# Powerline adpaters



## Andy1972 (Jan 12, 2014)

So my household likes to use the internet. A lot. From smartphones to you tube to gaming. However, we arent experts and I just google anything I need to know.

My son and myself are the heaviest users with our online gaming. Ive been using sky fibre and have been fine with it providing we agree not to hog the bandwidth and save downloading games to overnight. Ive just upgrade to sky fibre max so am getting a ‘guaranteed’ 69mbps. However over wifi this has been more like 35mbps down to 15 using wifi extenders on the first floor. My Netflix is on my tv, hard wired to the router and that was showing 55mbps so close. I thought id complain and sure enough they said im getting ’69.78mbps to the router’. Ive no idea how to prove this. So im accepting my TV drains a little.

Using the wifi, even with 35mb and latency of 40 ive been getting a bit of rubber banding on some games (stars BF2 and battlefield 5) to point of me stopping playing.

However, yesterday I bought some powerline adapters. Not sure if they would work as my house is a new house and has RCD distribution board with each floor in the house (3 floors) as a separate circuit. It was dead easy to set up as I bought some pass through ones from argos for £35. Plugged them in, left them for 2 mins and switched everything on. Bingo, my xbox X upstairs is now showing as ‘wired’ connection and im getting a constant 50-55mbps. No lag on the games so far. I also found out my router was upside down and turning the right way up made my TV jump from 45-55 to 68mbps haha

No real point to the post other than saying if you struggle with bad wifi around the house, even with extenders and aren’t a techno guru then try them. Worked for me and cant believe ive been stressing for so long trying to max out my wifi. I was even considering getting an electrician in to wire in some ethernet ports around the house!

Any further tips to improve things greatly appreicated!


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## garage_dweller (Apr 10, 2018)

I've used powerline adapters in the past when I had sky broadband and they were fine.

Moved to Virgin a couple of years ago and currently getting around 380mbps downstairs but still struggling with low speeds downstairs. I sold the powerline adapters so just bought a wifi range extender to see if that helps things upstairs. Should arrive today.


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## Andy1972 (Jan 12, 2014)

garage_dweller said:


> I've used powerline adapters in the past when I had sky broadband and they were fine.
> 
> Moved to Virgin a couple of years ago and currently getting around 380mbps downstairs but still struggling with low speeds downstairs. I sold the powerline adapters so just bought a wifi range extender to see if that helps things upstairs. Should arrive today.


380mbps! :doublesho how do people get offered this sort of speed. Mines a new estate so you would think we have the most up to date infrastructure yet I can only get 69mbps


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## garage_dweller (Apr 10, 2018)

Its virgin fibre optic so the connection is direct. I was originally on 200, but got upgraded to 350 but usually get 380.


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

The only thing to mention about powerline adaptors is they do suffer quite a bit of packet loss and cause 'dirty electricity'.

I do use them but they aren't good enough for some things I do so will I am in the process of accumulating things to run Cat 6 throughout the house.


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## Andy1972 (Jan 12, 2014)

Starbuck88 said:


> The only thing to mention about powerline adaptors is they do suffer quite a bit of packet loss and cause 'dirty electricity'.
> 
> I do use them but they aren't good enough for some things I do so will I am in the process of accumulating things to run Cat 6 throughout the house.


yeah my packet loss on the xbox has gone from 0% to 4%. Not sure if that makes a difference or not?


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## Deathstar (Jan 13, 2013)

Power line adaptors can cause all sorts of issues with packet loss, drop outs. Increase in CRC errors.
Have a read on the Kitz forum. 

They are dirty things, I lost 20Mb in speed using them.


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## Andy1972 (Jan 12, 2014)

Deathstar said:


> Power line adaptors can cause all sorts of issues with packet loss, drop outs. Increase in CRC errors.
> Have a read on the Kitz forum.
> 
> They are dirty things, I lost 20Mb in speed using them.


Id read something similar but then id also read equal or more rating them as life savers.

Im deffo in the latter. My signal to a remote xbox has gone up from 15-35mbps to 50-55 with a 4% packet loss. Not sure what other issues to look out for. I was losing connection to EA servers every so often when on fifa 19 last night (even with 55mb). Not sure if that's connected.


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## Starbuck88 (Nov 12, 2013)

Andy1972 said:


> yeah my packet loss on the xbox has gone from 0% to 4%. Not sure if that makes a difference or not?


In reality, if you see no errors, no increased lag etc, carry on. If big enough loss things like button presses etc could potentially happen but it'd need to be big.



Andy1972 said:


> Id read something similar but then id also read equal or more rating them as life savers.
> 
> Im deffo in the latter. My signal to a remote xbox has gone up from 15-35mbps to 50-55 with a 4% packet loss. Not sure what other issues to look out for. I was losing connection to EA servers every so often when on fifa 19 last night (even with 55mb). Not sure if that's connected.


Yes this could well be.

One example of packet loss in my business environment, take a Cisco SIP/VOIP phone. Via Ethernet, works fine, via powerline adaptor...doesn't even ring or notice a call is coming in. So completely useless for a number of 'small data' applications where the data is tiny but needs to be of a certain quality.

Most things will request the missing data again, which will just increase lag or failed handshakes with services may well cause you to be kicked but really EA servers were probably playing up is the most likely cause.


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## pxr5 (Feb 13, 2012)

I really don't like these power line adapters. Had some a few years ago. They worked for a while, then my broadband speed kept plummeting. I rang the tech support to moan and the guy told me to plug straight into the router and retest. I was dubious at first, but when I relented and did as instructed my speeds returned. As soon as I put my powerline LAN back on, off it went again. In the end I just bit the bullet and installed Cat6 around the house, using external walls for some of the runs. Everything is super quick now on a gigabit LAN. Everything than can possibly be on etherent is on it, except phones. I've even managed to cable up firesticks now, rather than use wifi.


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## Mugwump (Feb 17, 2008)

I would have a good read on the link below before going down the power line route - the interference those things cause to a wide range of radio communication links is more far reaching than most people realise. Added to which, almost all of the PLT devices currently available don't comply with the legal requirements regarding radio interference and the manufacturers massage the test results to get them through (in a similar fashion to the VW 'dieselgate' fiddle).

Have a thorough read of this link before you use it: https://www.ban-plt.org.uk/


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