slow speeds on powerline adapter

[Joshcanread]

I have one of those piece of shit powerline adapters that bearly works half the time and im getting like 5mbps on it and i usually get like 37 (with cat6 cable) does anyone know why?

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, Joshcanread said:

I have one of those piece of shit powerline adapters that bearly works half the time and im getting like 5mbps on it and i usually get like 37 (with cat6 cable) does anyone know why?

Powerline-adapters are very susceptible to wiring-quality in your building and any other devices consuming power, because they may end up causing interference. We can't really tell you what your problem is, you'd have to do it yourself: disconnect every electronic device in your home and see if that improves speeds and, if not, your problem would likely be your wiring and then you'd need to replace it.

[Bombastinator]

57 minutes ago, Joshcanread said:

I have one of those piece of shit powerline adapters that bearly works half the time and im getting like 5mbps on it and i usually get like 37 (with cat6 cable) does anyone know why?

Why?  Vaguely.

To expand on @WereCatf’s statement:

Powerline ethernet is T2.  There’s only two wires.  It’s a really old way to do ethernet.  To make it more fun those two wires are your electrical lines which were put in by people worrying about electricity not data possibly many many years ago.  Every wire nut, every connection, even every wire has to just happen to pass data.  Powerline and coax ethernet work the same way and are both kind of crap shoots for this reason.

[Donut417]

18 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

There’s only two wires.

From what I have read the newer adapters use 3 wires, at least in the US. Hot, Neutral and the ground. That’s how some of them get faster speeds. 

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

From what I have read the newer adapters use 3 wires, at least in the US. Hot, Neutral and the ground. That’s how some of them get faster speeds. 

Don’t know how they’re using ground.  It’s ground.  They may have thought of something clever though.  So T3 perhaps.

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Don’t know how they’re using ground.  It’s ground.  They may have thought of something clever though.  So T3 perhaps.

In the US all the ground wires connect back to the panel. Because they are all connected to the same bar, I guess they figured they could carry data. That’s if everything is done correctly of course. 

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

In the US all the ground wires connect back to the panel. Because they are all connected to the same bar, I guess they figured they could carry data. That’s if everything is done correctly of course. 

I dunno.  They still might actually be using it as ground but are doing something funky with it to make effectively better shielding for the two wire.  The only difference between the various CAT 8 wire systems really is how the electromagnetic shielding is set up.

[Donut417]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I dunno.  They still might actually be using it as ground but are doing something funky with it to make effectively better shielding for the two wire.  The only difference between the various CAT 8 wire systems really is how the electromagnetic shielding is set up.

No the wire is ground but all electric wires terminate back at the electrical panel. Generally the hot connects to the breaker, the neutral and ground connect to the same or possibility separate bus bars. Watch way too much Ask this old house. Romex(electrical wire) has only a shielding that protects from electrical shock. Besides that there are no shielding that protects data communication. That’s why coax is the better standard. RG6 has shielding that protects the RF signal. But Moca is expensive compared to power line networking, which is why more people use power line.  

[Bombastinator]

23 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

No the wire is ground but all electric wires terminate back at the electrical panel. Generally the hot connects to the breaker, the neutral and ground connect to the same or possibility separate bus bars. Watch way too much Ask this old house. Romex(electrical wire) has only a shielding that protects from electrical shock. Besides that there are no shielding that protects data communication. That’s why coax is the better standard. RG6 has shielding that protects the RF signal. But Moca is expensive compared to power line networking, which is why more people use power line.  

Yah.  I’m a landlord.  I got 5 separate electrical systems all of which I was involved with to one degree or another.  The 8 wire ethernet a did electromagnetic shielding in weird ways using unusual characteristics of electric fields.  Twisting different wires around one another to cancel each other out and stuff.  I got no idea how it worked even though I read about it. There’s several types of wiring.  Romex is only one and there’s several types of it.  Thhn can run in either EMT or smurf tube (nm). EMT can be used as ground often.  Even old old greenfield could be used as ground (not the new stuff it’s too thin). If they did something with ground as shielding it would probably work in some situations but not others so it would help by a variable amount depending on individual installation giving better “up to” numbers but probably not affecting real world applications all that much depending. 
 

I dunno.  Maybe they turned it into a data wire. Someone will know.  I don’t.