Over a Decade Later Powerline Networking Still Sucks

[Patrick Kennedy]

We replaced a Powerline network segment with 14+-year-old Netgear adapters with brand new Powerline networking and the results were very poor

The post Over a Decade Later Powerline Networking Still Sucks appeared first on ServeTheHome.

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[unwind-protect]

The more things change the more they stay the same.

 

[cesmith9999]

There is a reason that I have Cat5 running down my hallways... I started with Powerline. it worked... and for the occasional times that I needed to work from home... Then mesh networking started... that was much faster... but still had jitter issues.. When work from home started. I had to make the connection from my office to the family room better.

Now I have to figure out where I want the central switch/patch panel and all of the endpoints to be... then brace for the renovation bill...

Chris

 

[DaveLTX]

There is a reason that I have Cat5 running down my hallways... I started with Powerline. it worked... and for the occasional times that I needed to work from home... Then mesh networking started... that was much faster... but still had jitter issues.. When work from home started. I had to make the connection from my office to the family room better.

Now I have to figure out where I want the central switch/patch panel and all of the endpoints to be... then brace for the renovation bill...

Chris

To be honest, mesh really is a modern easy to setup way of the olden days of wireless repeaters, it really is that.
If you were nearer to one mesh node it will still have to double hops back to the main node or router which isn't doing favours for jitter.
I damn nearly bought into mesh before realising it's modern wireless repeater marketing

 

[WillTaillac]

To be honest, mesh really is a modern easy to setup way of the olden days of wireless repeaters, it really is that.
If you were nearer to one mesh node it will still have to double hops back to the main node or router which isn't doing favours for jitter.
I damn nearly bought into mesh before realising it's modern wireless repeater marketing

With one exception; sometimes mesh routers include a dedicated radio for the 'backhaul' connection.

When my powerline networking sucked, I bit the bullet and bought a 2-node mesh WiFi system that is tri-band. The 2.4 and 5 GHz bands are used for my client networking, while the 6E 6GHz band is used for the intra-node backhaul. I plopped one unit in my garage near my back patio, and the other unit in the center of my home. I now get ~500 Mbps WiFi from my iPhone in my garage, standing in the exact same spot where I got 32 Mbps from my brand-new powerline kit (my phone screenshot is in the article).

Mind you, my mesh WiFi solution was more expensive than the powerline kit; it cost around 2x as much. On the other hand, it's more than 2x the speed and also improved the general wifi performance throughout my home and not just in the garage, so I think in terms of value per dollar I came out way ahead.

 

[DaveLTX]

With one exception; sometimes mesh routers include a dedicated radio for the 'backhaul' connection.

When my powerline networking sucked, I bit the bullet and bought a 2-node mesh WiFi system that is tri-band. The 2.4 and 5 GHz bands are used for my client networking, while the 6E 6GHz band is used for the intra-node backhaul. I plopped one unit in my garage near my back patio, and the other unit in the center of my home. I now get ~500 Mbps WiFi from my iPhone in my garage, standing in the exact same spot where I got 32 Mbps from my brand-new powerline kit (my phone screenshot is in the article).

Mind you, my mesh WiFi solution was more expensive than the powerline kit; it cost around 2x as much. On the other hand, it's more than 2x the speed and also improved the general wifi performance throughout my home and not just in the garage, so I think in terms of value per dollar I came out way ahead.

Yes indeed sometimes they do have a dedicated backhaul and still performs much better than powerline.

In the end I just ran a RJ45 from my main router to a AP