Ethernet over power lines

BrutulTM · Dec 11, 2012

Anyone tried this?

http://www.amazon.com/ZyXEL-Powerlin...bxgy_pc_text_z

I have a cat 5 cable draped through my living room atm to my HTPC/Xbox/etc. Would this thing be a viable replacement for it? Do they suck if your wiring is old? This seems like it would be a great option for me but I have never known anyone that used them so I don't know if they suck.

chaos · Dec 11, 2012

Yeah I use the Netgear powerline 500 shit. It is kind of expensive, but less expensive than busting open my walls and running cat5 would be. From what I hear, they do suck if you have old wiring and can act strange in older houses. If I were you, I would try it. I figured if it didn't work I would just take the devices back and move on to plan b. For me,t hey work great. Wireless is shit in my house. I was having constant signal drop and shit. These things work really well, though.

Silence_sl · Dec 11, 2012

They work fine so long as your wiring isn't shagged and if they don't have to pass over a breaker.

BrutulTM · Dec 11, 2012

Do they have to be on the same circuit? I've heard it's faster if they're on the same phase but having to be on the same breaker makes them kind of useless.

Ancallagon · Dec 11, 2012

The other potential concern is if you have multiple circuits throughout the house - would have to do some funky stuff if you want to network two rooms that are on totally separate circuits. Not generally a huge concern unless you have a mansion or perhaps a really old place I suppose.

I believe my terminology is right - I'm not an electrician, but I recall there being some issues with this stuff.

BrutulTM · Dec 12, 2012

Just checked my breakers and the outlets I would use are on the same phase, but not on the same circuit. I don't think it's that unusual to have outlets on different circuits in your house. You don't really want to blow a breaker because you're trying to cook a waffle and make coffee and microwave something at the same time and have it shut off the computer in your office.

chaos · Dec 12, 2012

I was running across 3 different circuits and didn't have any issues. I really think that shit applies to older wiring. Right now I'm only running across 2, turned my office into a playroom for my girls because apparently that's what we do.

I'm no electrician, but my understanding was that a circuit is an isolated path coming off of the breaker. Maybe I am just wrong or whatever. But I had one powerline adapter in my bedroom, another on a different breaker in my basement, and the master adapter in my living room on yet another breaker.

BrutulTM · Dec 12, 2012

That makes more sense to me.

And yes the breakers are just switches running to different parts of the house so you can short/overload something in one part of the house without turning off the power to everything. I wouldn't think that there would be much resistance in the breaker that would interfere with anything.

Silence_sl · Dec 12, 2012

I only fiddled with them briefly, and like Ancallagon, I am not an electrician, so I may be mixing and matching terminology. Phase? Circuit? Wha? This is why I hire electricians.

At any rate, I fiddled with different brands several years ago in several houses and had really mixed results. Newer gear might work better.

Check out SNB and their forums for real grit on the issue:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwa...-network-speed

I just ordered these just for shitsngiggles:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833704148

Silence_sl · Dec 12, 2012

Really good FAQ:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwa...-powerline-faq

Nepenthes_sl · Dec 12, 2012

I don't think phase is the correct term to use here but I'm not an electrician either. A phase here is being used to describe one side of the breaker box. In some boxes its every other breaker to a "phase" that's how you use the big 220v breaker. In some boxes you can actually see it split into 2 sections pretty easily. It's still considered single phase. It's got something to do with being able to run 110V and 220V so each hot is a "phase". I don't fully understand how it all ties together though. A circuit would be any wiring connected to the same breaker.

Silence_sl · Dec 12, 2012

Nepenthes_sl said:
I don't think phase is the correct term to use here but I'm not an electrician either. A phase here is being used to describe one side of the breaker box. In some boxes its every other breaker to a "phase" that's how you use the big 220v breaker. In some boxes you can actually see it split into 2 sections pretty easily. It's still considered single phase. It's got something to do with being able to run 110V and 220V so each hot is a "phase". I don't fully understand how it all ties together though. A circuit would be any wiring connected to the same breaker.

