Powerline Adapters

Hi,

My house has one consumer box but i think it has different fuses for upstairs/downstairs.
The router is downstairs and the room which i need internet is upstairs - would it work?

Also should i get 85mbps or 200 or is there faster?
I'm currently on 16MB and maybe 20-24MB in the near future.

thanks for the help.

They work across different rings so you should be OK. The 85 and 200Mbps are much faster than your ADSL link so the speed is irrelevant for browsing or downloading. You will only appreciate the faster speeds if you use the links for inter-computer transfers.

My setup is similar, but a computer downstairs and a print server upstairs- works fine.

You might notice a difference at 24Mbps if you get it, but not much.

About the only time you would *really* notice a difference is on huge transfers between computers, or if you do a load of HD media streaming in the house.

For most people the 85mbps ones are fine, but if you have a lot of internal traffic the 200Mbps ones may be a better buy.

I use 85Mbps ones and the measured transfer rate I get is around 30Mbps. That is faster than 54Mbps 802.11g WiFi can achieve (I measured mine at about 22Mbps)

200Mbps units were significantly more expensive than 85Mbps when I last looked at pricing. If you are looking at really big file transfers between machines use a USB drive - esp if using Vista which I have found to be abysmally slow across a network (including wired).

I was looking to pay £50-£60 so i went for this;

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?...

one other thing i intend to leave them on 24/7... can they go into stanby automatically when theres no activty?

Looks like prices have fallen since I last checked them - or maybe you just got a good deal.

I have a single port one on the router and one with a three port switch built in upstairs which means that transfers between the upstairs machines take place at full ethernet speed which is handy. Those get left on 24x7 because I do run a machine 24x7. I haven't actually checked what they use but I can't really see it being more than a few watts.

I also bought a homeplug wireless AP and router which I sometimes use to extend the WiFi outside (my walls are 2 feet of stone). That runs red hot so must use at least 20-30 watts.

If you decide to add to your setup make sure you stick to 200Mbps units - although the 85Mbps are compatible with the pretty much obsolete 14Mbps ones the 200Mbps units use a different standard.

You can set a password on the units to secure them and there is a utility which allows you to see all units in range and the rate they are synced at. They are not supposed to be able to work through the meter anyway and they certainly won't work across phases so your two immediate neighbours will definately not have access.