Old PCIe Wifi dongle vs TP-Link AV1000 Powerline Ethernet Adapter || PCIe showing way faster speeds?

[imKaia]

Hey All! 

I wanted to ask this question as I dont know much about networking. 

I changed where my PC is setup and for some reason I don't get wifi in that part of the room (with the PCIe dongle) so I was suggested to buy a powerline adapter.

The way my PC is setup right now (before I move it) I get wifi with the dongle - doing a speedtest it shows 500ish Mbps down (way more then what I pay for) 
And tried to download a game on steam and I peaked at 31MB/s (I saw it around 20MB) 


When I switched to the Powerline, the numbers dropped a ton it averaged around 80Mbps, and the same steam download was around 13MB/s 

 

Since the new spot for my PC has no wifi with just the dongle any speeds are good if the Powerline works, but im kind of bummed out how much slower it is? 

Anyone have any ideas why this happens? is it the powerline I bought? the ethernet cables it came with? Also I can't recall if someone told me that speedtests dont show an accurate depiction on your speeds as its a "best case scenario"? But even the steam downloads were halved. 

Thanks!  

[AbydosOne]

17 minutes ago, imKaia said:

Anyone have any ideas why this happens?

Powerline just kinda sucks, really. It was a solution to slow wifi, but wifi very quickly eclipsed it in throughput. 

[Falcon1986]

5 hours ago, imKaia said:

When I switched to the Powerline, the numbers dropped a ton it averaged around 80Mbps, and the same steam download was around 13MB/s 

First of all, I hope you realize that Steam, by default, reports download speeds in megabytes per second. Speed test sites usually report speeds in megabits per second.

 

5 hours ago, imKaia said:

Anyone have any ideas why this happens? is it the powerline I bought?

Secondly, that's the nature of Powerline. It works decently only if you have good electrical wiring and no form of surge/line filtering devices on your AC circuits.

 

A newer generation of Powerline might be able to compensate to some degree, but you'll never get full consistent speeds on it if your electrical wiring is older.

 

2 hours ago, Billbill said:

Maybe try a range extender.  

Only if it can be positioned in a location that has a good quality signal to extend in the first place.

 

Range extenders, if used correctly, will only increase wireless range. They will worsen latency.

 

A better solution is mesh or a AP wired into the switch/router.