There's a pretty simple but useful diagram in the faq I linked above. Also, pdf:http://smallnetbuilder.com/mydownloa...e_coupling.pdf

BrutulTM · Dec 12, 2012

I don't know if anyone really wants a lesson on electrical wiring, but the reason there are two sides to the breaker box is that you don't actually have a 240 volt line running into your house, you have 2 120 volt lines that are 180 degrees out of phase, so you can get 120 volts off of either side of the box or you can connect to both sides and get 240. This is not the case in some places but it is in America. This is still referred to as "single phase" even though this doesn't really make sense to me. 3-phase power is used in big ass industrial electric motors. There is no such thing as 2-phase even though, as far as I can tell, single phase obviously has two phases lol.

According to Silence's link, even though there is no physical connection between the two sides of the breaker box, the data still gets through because it can couple across the coils in the transformer out on the power pole, which is pretty crazy. This sounds like really cool technology to me, but I think I am going to just break down and drill a hole in the floor and run a cable through the basement.

Brando · Dec 12, 2012

I used the Netgear ones in my old apartment building from my router upstairs to my PS3 downstairs and had no issues streaming Netflix and the like. I'm now using it in my house up to my daughters rooms where the previous owner wired the rooms himself in a pretty fucked up way and again it works fine. I would definitely recommend using these if you're having wifi issues like I was. The only thing to watch out for is at times the PS3 wouldn't wait for the adapters to sync and that could get a little frustrating but all in all a minor thing.

Pollo · Dec 12, 2012

I used some Netgear Powerline shits (can't remember the model number) because I had DirecTV for TV and cable for interent. The only available coax I had in the house was on the other side of it and I couldn't centrally locate my wifi router. So I tried out the powerline stuff and it worked flawlessly for two years. Modem>PowerlineA>PowerlineB>Router profit. Seeing as how this was Lower Alabama, I didn't have screaming internet but I never noticed a drop in performance. When I was reseaching it, I did read some shit about how appliances that draw a heavy load could effect the perfomance and larger buildings could have some degradation. As far as crossing circuits, I went from a bedroom to the living room and I didn't have any issues.

The only issue I really had was with my PS3 as well. I could never get Netflix to stream HD content on it. It worked on my PCs and BLU-RAY player but never my PS3.

Parker Lewis_sl · Dec 12, 2012

I use four of the ZyXEL 200 Mbps adapters around my house because 802.11n wifi wasn't cutting it for streaming 720p/1080p video for XBMC. I've been extremely happy with them; for under $150 I was able to get a reliable 70+ Mbps connection anywhere I want in my house and didn't have to deal with wiring Ethernet. The only real drawback I could see would be if your house's wiring is old, otherwise there's almost no drawbacks.

Lenardo · Dec 12, 2012

at work i use an older set of belkin power line adaptors(12Mps rated) for my work's copier. my work is an OLD house built ~1920ish and it works fine 90% of the time, at most i have to pull the plugs for ~10sec to reset.

at home i have a set of netgears 200Mps powerline adapters and it works great - but i have not needed it in a while.

Aychamo BanBan · Dec 12, 2012

I used these temporarily at a rent house until we bought. They worked fine, but rarely shitted out if streaming a multiple gig movie, etc. Just buy the fastest, best reviewed ones, and expect about 1/5th the speed advertised

If they suck, return them. If you're living at a place for a while, having ethernet put in the house isn't so bad. I had cat 6 installed at 3 drops, all terminating at a patch panel in a media closet (along with speaker wire to outside, and 4 new electrical drops) for about $600. so you could probably get it done for maybe 2-3x the price of the Power over ethernet things

Hex · Dec 12, 2012

Silence_sl said:
They work fine so long as your wiring isn't shagged and if they don't have to pass over a breaker.

Pretty much this, I worked for a place that was looking to sell it as a solution to customers who didn't want to run ethernet cabling in their household. We were using Motorola hardware it worked but honestly it wasn't that great, if your wiring isn't done properly it'll probably fall flat on its face the second you try to use it. Other than that nothing to write home about but it works.

The Ancient_sl · Dec 13, 2012

I actually just bought a MoCa(Ethernet over CoAx) kit since my bedrooms are behind AFCI and I was told that wouldn't work for Ethernet over Power. I'll let everyone know how it works if there is any interest.

Ethernet over power lines

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