Powerline Plug Recommendations

We're struggling with the wifi coverage from our Sky router at the moment and considering Powerline wifi extenders as a way forward.

Our local Maplin pushes Devolo, but the TP-Link ones seem to get marginally better reviews on Amazon.

Is there any reason to favour one brand over another or are they all likely to behave somewhat similarly?

Out house is a long thin 30 year old detached house, so hoping we won't run into any wiring issues that might impact Powerline as an option.

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Running a long ethernet cable from the router to a wi-fi extender at the other end of the house would be a better solution.

I concur with Gomezz run a cable if possible, I recently tested a TP-link powerline adapter, and to get a good performance out of them they needed to be close together on the same circuit in the house.

I would run a cable my experience with homeplugs has been generally poor with regular drop outs and speeds fluctuating all over the place... I tried many brands.

Thanks all for your advice.

I very much doubt my wife is going to let me run an ethernet cable through the house, so whilst I'm sure it is the best technical solution, I'm not sure it is that much of an option

I guess it's a case of which is the least worse case of:
1) Powerline
2) Wifi extender
3) Relying on the wifi of a better router.

The main body of the house is roughly 40' long by 18' deep and with it being a relatively modern house, most of the walls are partitions rather than load bearing.

Can you run an external cable? You must already have cables running around the house e.g. For Sky, landline cable coming down the house etc? You can get external grade cabling and run it to the optimal location.

What is the speed of your broadband?

External cabling may be more of an option. There's certainly a hole in the wall in the living room that had a Satellite cable running through it at one stage. Will have to look at the routing.

At the moment we are only an ADSL Broadband, but looking to move to VDSL. Thinking of going the 80/20 option (or whatever that has been sanitised to now!), as we have a BT fibre cabinet the other side of our garden wall.

Cales every time!

You can often squeeze a cable into the gap between carpet and skirting board - worth trying to see. If not, an RJ45 socket on the wall, external Cat5e from there and straight out and the same at the other end. Two short patch leads and all done.

get the devolo 1200 devices. I use the 650 ones to run all over the house, They just work. I can max out my 40/10link.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00UTG32TQ?ref_=ams_ad_d...

In reply to a post by iand:

get the devolo 1200 devices. I use the 650 ones to run all over the house, They just work. I can max out my 40/10link.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00UTG32TQ?ref_=ams_ad_d...

That's what I have. I get well over 50 Mbps. And if you get the right bits of kit it extends your wifi too.

cable if at all possible but dont buy from here at these prices!!!!!!!


http://srx.uk.ebayrtm.com/clk?RtmClk&u=1H4sIAAAAAAAA...

In reply to a post by iand:

get the devolo 1200 devices. I use the 650 ones to run all over the house, They just work. I can max out my 40/10link.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00UTG32TQ?ref_=ams_ad_d...

Did you mean to say get Devolo 1200s and then link to TP-Link 1200s?

If thinking of fibre 100% use a cable.

I have used homeplugs and can get 120Mbps one day and 2Mbps the next. They also add lag to things such as my Apple TV screen mirroring is unusable over the homeplugs whereas over standard wifi it's fine.

Get an external cable, do it right, do it once. Get a good spec cable and you won't need to upgrade in future. At the end of the cable connect an AP.

the range of the sky hub is already good you won't find a router with significantly more range, possibly a marginal boost but slow throughput in the current not spot areas

the problem with homeplugs/powerline adapters is the frequencies the devices use are on the HF Radio Frequency spectrum the same as VDSL. and can cause bad interference to VDSL2 in some instances. have a look on google and read all the reports.. BT are even now asking if you have PowerLine Adapter's and telling you not to use them.when reporting faults/etc skyQ boxes built in powerline is one of the worst. when i am viewing a movie and using data i get interference on my alarm system.. and you cant turn it of on latest firmware..
i am not saying you will get this interference it all depends on your house wiring...

Please also note homeplugs can also use your internal house wiring as one big antenna and cause harmful wireless interference to your neighbourhood....if you really need to use homeplugs then use a mains conditioner this will help cut this interference and can protect you from any interference coming into your house wiring............

