Do people not know power line ethernet adapters are a thing? Look if up on Amazon, you just plug one into the wall by your router and one next to your PC. Clean and strong connections.
Granted I’ve only used it in 2/3 houses but they’ve always given me the best speed, at least in the past 5-10 years. They used to be much worse if you’re basing this on old experience. And also the oldest house I used them in only got 2MBps so it wasn’t exactly hard for them to get to top speed. My current place isn’t exactly new wiring and the copper cables still get my max speed of 11MBps.
Yeah you won’t get the full experience of gigabit connection through copper wall cables but I’ve never lived in a place with fast enough WiFi for that to matter. I much prefer a cable free house, I have a power cable going to my server in a cupboard and I really hate it, wish there was a power socket in there.
Depending on the model, and your electric network, you might get some disconnects though. Had that at my parents years ago, ended up doing exactly what the meme is
From my experience, power line adapters are very hit or miss depending on your house setup. I’ve had power line adapters that couldn’t even get above 10 Mbps. I feel like the next best thing besides just straight up Ethernet cables is something called MoCA adapters. They use the already existing (in most houses) coax cables, which allow for much higher throughput and very consistent connection. I’ve had peaks of 850-900 Mbps with 10ms latency using MoCA adapters.
This is as dumb as asking if people don’t know wifi exists. Yeah, pretty much everyone knows, but it has substantial tradeoffs to just running a long cat6 cable, one of which likely is plain cost.
They’re good/reliable enough that it’s worth the £20-30 to try a set out. Although like another guy commented bad wall wiring can sometimes have effects if your router is really fast, I get my full 11MBps through my walls easily enough in relatively old housing.
11mbps, even if that’s megabytes not bits, is pretty fuckin slow as far as network speeds today. That’s either 1/100th or 1/10th of gigabit speeds, and a good Ethernet cable can provide well over gigE nowadays
I didn’t realize that the only thing people used network connections for was Internet connections. Wow thanks for letting me know.
Lots of ISPs offer way more than 100mbps, many places offer past 1gbps. Even if they don’t, there are many LAN-based things that run even if you don’t know they do. P2p software updates are widespread now. So yeah “it depends” on whether you care about a fast and stable network connection.
Not to mention, power line is a shared medium, much like wifi, so if you have two computers, kiss even your already slow speeds goodbye
First, I suggest you read the last 12 words of my post rather than reacting to your own interpretation of my comment as a personal dig at you.
Second, Ethernel over Power sharing is only up to the first circuit breaker, whislt WiFi sharing is only limited by metal surfaces, walls and distance.
This means that in some situations (for example appartments in appartment buildings) EoP “sharing” is entirelly dependent on what devices a person puts on the same electrical network (i.e. the power line branch sharing the same circuit breaker) whilst WiFi is a complete total hellhole of everybody screwing everybody else.
Further, people sometimes rent the place they live in, not own it and getting permission to run wire along the walls might be impossible whilst investing in improving the landlord’s property by having wire run within the existing paths inside the wall (usually shared with power wire) is usually not exactly smart.
So Ethernet Over Power is a possible solution that should be considered in light of the situation and used if appropriate or discarded if not.
Looking at and evaluating the various solutions in light of the context is the Engineering approach to solving problems, so it makes sense to present a possible solution in a public forum when one’s intention is to help others.
A self-centred “it’s not good in my situation hence it’s shit and anybody who says otherwise is insulting me” take does nothing to help others.
My original comment was about how slow Ethernet over power was and you claimed that only matters if your internet is faster. There are lots of situations where you’d run cable where that statement isn’t true. If you had said “sure it’s slower but it still works sometimes” that’s a wildly different statement than the equivalent of “speed only matters if it’s the bottleneck to the internet”
Power line adapters are usually fairly separated by different circuits, but that’s far from a hard limit. Just because there’s not a reliable connection between two circuits doesn’t mean the medium isn’t shared and interference can’t happen - it is very much like wifi through a cement wall or two.
