How good/bad is powerline networking, especislly with more than two devices?

[Chris Green]

I am investigating my options for getting the LAN to work as well as poosible around our property. We are having quite a lot of changes done at the moment (new shower room, balcony, etc.) and so some parts of the existing cat5e plus WiFi will have to move and/or be replaced.

The 'existing' coverage is provided by the main VDSL router (Draytek

2860n) which provides WiFi for some of the house and a second Draytek (2820n) with the WAN side turned off covering some/all of the rest. There is then a length of cat5e draped through a tree and going to the garage for the backup system and, thence, a TP-link outdoor access point for more distant WiFi.

I'm considering using powerline networking for filling in some gaps and/or replacing some of the more bodged cat5e connections. How good can powerline networking be? I know I'm unlikely to get a good speed over really long bits of mains wiring but if one uses more than one powerline device will they 'chain' their connections to provide good end-to-end working or are they not that clever?

My tests with a fairly basic pair of Tenda (supposedly Gigabit) powerline devices suggest that they're only 'good' when used on a single, or at least closely associated, circuits. However if I can add more of them so that they 'chain' across the system that could well be a reasonable solution, but I need to know if they can interconnect like this. Does anyone know?

[Andy Burns]

If you've got "work" going on now, including rewiring etc, I'd bite the bullet and lay in enough ethernet cable (cat5e/cat6 your choice) to do it properly, I know Brian and co dislike powerline for interference reasons, but the real reason to avoid it, is that it's never as fast, or as reliable.

[T i m]

Agreed.

Apparently.

Not as always fast as wired, no, but often faster than WiFi under many circumstances and generally a lot easier than drilling holes and running cable. ;-)

Again, 'than cable', probably but I'd say more reliable than WiFi under difficult circumstances and can be pretty reliable.

A mate has a long thin house and wanted wireless coverage over the house for phones, tablets and laptops etc.

Whilst he was having some rework done, I got him to run Cat5e to key locations but he wasn't able (at that point) to get cable though to the rear addition. So, that area is covered using a pair of Powerline adaptors (the remote with WiFi) and it has 'just worked' for a long time now. In fact, the only times it hasn't worked is when the cable feeding the end of the house failed!

Daughter has PL to a gaming PC in a remote bedroom in the flat and that too has worked faultlessly (and after power outages etc).

But yes, I would always try to go for wired over anything else, given the choice, but if it's not portable, PL can be pretty good.

Sister couldn't get reasonable performance (buffering) from a NowTV box when using WiFi. Went to PL and it's been fine ever since.

Cheers, T i m

[Tim+]

As another alternative worth considering, how about a ?mesh? Wi-Fi system? We have the three node BT mesh system and are very happy with how it reaches all parts of our 5 bedroom house. It?s great having just a single SSID and no faffing about telling mobile devices with access point to use as you move around.

Not cheap but I?ve absolutely no regrets about investing in the system.

Tim

[Jethro_uk]

Be prepared for machines falling off the network and the PL needing cycling ...

[Chris Green]

Yes, I can/will do that for some areas but the more distant bits are still a problem. The two links that I'd most like to consider the powerline devices for are:-

House to garage - as I said this is currently cat5e strung through a tree which works OK but isn't very beautiful and is likely to get broken rather easily. Burying s cable would be the ideal solution but is rather OTT. As the garage is basically just for the backup system speed is not that important. The electricity meter and incomer are in the garage so the house is electrically quite 'close'.

Garage to cabin/garden - the cabin has mains power, from the garage, so if 'chained' powerline adapters work OK then the 'house to garage' plus 'garage to cabin' approach would work well.

Finally, do any of the more reasonably priced 'mesh' systems have wired interconnections between the mesh boxes? Just relying on the WiFi to connect them is a bit hopeful in our house.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes.

I have found it faster and more reliable than wifi - for a single link only, though.

There is one place where I never cabled - the kitchen. Powerlink gets ethernet to that to run the telly and a wifi point.

But it is very much second best to proper cat 5/6 etc

[The Natural Philosopher]

never had that when using just two devices.

Always had that with Wifi..

[Dave Liquorice]

+1 cable is cheap. Getting access to install fit it latter is expensive. Refurb of the house had two Cat5e and coax installed at the diagonally opposite corners of a room across the corner with the door. All run back to the "services" cupboard, where they are terminated on a couple of 24 port patch panels, enabling easy connection to switch ports etc. It's really nice want a bit of kit there, run a shortish cable to a socket, patch it, done.

And I don't think the "relaying" requested works either, even of you try and frig it by taking the out of one unit into the in of another. If nothing else you have a transmitter right next toa receiver... I believe it's also a bit unpredictable if it'll work between rings.

