Powerline Ethernet Adapter

Dirty Hipsters

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Anyone know anything about powerline ethernet adapters?

I've never used one, but considering getting one for my TV and playstation. They aren't getting great signal quality from the router in my new house and I can't figure out why.

My phone and work laptop both get great signal anywhere in the house, but my playstation 4 and TV are getting like 15mbps on a gigabit connection.
 

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
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I had one installed at my place for a time. They were really, really useful since it let me connect the living room (tv, consoles, media player) via Ethernet rather than wifi to my router. And the speed tests I ran using a laptop showed a pretty minimal loss of throughput.

However.

One week my neighbour got some pay tv installed and the installer used similar devices to connect the box to the router and it turned out there was somehow, somewhere a connection between our power because I somehow ended up connected to his network, getting his IP range and connection.

I ended up paying for a proper CAT6 run between my office and lounge room.

So in short they’re very useful - especially in properties you don’t own - for putting wired network devices in difficult to reach places, easy to setup and use and relocate.

That said they can fall victim to unintended consequences like what happened to me, I don’t know how well they handle multi-storey properties and they will take up a precious main socket - they work but can be unreliable through power boards.
 

Baffle

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Oct 22, 2016
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We use them; they work well and are convenient. They do occasionally drop and need to be unplugged and plugged back in. Never had an issue using them in an extension lead either.

They're only guaranteed to work if they're on the same ring main (I'm not sure if you use ring mains in the US, but I think radials are probably the same), but they do actually work across ring mains going back to the same consumer unit in my experience (with no noticeable quality difference). I understand that in blocks of flats that can be a problem with hooking into each other's networks.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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We use them; they work well and are convenient. They do occasionally drop and need to be unplugged and plugged back in. Never had an issue using them in an extension lead either.

They're only guaranteed to work if they're on the same ring main (I'm not sure if you use ring mains in the US, but I think radials are probably the same), but they do actually work across ring mains going back to the same consumer unit in my experience (with no noticeable quality difference). I understand that in blocks of flats that can be a problem with hooking into each other's networks.
Any particular brand or model that you would recommend?