The potential for interference appears to have been overstated in practise although it is possible that this is just because so few people are in a position to identify problems they have started getting as being down to their neighbours using these things.

The potential has not been overstated - more a case of there being very few extreme cases.

As you say, how many can actually prove it?

If you go back to the old baby monitors - same principles. There were demonstrated cases where someone with a similar systems several houses away could pick up the transmissions as they were not encrypted.and maybe higher power. Some reports suggested over 100m away was common.

The cable is very, very, low impedance - especially when compared to phone cables and how far to the very low level ADSL and VDSL signals travel? Several miles for ADSL.

TBH what is more worrying is this

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/21/att_tries_ag...

Been known about for quite a while - only now becoming public. It is, to be honest, a horrendous proposal. Interference with radio - not just amateur, Homeplugs would not co-exist, crosstalk to phone lines ... and many more issues.

However, if ATT have a patent they could then use it to stop others using a similar method and causing issues with telephony based DSL.

In reply to a post by gomezz:

TBH what is more worrying is this

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/21/att_tries_ag...

Note that the ATT proposal is absolutely nothing to do with the powerline devices being discussed here. As stated in the Register article this is using signals above 20GHz and sending them along overhead distribution wires by what is effectively waveguide techniques. Any stray radiation will probably only travel millimetres. There is no possibility of interference in the range PLT devices cause (and PLT interference is indeed very very real).

ok, so they all look the same. nice spot

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Devolo-dLAN-Wi-Fi-Powerline...

the other one also looks ok.

For ease, go for Powerplugs for the interim. Distance is not an issue under 100m and although I use Solwise I understand Devolo are the 'favoured ones'.

Yes, Cat5/6 is the best solution, but if that is difficult use HPs. For best performance use them on the same circuit, athough they will cross circuits at the distribution board or consumer unit, but same circuit will give best performance. Consider a wifi Homeplug on any network to feed anything far away from the router.

I have found that switching noise on the circuits used for Powerline networking can cause problems with momentary drop-outs that are not a problem for most applications but can cause VPNs to drop.

My wife uses a VPN extensively from her laptop which she uses to work from home. This works fine when using the WiFi or cable direct from the router. For a part of the house remote from the router we have a WiFi access point connected to a home-plug 500. We can stream BBC iPlayer endlessly on this as well as all the mobile devices, however the VPN drops from time to time on this setup.

The circuit used covers all the ground floor sockets which has the TV, computer, fridge, microwave and hi-fi connected. We tied down the VPN drop-outs to devices on the circuit being switched on and off. Presumably this is creating noise on the circuit that is momentarily knocking out the network. I have a VPN system on my work laptop that can cope with that, but my wife's VPN setup seems much more sensitive.

I've just got a pair of TP-Link AV2000 adapters to test at a specific problem site. I'm not at home at the moment but when I was, I was getting about 150Mbps across two circuits via the consumer unit and much higher when on the same ring.

When I get back I'll run some more tests and let you know.

The connection seemed to be reliable with no packet loss. It did vary throughout the day but it's currently in an electrically noisy environment.

Depending on the speeds, a fix could be a good WiFi extender instead of homeplugs (but expect speeds to be around 20/30Mbps only) or running an ethernet cable.

I personally have found the same issue with homeplugs in every house I've lived in. Random little drop outs which affect some services.

Speeds were stable for about a week and then they dropped suddenly from about 150Mbps to about 25Mbps.

Power cycling the homeplugs restored performance immediately but it's still a disappointment after such a solid start.

Well, the update is that things seem to be working better than I expected. The site I've put the TP-Link AV2000s at is a large and old house. At a distance of about 45 metres, and with mains wiring of dubious provenance, I can transfer files at 43Mbps.

That may not seem great but there are some internal granite walls three feet thick which mean wifi is hopeless between rooms. The internet connection is now the limiting factor - a grindingly slow 1.2Mbps down and about 300kbps up.