HomePlug affecting Speeds/Timeouts?

I have this weekend added a pair of Devolo Homeplug AV Adapters (an ethernet over powerline bridge) into my network. Connected to a Linksys ADSL router at one end and directly to a computer at the other.

I am hoping that it is coincidental that I am since suffering slow speeds, perhaps not suprising considering throttling (am on BT Broadband Option 3 (forced to move from 4)), but more worryingly I am getting timeout errors on loading web pages.

These timeouts aren't the type I am used to; where the page lingers for ages and times out (although these occur too), the more noticeable ones are where a site loads perfectly well, but then just instantaneously times out when clicking on a link to another page in the same site, or, another example; a frame in a page loading an ad times out and the main page loads.

I use OpenDNS but I don't think that this is the cause of the problem since I believe that once one has loaded, say, one bbc.co.uk page, the DNS result is cached for a time.

It should be noted that this occurs whether I am using the computer connected to the HomePlug adaptor, or another computer whose network configuration has remained unchanged.

In addition, internal networking over HomePlug appears to work fine, very well in fact, both under load, and when subjected to extended ping tests (in and out of the network) when I was attempting to isolate the problem.

Edited by oracleredux (Sun 08-Jul-07 21:32:18)

If it was a problem with the homeplugs id expect it to affect external traffic as well.

Unless they are creating noise which is upsetting the adsl.

I have a pair of zyxel 85mbit/s home plug turbo devices which are working fine and not causing any problems with my internet connection.

I assume you mean internal traffic?

I would imaigne they aren't creating noise since my internet connection isn't getting dropped.

Did you use the utility to change the name of the network to something other than the default?

if your neighbours had them and they both had the same network name you could get a conflict occurring confusing both yours and their routers. (although its not very likely)

out of interest does it still happen to the other computers if your homeplug link is powered down

I have secured the HomePlug network (with the configuration utility) and renamed the adapters using the Devolo 'Informer' software on both computers. There isn't a specific network name that I have seen anywhere in the minimal configuration permitted.

Haven't tried the latter yet. Am trying to isolate the problem, and am also in denial slightly. Since the HomePlug system has solved a major problem with Wireless range and I don't want it to have introduced another. Also, it would require extended testing since it is one of these intermittent faults.

well all I can say is mine works fine so i know homeplug as a system does indeed work, wether however there is something specific to your situation that's causing your problem I'm unable to say.

I very occasionally get pages refusing to load but it happens so infrequently that I just assumed it was an internet problem.

One thing I had noticed with using Opendns is if a site is unreachable briefly and you get taken to the opendns search page the either the web browser or windows DNS caching seems to cache that and rather than checking to see if the sites back online when you next try and visit it doesn't even try to connect it just opens up the Opendns page instead.

I know this becuase my webserver died, i rebooted it and then kept ending up on the opendns page for one the sites hosted on it dispite me knowing the server had come back up.

Perhaps it is something specific to my setup. I have since added in an old ADSL router at the non internet router end (where the direct PC connection was before) of the HomePlug link in order to create a Wireless Access point in effect. Unfortunately I don't know enough about routing protocols to know whether my settings are 100% correct (telling the old ADSL router to act as a DHCP relay server).

With regards to the OpenDNS caching issue, you might be aware of this but entering "ipconfig /flushdns" into the command prompt will clear your windows DNS cache, and restarting the browser will clear it's cache.

worth checking the homeplug link for packet loss 'ping other.ip.add.ress -t' and let it run for an hour.

Yup, already done that. Zero packet loss over 4 hours. Thank you for the variable -t though; I had forgotten what one had to use to keep the ping going.
I did set a higher delay between pings (using a standalone program), so I might reduce that.