[Chris Green]

I've been considering it (see my other response). However, is the BT mesh system interconnected by CAT5 or by WiFi? Our house isn't very 'WiFi transparent' so I think a wired interconnect mesh system would make much more sense.

[AlanC]

I have the BT mesh system and have been very happy with it.

I have each device (3) connected via ethernet and spread throughout the house to give complete coverage.

Alan

[Tim+]

It interconnects by Wi-Fi. What you need to do is find someone local who has the system and then borrow it for a trial. It may not be possible of course but we lent ours to a friend to ?try before he bought?.

Tim

[Tim+]

Just seen Alan?s reply. As he says you can link all the nodes back to the router by cable but as each node only has a single socket, you can?t daisy-chain the cable, you have to have a radial layout.

Maybe you could do something with switches to reduce cabling though. I dunno. ;-)

Tim

[bert]

Whenever I've looked at the small print they have all said they must be on the same circuit.

[spuorgelgoog]

The other day on Youtube or a Web page I saw someone who'd measured the speeds.

On the same MCB (circuit) is preferred.

Across two MCBs but on the same RCD (busbar) performance drops, but still useful.

Across two RCDs (on different busbars) performance falls *markedly*.

Most houses will have one smoke detector circuit throughout the whole house for interlinking purposes, so that might be one to put the powerlines on (with the caveat that most powerline adapters have built-in 13A plugs and 13A sockets ought not to be put on lighting circuits).

The other thing is that most 'mesh' or multi-access-point systems need some form of proprietary controller software to kick user devices off a weak ap and force them to find a stronger one -- most consumer devices don't auto-search for a better point and reconnect. *Reducing* wifi power output on the access points can paradoxically give better performance, as it encourages the devices to drop off the weak signal and reconnect to a stronger.

I think various options of OpenWRT will handle this and are a lot cheaper than a proprietary solution - BT Hub 5a or Plusnet Hub One are available for peanuts online and someone on ebay will reflash them for £13 inc return postage (which saves soldering and using a TTL serial connection to rewrite the boot loader).

Owain

[Jethro_uk]

Happens once a fortnight

Well, yes. But I start from having very low expectations of WiFi anyway. I'm rarely disappointed.

[Andy Burns]

Ish.

A few years ago dad wanted to use an old PC down in his pottery shed, well out of wifi range from the router at the front of the house, so we tried a powerline adapter from the ring in the house, via the CU which is fuses only, through some henley blocks, down about 50m of 16mm^2 SWA into the shed, through a small CU with MCBs and another wired powerline unit off the ring within the shed.

It was at best marginal, so he stopped using it.

Recently he wanted a hive camera looking at part of the garden, I bought a wifi-ap-powerline unit, and tried plugging it into the ring at the back of the house, but the wifi was still weak to the camera location, so I tried the powerline wifi unit on a short radial from the CU in the shed, it's only a few feet to the camera, so the wifi signal is strong, the powerline unit still occasionally drops out while viewing the camera, but not that bad.

at the same time, he gets a reliable connection over powerline to a wired PC in the house.

[Chris Green]

"Most houses ..." seems a little hopeful! :-) I think in reality very few houses even have interlinked smoke detectors and there isn't a requirement for interlinked (wired or radio) alarms to be on the same or dedicated circuit.

Isn't the 'move client to a stronger access point signal' software in the mesh access points? That's the whole point surely.

I ran OpenWRT on a Mikrotik router for quite a while but didn't find it a very practical router OS in the real world. Not that I've found any proprietary ones much better I must admit.

[John Rumm]

I am not aware of any that "mesh" as such. Ones of compatible speeds will interoperate on the same set of wires - but I think its basically a peer to peer network. (How many devices you can have will depend on the chipset in use. Incompatible ones can share the same mains wiring, but form separate non connected networks).

I find them good on a single circuit and not bad between circuits on the same CU. Generally good for getting round the limitations of wifi, or forming the backbone of connectivity to wifi access points. The more devices and circuits you go though however the poorer the connectivity speed will get. For example, I have a set of "hi power" homeplug devices that I link to my workshop with. That goes comms cabinet circuit MCB, RCD in main CU, then to garden/outbuilding CU, through its RCD to a HRC fuse carrier, cable to Garage CU, via RCD, and MCB. It just about works

- speed is fairly slow and it can only manage an "orange" connection status on the mains side...

Having said that, CAT5 is better if its available. Homeplug tends to be better than "normal" wifi around a building unless it has multiple access points. Not tried meshing wifi to see how that compares, that might tip the balance, although homeplug is pretty cheap - and you can get homeplug devices with built in wifi APs as well.

[John Rumm]

You don't need a mesh system for wired interconnects - ordinary APs will do for that.

The whole point of mesh is it establishes potentially multiple connections between the devices giving redundancy and added throughput. So to work well you need enough of them in a layout that allows them to actually mesh rather than forming a long chain.