Anyone Had Any Experience Of Homeplugs?

So, I've just moved back home after graduating, and unfortunately find myself in a situation where I live with my brother and his girlfriend. The time has come for me to hook my desktop up to the net and although I have a 30m cat6 cable, they (she) won't let me put it across the hallway which is literally half a metre to the router, and neither will they allow me to route the stupidly long cable neatly around the doorframes to the router. So I am left with 2 options.

I have a number of devices in my room from laptops to desktops to game consoles etc, and I like ot share stuff between them so I have a little network within my room where everything basically runs off of a switch. Now to connect this internal LAN to the wireless router, I am either having to get a wireless bridge in my room to connect wirelessly to the router and wired to my switch (or act as my switch) or go with the Homeplugs. If you're not sure what they are, they are small devices you insert into the mains electricity socket and they have at least a single ethernet socket for you to connect an ethernet cable into. This allows you to use your house's wiring as an ethernet cable to carry the data. There is already 1 pair of these in the apartment as we have BT vision but from my understanding if I were to go this route, I would have to replace the already existing ones as they are pretty sh**e, and don't even follow the correct specifications.

My main question is, has anyone had any experience of these and can vouch for their reliability? All of my research has supported the fact that they are faster than wireless with less latency etc, but they have always been in desperate circumstances where wireless signal has struggled to reach. Given that the router is about 50cm from my room, I doubt very much I would ever have any drop in signal if I went for an N capable bridge, but due to the fact there are about 7 other wireless networks within range of my room, owned by other people this may affect the reliability of the package transmission.

Price-wise, they are the same price for 3 homeplug Powerlines, as it is for a decent bridge. I just want to know if the HP are much better than the wireless alternatives or not? Baring in mind that my block of apartments is pretty old, where the fuse boxes for each apartment is at the end of the hall and not within the actual flat.

Sorry for the essay

 

I know what your talking about, but steered away from using them as I was concerned about 'noise'. but I had the option of running a usb cable with a wireless dongle under the floorboards to sit positioned under the upstairs floor, in the ceiling above where the router was positioned, thus going over the top of the 2 walls blocking the router signal

 

Ah, well unfortunately all the posts about them that appear on google are from 2010 and earlier, which was when the homeplug idea was quite new and did indeed cause a lot of noise and used to mess up low frequency radios etc. but form what I've read, they have improved dramatically and if used in the msot optimal settings can be just as quick as if I had run the cable form point A to point B.

In my eyes, I'm just trying to decide if any form of signal loss/degradation would happen within the 1m from my room to the router (through a single wall), causing the homeplugs to be a more optimal solution for gaming etc.There's a high chance I will be moving soon when I find a job so I also need something that I will be able to take with em, so either take a pair of homeplugs with me, or the wireless bridge. Of course if it's sharing a place with someone else then I may have no option of using the homeplugs on the router and must sue an AP but none fo that really matters right now I just want to know if the wireless bridge will be good enough for gaming and streaming from such a short distance away or would I be better off with the homeplug

 

Yes it would have been 2007/8 I looked at them, just mentioned the 'noise issue' for you to consider, the other thing to consider is where the house wiring runs, it could be 1m physically, but the wire could be 10m +, unfortunately I've never used a wireless bridge so it's hard for me to comment.

one option is to see if you can borrow, return for cash the equipment to the shop. if no one can give you a definitive answer.

 

I can't vouch for them now, but I ordered this Netgear set yesterday (should be delivered by Tuesday), Homeplug for the Router and a Ethernet switch with 4 ports on the other end - http://www.netgear.c...e/XAVB5004.aspx

And like you say from your reading, mines for a near worst case scenario, as I'm the furthest away from the router in my bedroom (maybe 3 walls or by my crummy estimate about 50ft~) even the 2.4GHz signal is rubbish 40-200Mbps, more often than not nearer 40Mbps, so even if I got 40% of the speed out of that Homeplug set I'd still be better off, as well as lower latency than wireless and a stable signal as it does sometimes drop out currently.
Unfortunately the house has two circuits for downstairs and upstairs, which is meant to affect the signal, hopefully it doesn't affect it too much.

I'll post back with my experiences sometime next week, probably Wednesday if that helps.

 

Okay, that sounds cool, thanks woody Might do what Match suggests as well and tyr get a set from a place that will let me return them easily. That way I can test them and if I am getting speeds faster than the current wireless on my laptop then I'll keep them

But interested to see how you get on with them too.

 

Just as information for this, I received the Homeplug set (as linked above - http://www.netgear.c...e/XAVB5004.aspx) today and on first impressions I am extremely impressed by the performance.

I tested the set in a few locations around the house to try get an estimation of performance, the router is on the downstairs circuit so I'll name the test locations.

NOTE - By Tx (Transmit) I mean to the router and Rx (Receive) I mean from the router, plus the first three tests were just plug in and check speeds they do seem to fluctuate slightly and the set is rated for up to 500Mbps.

First in the nearest socket to the router (probably about 5m of electrical wire, downstairs circuit) where it picked up 490Mbps both Tx & Rx.

Second in a socket at the bottom of the stairs (this is directly behind the socket the router is plugged in, through the wall), I'm not sure if this is on the downstairs circuit or whether it's the transfer point (whatever it is called for an electrician) to the upstairs circuit, I'll assume downstairs, probably 8-12m of electrical wiring, it was picking up around 400Mbps both Tx & Rx.

Third in a socket at the top of the stairs (upstairs circuit) which produced around 360Mbps Tx & 320Mbps Rx (wiring must be in the range of 20m now).

And Last in my bedroom (probably 25m of wiring to the router), it seems the signal needs to settle slightly, if that's the right choice of words, at first it picked up 300Mbps on both Tx & Rx, but currently it's picking up a very healthy 370-400Mbps Tx & 315-330Mbps Rx.

So overall I'd highly recommend them as I feel at the moment it was well worth the £105 I paid for it, the pings have cut in half (roughly), the difference between the downstairs and upstairs circuit isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, though it does look to affect the Rx signal more (Router > Computer) than the Tx signal, either way I can't complain as it more than beats my 200Mbps (not near this very often) best for wireless which was way less reliable and is still above wireless N speeds after about 25m of wiring, this is in a 20 year old house so I'd expect it to be just as good in any house/flat built in the last 25 years.

 

Ah great, thanks for that Woody! I was leaning towards home plugs anyway but that's secured it for me

 

Just a small point, recent changes to electrical regulations in the UK means that wiring in newer buildings, or older buildings recently re-wired, socket circuits must now be separate for upstairs from the downstairs circuits. That means data signals from downstairs will have to go right back to the mains distribution and circuit breaker box before going through the wiring to an upstairs circuit. It should still work OK, but effectively the expected distances may be much longer, so speeds may be lower.

Nev.

 

That's useful info Nev! Luckily, I live in a pretty old block of apartments (for now at least!) So the wiring is nice and old. All the rooms are wired together May be waiting abit longer till I get my homeplugs though as it turns out I need 2 pass-through devices and then at least 1 ethernet only. The former are quite expensive right now.