In no way am I personally offended, I just used some sarcasm to show how inane that original statement is; and those kind of statements are everywhere in networking discussions.
There is indeed as you pointed out the problem that the bandwith is shared between devices on the same electric circuit when using Ethernet Over Power but not with Point To Point Ethernet connections (which are all of them nowadays, though in the old days shared topologies were more common).
I can see how if you have devices on you network communicating with each other and using lots of bandwidth doing so, the bottleneck wouln’t at all be the internet connection.
That said, point to point ethernet connections to a central router might not be the greatest solution if your running your own mini server farm from you a location away from the main router, unless you want bundles of cables along your walls. Ultimatelly keeping those things together and pulling a single cable from the main router to a secondary router that then connects point to point to all those machines, might be a better option.
And no, EoP doesn’t leak in any way significantly across high inductances or transformers which have been designed to work with home electrics (i.e. for a frequency of 50/60Hz) simply because the inductors filter out the higher frequencies that are necessary to be able to transfer data at MBit/s speeds - this isn’t a “networking” thing, it’s Physics (and basic Electronics).
Even if the EoP protocol using is using multiple channels at multiple frequencies, the lower frequencies that might leak between your and your neighbours’ electric circuits if both are using those adaptors, and could thus have too low a Signal-Noise ratio to be useable, are a tiny fraction of the total bandwith because those low frequencies which can transverse the inductors without being too dampened cannot encode and carry all that much data (it relates to the Nyquist Theorem), so you would loose a tiny fraction of the total bandwidth (I would be surprised if even a 1MHz signal can cross an Electric Meter without being attenuated to near non-existence).
Even the radio waves emitted by your wires whilst carrying that data will at worst induce tiny amounts of electric noise in your neighbours wires (and vice-versa) as neither are designed as antennas for those frequencies. We’re talking sub-1% levels of electrical noise due to electromagnetic interference here.
If your house is right next to your neighbours’ (such as in an appartment building), unless yours and your neighbour’s electric circuits both sit behind the same Electric Meter (i.e. you share payment) and hence there is nothing but two simple circuit breakers or fuses between both electric circuits, the level of EoP interference between both will be at least one order of magnitude lower (probably much more) than the level of WiFi interference if only because of the coil in the Meter along with the natural resistance of the circuit acts as an LP filter with quite a low cut-off point thus attenuating almost all of the signal, and if you sit behind different mains transformers the signal going across will be so low as to not even be measurable.
It’s not by chance that other posters were complaining that EoP did not work between devices in two different parts of the house, and that’s merely them being in different electric circuits separated by simple circuit breakers.
Yeah, it’s an old house and I’m not paying for gigabit internet because whenever I have I’ve literally never gotten the advertised speeds. I’m sure it’s good enough for 99% of people, I have the best internet of all my friends lol. But yeah, you won’t get the full gigabit speeds through copper wires if that’s what you can get from your router in other ways.
Pretty sure nowhere apart from ugly new builds and student housing really gets modern internet speeds in the UK. I got one dude who’s still in the same city as me on like 10mb/s. My other friend just bought unlimited 4g because it’s better than their shit WiFi.
Do people not know power line ethernet adapters are a thing? Look if up on Amazon, you just plug one into the wall by your router and one next to your PC. Clean and strong connections.
There’s a few caveats to this. I had a good set of powerline adapters that still ended up with worse performance than a usb wireless dongle.
If the outlets are in different circuits or you have a house with old wiring there’s a good chance they won’t work
Granted I’ve only used it in 2/3 houses but they’ve always given me the best speed, at least in the past 5-10 years. They used to be much worse if you’re basing this on old experience. And also the oldest house I used them in only got 2MBps so it wasn’t exactly hard for them to get to top speed. My current place isn’t exactly new wiring and the copper cables still get my max speed of 11MBps.
Yeah you won’t get the full experience of gigabit connection through copper wall cables but I’ve never lived in a place with fast enough WiFi for that to matter. I much prefer a cable free house, I have a power cable going to my server in a cupboard and I really hate it, wish there was a power socket in there.
That’s fine if you’re simply trying to max out your net, but for large internal file transfers EoP are a nuisance vs GbE.
Depending on the model, and your electric network, you might get some disconnects though. Had that at my parents years ago, ended up doing exactly what the meme is
From my experience, power line adapters are very hit or miss depending on your house setup. I’ve had power line adapters that couldn’t even get above 10 Mbps. I feel like the next best thing besides just straight up Ethernet cables is something called MoCA adapters. They use the already existing (in most houses) coax cables, which allow for much higher throughput and very consistent connection. I’ve had peaks of 850-900 Mbps with 10ms latency using MoCA adapters.
Yep. Got one transferring 1 gig fiber between floors, and the upstairs regularly gets full speed through it. Highly recommended if you can do it.
This is as dumb as asking if people don’t know wifi exists. Yeah, pretty much everyone knows, but it has substantial tradeoffs to just running a long cat6 cable, one of which likely is plain cost.
If I wanted to do powerline best I could do is get 3 rooms next to me, certainly not floor above or below me.
thanks for this!
Just be careful, they can be pretty expensive and often way way slower than advertised.
The main reasons I use them are places you lack WiFi coverage, where reliability is more important than speed.
I’m guessing Ethernet would be transmitted over the electrical wiring? if that’s the case, if your house have different circuits it wouldn’t work?
It actually CAN work across circuits, I believe, but it’s significantly degraded. Like 5-10 Mbps bad.
What in tarnation is this black magic? I don’t know how I’ve never heard of these before.
If your house is wired for cable and you’re not using it, they also have MOCA which is way way better.
Coax cables are wicked fast and you can use them alongside network switches to get LAN all sorts of places you’d normally have issues.
They’re good/reliable enough that it’s worth the £20-30 to try a set out. Although like another guy commented bad wall wiring can sometimes have effects if your router is really fast, I get my full 11MBps through my walls easily enough in relatively old housing.
11mbps, even if that’s megabytes not bits, is pretty fuckin slow as far as network speeds today. That’s either 1/100th or 1/10th of gigabit speeds, and a good Ethernet cable can provide well over gigE nowadays
Which only really matters if your actual internet connection can do the same.
Or in other words, it depends, so each one should try to get the right solution for their situation.
I didn’t realize that the only thing people used network connections for was Internet connections. Wow thanks for letting me know.
Lots of ISPs offer way more than 100mbps, many places offer past 1gbps. Even if they don’t, there are many LAN-based things that run even if you don’t know they do. P2p software updates are widespread now. So yeah “it depends” on whether you care about a fast and stable network connection.
Not to mention, power line is a shared medium, much like wifi, so if you have two computers, kiss even your already slow speeds goodbye
First, I suggest you read the last 12 words of my post rather than reacting to your own interpretation of my comment as a personal dig at you.
Second, Ethernel over Power sharing is only up to the first circuit breaker, whislt WiFi sharing is only limited by metal surfaces, walls and distance.
This means that in some situations (for example appartments in appartment buildings) EoP “sharing” is entirelly dependent on what devices a person puts on the same electrical network (i.e. the power line branch sharing the same circuit breaker) whilst WiFi is a complete total hellhole of everybody screwing everybody else.
Further, people sometimes rent the place they live in, not own it and getting permission to run wire along the walls might be impossible whilst investing in improving the landlord’s property by having wire run within the existing paths inside the wall (usually shared with power wire) is usually not exactly smart.
So Ethernet Over Power is a possible solution that should be considered in light of the situation and used if appropriate or discarded if not.
Looking at and evaluating the various solutions in light of the context is the Engineering approach to solving problems, so it makes sense to present a possible solution in a public forum when one’s intention is to help others.
A self-centred “it’s not good in my situation hence it’s shit and anybody who says otherwise is insulting me” take does nothing to help others.
My original comment was about how slow Ethernet over power was and you claimed that only matters if your internet is faster. There are lots of situations where you’d run cable where that statement isn’t true. If you had said “sure it’s slower but it still works sometimes” that’s a wildly different statement than the equivalent of “speed only matters if it’s the bottleneck to the internet”
Power line adapters are usually fairly separated by different circuits, but that’s far from a hard limit. Just because there’s not a reliable connection between two circuits doesn’t mean the medium isn’t shared and interference can’t happen - it is very much like wifi through a cement wall or two.
In no way am I personally offended, I just used some sarcasm to show how inane that original statement is; and those kind of statements are everywhere in networking discussions.
Yeah ok, I see what you mean.
There is indeed as you pointed out the problem that the bandwith is shared between devices on the same electric circuit when using Ethernet Over Power but not with Point To Point Ethernet connections (which are all of them nowadays, though in the old days shared topologies were more common).
I can see how if you have devices on you network communicating with each other and using lots of bandwidth doing so, the bottleneck wouln’t at all be the internet connection.
That said, point to point ethernet connections to a central router might not be the greatest solution if your running your own mini server farm from you a location away from the main router, unless you want bundles of cables along your walls. Ultimatelly keeping those things together and pulling a single cable from the main router to a secondary router that then connects point to point to all those machines, might be a better option.
And no, EoP doesn’t leak in any way significantly across high inductances or transformers which have been designed to work with home electrics (i.e. for a frequency of 50/60Hz) simply because the inductors filter out the higher frequencies that are necessary to be able to transfer data at MBit/s speeds - this isn’t a “networking” thing, it’s Physics (and basic Electronics).
Even if the EoP protocol using is using multiple channels at multiple frequencies, the lower frequencies that might leak between your and your neighbours’ electric circuits if both are using those adaptors, and could thus have too low a Signal-Noise ratio to be useable, are a tiny fraction of the total bandwith because those low frequencies which can transverse the inductors without being too dampened cannot encode and carry all that much data (it relates to the Nyquist Theorem), so you would loose a tiny fraction of the total bandwidth (I would be surprised if even a 1MHz signal can cross an Electric Meter without being attenuated to near non-existence).
Even the radio waves emitted by your wires whilst carrying that data will at worst induce tiny amounts of electric noise in your neighbours wires (and vice-versa) as neither are designed as antennas for those frequencies. We’re talking sub-1% levels of electrical noise due to electromagnetic interference here.
If your house is right next to your neighbours’ (such as in an appartment building), unless yours and your neighbour’s electric circuits both sit behind the same Electric Meter (i.e. you share payment) and hence there is nothing but two simple circuit breakers or fuses between both electric circuits, the level of EoP interference between both will be at least one order of magnitude lower (probably much more) than the level of WiFi interference if only because of the coil in the Meter along with the natural resistance of the circuit acts as an LP filter with quite a low cut-off point thus attenuating almost all of the signal, and if you sit behind different mains transformers the signal going across will be so low as to not even be measurable.
It’s not by chance that other posters were complaining that EoP did not work between devices in two different parts of the house, and that’s merely them being in different electric circuits separated by simple circuit breakers.
Yeah, it’s an old house and I’m not paying for gigabit internet because whenever I have I’ve literally never gotten the advertised speeds. I’m sure it’s good enough for 99% of people, I have the best internet of all my friends lol. But yeah, you won’t get the full gigabit speeds through copper wires if that’s what you can get from your router in other ways.
Pretty sure nowhere apart from ugly new builds and student housing really gets modern internet speeds in the UK. I got one dude who’s still in the same city as me on like 10mb/s. My other friend just bought unlimited 4g because it’s better than their shit WiFi.