What's the obsession with Powerline?

[Broseephus]

Just about every thread in here is either about Powerline adapters, or they are mentioned as a solution.......seriously why?

[AMD Lover]

Its easy and better than wireless.

[Elven]

Better than wireless  :lol:

[xXxYOLOxSWAGxXx_420BlazeIt]

Its easy and better than wireless.

Better than wireless  :lol:

Questionable.

 

Just about every thread in here is either about Powerline adapters, or they are mentioned as a solution.......seriously why?

Because most people here are either too lazy to spend a couple of hours hiding a cable, or their parents wont let them drill through a floor or wall.

[Cacao]

Not as good as direct ethernet, but definitely better than wireless. It's a good solution for those people that refuse to get a proper wired connection for some reason. 

[Elven]

 

Because most people here are either too lazy to spend a couple of hours hiding a cable, or their parents wont let them drill through a floor or wall.

 

 

Yup, defo the best option to do. If you got permission to do it  :lol:

[AMICLG]

It's better than wireless at a distance but expensive ones only have a though put of 500 Mbps so AC is better when your close the router.

[TheNinjaNextDor]

It's in between ethernet and wireless being more reliable than wireless and most of the time faster, but not nearly as reliable and fast as ethernet.

[SSOB]

It once was alot better than wireless. Now with AC routers and 5GHZ bands , just overall better routers not so much anymore. The PING times are of course still better but not by much

[helping]

I would say it's probably more reliable than wireless (but really in what situation is wireless not reliable enough?)
 
To say it's better is, well, you would have to apply a personal definition of what better means to answer that question. IMO it's not really that useful unless you need to retrofit some remote non-wifi device onto a network, even then another router to act as a bridge would be cheaper if you have one laying around.

[skywake]

Because there is no one size fits all solution. Close up you should always use Ethernet because it'll run more-or-less as hard as you can push it and it's cheap. At longer distances you should use Powerline because walls and distance kill the 5Ghz signal almost entirely but distance doesn't hit powerline anywhere near as hard. As I've pointed out before the signal from my dual band N600 router is fairly unstable (i.e. even basic video streaming isn't 100%) at the far end of the house but AV200 powerline gives me 40Mbps real world throughput. Enough for 1080p with powerline, not enough for much at all on wireless. Wireless is really just a convenience thing and for that intermediate range.

 

Also what's this nonsense about wireless being cheaper? What a load. Looking up my local PC components retailer they have a pair of AV 200 powerline adapters at $62AU with their AV500 kit (with minimal actual real world benefit BTW) at $76AU. Their N600 class media bridge is $89AU. Wow, it also has a 4 port Gigabit Switch built in, that's like another $20AU or so. Really guys, the two solutions are the same price. Also when I got a sparky in to run Ethernet he charged about $60AU to run Cat6 from my router to anywhere in my house. So which solution is cheaper? It ain't wireless. For the "I need my TV hooked up" problem Ethernet > Powerline > Wireless.

 

edit:

I would also add that if you're extending your wireless signal over wireless the speed will drop significantly. If you extend it using powerline you can not only get further away but you can also send the signal over an entirely different media. So in theory at least a wireless extender might give you 20Mbps or so. A wireless access point hooked upto powerline is more likely to give you something around 40Mbps. A wireless access point hooked upto Ethernet... well all bets are off, 200Mbps+ easy.

 

edit2:

ok, so I decided to put my rant to the test and actually benchmark wireless vs powerline again. Way out at the far end of the house, wireless signal (N600 at both ends BTW) is so low that I can't really get it connected for long enough. Walk a bit closer and run iperf -r a handfull of times. Speeds are all over the place, anything from 0.2Mbps to 1.2Mbps. Walk back to where the wireless wasn't working and run the same test on powerline. Every time, same result. 35/40Mbps +/- 1Mbps. THAT's why I recommend powerline to people. Wireless can kill powerline close to the router (one room away wireless jumps back to 80/40Mbps while powerline is something more like 40/55Mbps) but that means little because powerline still works ok enough in that range while kicking wireless' ass at distance /thread

[bjotte]

My reason for recommending powerline adapters is that if you have many devises running on wireless you will get unstable performance, and high latency. and many people can't run Ethernet ether because they are renting a flat or they live at their parents that wont allow it or if they in theory could run Ethernet unhindered by renting or parents many people can't afford either the work or the supplies as this cost varies from country to country. 

[h3ll0]

Everybody says powerlne is better than wireless yet I get 30 Mbps on power line with 3-5ms ping to my router, but with wireless I get 50 Mbps and 1-2 ms to my router.Not worth $50 for a poweline kit if you ask me . Thought I'd also mention my computer is 30 ft away and through 3 walls and I still get full 5 GHz signal at 300 mbps .

[skywake]

Everybody says powerlne is better than wireless yet I get 30 Mbps on power line with 3-5ms ping to my router, but with wireless I get 50 Mbps and 1-2 ms to my router.Not worth $50 for a poweline kit if you ask me . Thought I'd also mention my computer is 30 ft away and through 3 walls and I still get full 5 GHz signal at 300 mbps .

 

I did point out that wireless does perform better at closer range. That second set of numbers I posted were from ~5m with one brick wall between me and the router. At distances under ~10m wireless wins consistently. The problem is that when people have issues with wireless they're not talking about speeds at close range. When someone's tearing their hair out about wireless they're probably having issues with distance, brick walls and neighbours not speed. When range is the issue then a shiny new router almost certainly won't fix the problem.

I know from personal experience, I've played that game enough that I almost need a shelf dedicated to old routers. All because a couple of back rooms got crappy speeds. So before spending more cash on another shiny new router I figured I'd give powerline a go. It worked a dream. Plus testing it it's like the Energiser bunny, you put unreasonably large distances between them and it's still chugging along at ~30Mbps. For instant network at distance with no dicking around powerline wins. That said when I wanted to permanently connect another location I gave up on both alternative options and just ran Ethernet everywhere. I'll say this again, for the "I need my TV hooked up" problem Ethernet > Powerline > Wireless