Do powerline adapters have better speeds than WIFI repeaters

I've noticed with my BT wifi disc repeater, I get half the speeds of my router, meant to be getting over 500mbps but am only getting around 180-200 mbps from the disc, probably because the walls in my house are very thick, despite it being quite a small house.

Will something like a 1200mbps tp-link work better?

The disc can only provide a maximum of the speed you could get if you used your device where the disc is located - if you have already got a lowered speed it can't boost it (unless of course you run an ethernet cable to where the disc is in which case you would get full speeds).

Powerline is not a fast technology. Your electrical wiring will impact on the speed you can get at the powerline location. For the 1200Mbps powerline the real world usual speeds would be around 200Mbps. If you can get one on sale or return (Argos could be good for that) you could try it but the speeds of powerline are lab conditions and are generally massively higher than you would actually get.

PLA's are a very poor substitute for a proper wired solution. However if you can't run to wired Access Points, then perhaps a better MESH system with a dedicated Wifi channel for the backhaul might work better.

In reply to a post by Adduxi:

PLA's are a very poor substitute for a proper wired solution. However if you can't run to wired Access Points, then perhaps a better MESH system with a dedicated Wifi channel for the backhaul might work better.

PLA speeds fluctuate too just like wifi does. Except it can go into the low 10mbits ..

Ideal situation would be a cable connection to any access points ...

That said we don't know much about OPs situation except that its a small premiss

Copper Cat5e or CAT6A cabling to multiple APs would definitely be the best solution. Possibly cabled in the ceiling void, or run along skirting, or at worst chased into the walls (a job to be done when you were already planning to redecorate!)

Something like Unifi U7 Lite is quite cheap and very good. It can be either wall or ceiling mounted unobtrusively. You would uplink them into your router's LAN ports, or you can use a PoE switch to avoid using a separate power injector for each AP.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Copper Cat5e or CAT6A cabling to multiple APs would definitely be the best solution. Possibly cabled in the ceiling void, or run along skirting, or at worst chased into the walls (a job to be done when you were already planning to redecorate!)

if you are going to some wall chasing, put some trunking in, then the cable and any additional string.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Something like Unifi U7 Lite is quite cheap and very good. It can be either wall or ceiling mounted unobtrusively. You would uplink them into your router's LAN ports, or you can use a PoE switch to avoid using a separate power injector for each AP.

in "bbc style" other products are available 😂

Wired, PLAs*, wired to a disc and then WiFi.
*PLA's only work if they are on the same circuit... so if your property is over 2 floors and your hub is downstairs and you're trying to use PLAs upstairs then it's probably not going to work. If you ISP has sent you 1 disc they will drop feed you up to 3 with no extra cost

PowerLine can work across circuits - I have done it myself across different ring mains in a house. I know in some cases it doesn't but in my experience it worked with a standard fuse box.

And if you are unlucky it can be massively worse than 200Mbps.

I finally installed an external Ethernet run connecting the two ends of our house when moving from ADSL to Starlink, because I could barely get 35Mbps using the 1200Mbps adapters between the two points I needed to connect (though I did see 300Mbps between other locations in the house).

I still use a pair of 1200Mbps adapters between the house and an outbuilding, but that is just connecting a relatively low bandwidth security camera feed (and I'm not sure it is even getting 35Mbps).

Yep, the remaining pair I have in place goes through four consumer units/fuse boxes and works. It isn't fast, but it does work reliably for what I need it for.

In reply to a post by Heatty:

I get half the speeds of my router, meant to be getting over 500mbps but am only getting around 180-200 mbps from the disc, probably because the walls in my house are very thick, despite it being quite a small house.

My family have the white discs (the ones you could buy) rather than the black rented ones. They are the WiFi 5 version (802.11ac) and on a 350mbps Virgin Media cable broadband service that measured over Ethernet manages 380 Mbps. Over WiFi in the room with the disc, the max seen is 300 Mbps.

So if you have solid thick walls you are going to need some higher spec hardware to do much more, probably at least WiFi 6; and better to see if you can run Ethernet.

The original consortium for these adaptors, Home Plug Alliance is defunct and shut down as of at least June 2022. They announced all their standards and patents would be turned to the public domain. So anything you buy is likely to be propriatory and not interoperate with any other vendor.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug