Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
- 8,157
- 140
Ordered this last week:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
My current setup at home has my cable modem + wireless router in our finished basement where my main gaming PC is(ethernet wired), as well as our primary entertainment center(XB360, Roku, DirecTV(all all wired via Ethernet). Our living room is on the floor immediately above, and that is where we generally stream content wirelessly, whether on a tablet, my Chromecast, or my wife's laptop.
I've always had the occasional hiccup when streaming video upstairs in our living room, so I was looking for a solution for getting my wireless router upstairs into the living room, and running an ethernet cable from the modem in the basement wasn't an option, the ceiling in the basement is completely finished/drywalled, and I didn't want to drill through it.
I have 50 Mbps cable service through Time Warner cable, and I actually generally get that full bandwith, here's a typical bandwith test at my home for the wired devices:
After testing my wifi downstairs in the same room as my wireless router, I was generally getting about 35-40Mbps on our tablets as well as the laptop. Going upstairs to our living room and running the same speed tests, these speeds dropped by about 10-15Mbps having to go through the floor/ceiling with the signal. 20-30Mbps was still decent, but I figured I could improve things a bit if the router was in the same room.
Well, sending any traffic that was sent/received via these powerline adapters immediately cut all my bandwith down to about 10-15mbps, much slower than my former wireless signal travelling through the floor. To be fair, I do live in an older home(built in the late 60s) and the wiring is all original, and the Belkin website did warn that your bandwith would be very dependent on both the quality of your wiring, and how many devices are currently using electricity in your home(and in mine, there are a TON, I'm a bit of an electronics junkie), so I'm sure my home is not "ideal" circumstances for powerline adapters, but I was still shocked that they advertised a theoretical max of 500Mbps and I couldn't get more than 15Mbps. I can't imagine under what real-world conditions they ever got 500Mbps transfer rates out of these things. Maybe it was over a 1-foot long wire with no other electrical usage on it? Who knows.
So basically, I think the devices would generally work pretty well for anyone that has lower-end broadband in their home, if you only have a 10Mbps or 15Mbps cable/DSL connection, then you would probably be able to stay maxed out on your bandwith using the powerline adapters, but for anyone that has higher-end connections(or god forbid Fiber), you will be sorely disappointed at their performance. In the instance of someone with 50+ Mbps, these would really only be of use if you need to reach an area of your home that just absolutely can't get a wireless signal from your router. I'd also assume that using multiple wireless routers/repeaters throughout your home would give much better performance for anyone with high-end broadband.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
My current setup at home has my cable modem + wireless router in our finished basement where my main gaming PC is(ethernet wired), as well as our primary entertainment center(XB360, Roku, DirecTV(all all wired via Ethernet). Our living room is on the floor immediately above, and that is where we generally stream content wirelessly, whether on a tablet, my Chromecast, or my wife's laptop.
I've always had the occasional hiccup when streaming video upstairs in our living room, so I was looking for a solution for getting my wireless router upstairs into the living room, and running an ethernet cable from the modem in the basement wasn't an option, the ceiling in the basement is completely finished/drywalled, and I didn't want to drill through it.
I have 50 Mbps cable service through Time Warner cable, and I actually generally get that full bandwith, here's a typical bandwith test at my home for the wired devices:
After testing my wifi downstairs in the same room as my wireless router, I was generally getting about 35-40Mbps on our tablets as well as the laptop. Going upstairs to our living room and running the same speed tests, these speeds dropped by about 10-15Mbps having to go through the floor/ceiling with the signal. 20-30Mbps was still decent, but I figured I could improve things a bit if the router was in the same room.
Well, sending any traffic that was sent/received via these powerline adapters immediately cut all my bandwith down to about 10-15mbps, much slower than my former wireless signal travelling through the floor. To be fair, I do live in an older home(built in the late 60s) and the wiring is all original, and the Belkin website did warn that your bandwith would be very dependent on both the quality of your wiring, and how many devices are currently using electricity in your home(and in mine, there are a TON, I'm a bit of an electronics junkie), so I'm sure my home is not "ideal" circumstances for powerline adapters, but I was still shocked that they advertised a theoretical max of 500Mbps and I couldn't get more than 15Mbps. I can't imagine under what real-world conditions they ever got 500Mbps transfer rates out of these things. Maybe it was over a 1-foot long wire with no other electrical usage on it? Who knows.
So basically, I think the devices would generally work pretty well for anyone that has lower-end broadband in their home, if you only have a 10Mbps or 15Mbps cable/DSL connection, then you would probably be able to stay maxed out on your bandwith using the powerline adapters, but for anyone that has higher-end connections(or god forbid Fiber), you will be sorely disappointed at their performance. In the instance of someone with 50+ Mbps, these would really only be of use if you need to reach an area of your home that just absolutely can't get a wireless signal from your router. I'd also assume that using multiple wireless routers/repeaters throughout your home would give much better performance for anyone with high-end broadband.
