Homeplugs

[Mildandsandy]

Has anyone had any problems with Homeplugs devices (ethernet over power lines) not working in all power sockets ?

It works fine in some sockets - yet quite often the next one down will not work at all - not just a bad connection - no connection

Suppliers tech help just tells me it's a wiring fault.

Any idea's


Ta

 

[Chri5]

They are a pretty poor form of network,best avoided. Why aren't you in the wifi world with wireless adapters everywhere?

 

[Aragorn84]

Or string some CAT5 round the place....

 

[roberta1000]

They are a pretty poor form of network,best avoided.

Not at all - you are perhaps a bit out of date!

<anorak>In almost all cases the latest ones are capable of a much greater bandwidth than wireless. In some circumstances (bearing in mind that everyone shares the same channels and various attenuations) the available bandwidth is much less - often by a factor of 10 or more - than the headline speeds. In addition to this in many buildings wireless signals have extreme difficulty in penetrating diagonally up and down where they may have to travel through several walls and a floor leading to much reduced data rates and in extreme cases no connectivity. The best powerline type products can achieve bandwidths of several hundred MHz throughout a property.

The main problem that 'powerline' type products have is in matching into the very variable impedance of a typical property (varies from a few to several hundred ohms at the frequencies involved). Also the impedance changes as equipment is plugged in and/or switched on and off around the network and varies considerably across the band. This makes the design of the filters very tricky and puts a lot of strain on the 'learning' ability of the digital signal processing in the electronics. It's also the main explanation why some sockets work better than others - not really a matter of 'wiring faults' usually but more that the characteristics of the wiring to some sockets are just too extreme for the technology.</anorak>

Aside from a considerable number of years as an analogue 'chip' designer I have quite a bit of user experience with these things. My garage is at the end of a longish garden and wireless reception is nil unless I use an external directional aerial system. Instead I use a powerline link and get around the same performance as my hard-wired network. I expect that OP's problem is as I mentioned earlier - some sockets which just happen to have poor RF characteristics.

 

[Chri5]

Robertw63

Thanks for that. I would still suggest that the units are 3rd rate when wired Cat 5/ 6/7 is the best and wireless (have you tried some of the newer Mimo wireless routers) a close 2nd.

They have failings which you clearly detailed, and as such are a product that belongs in the last chance saloon. Use only when suggestions 1 and 2 won't work.

My Netgear router at front of property gives me 100% signal at the back of my garden (145ft away!),

 

[Aragorn84]

I've always had wired networks at home, and the only devices i run on wireless are my and the missus's laptops due to portability.

Doesnt take much to run some CAT5 cables round the place, and any fixed equipment really should be cabled for maximum bandwidth, latency and privacy.

I've only seen one homeplug installation, which looking at the installation had been missold to the people using it. They had their PC, router and laptop all in one room, and for some crazy reason had a homeplug thing sitting between the router and the laptop, rather than just running a cable round behind the desks, or using the wifi built into the router.

I too would consider it a last resort.