 2 times again the width of the main building.

Currently the cable enters the lounge, previously the ADSL / Router was in the hall and served the PC in the study and the PC at the furthest end on the 1st floor (doh).

Now they have the cable, modem and 'n' router in the study and the WiFi doesn't even serve the kitchen, let alone the remote PC.

Would it be possible to 'remote' the router from the cable modem using the Delovo plugs and then see what the WiFi coverage is like from (say) the bedroom nearest the new extension (the furthest of the old house wiring). The Study would be seen diagonally through a floor, as would the kitchen (for the Netbook) and the remote PC about 30m+ line of site down the building?

At least they could make use of the kit they have (I just need to remember if the remote PC still has wireless or not).

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

I did, thanks.

T i m

[John Rumm]

Yup that ought to work. In fact Solwise do a box that is a homplug unit with WiFi and Ethernet, so you can plug it in to extend WiFi to new areas via the homeplug network.

[T i m]

Yep, I saw that but that would probably require buying two units as the existing system is 14M wouldn't it?

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

I think there was a 14/85 version of it... not sure if its still current?

[T i m]

They (Devolo) did a 14M version of the AP but it was very expensive. You can still get them on eBay but they are still expensive there as well and it would be cheaper to upgrade the lot to summat else (especially from Solwise). ;-)

And whilst that's not out of the question it can be complicated explaining it all to someone when they only recently bought summat.

Luckily, I warned them of the potential issues /before/ I got them for them and I'm sure I can sell them for them as well.

Cheers, T i m