Buying a new House - WiFi or Powerline?

[Drekce]

In my current house I wired Cat5 everywhere, but this new place would be a lot harder, and I think that alternative networking tech means I don't really need to. Here's my setup:

I need primary access in four places, plus general WiFi.

1. Cable Internet Access in an office (on the second story). This is where everything will originate.

2. Playroom on second story, fairly close to office. Will have an Xbox, DirectTV box (wired acess only) and Boxee. I could probably have a Wifi (N or AC) with a bridge to have everything wired, or do a powerline adapter.

3. Downstairs TV. Will have a PS3, Boxee, DirecTV, etc. Again, Wifi or Powerline? This is a lot farther and on a separate floor from the office.

4. Desktop PC in family room. Currently uses WiFi, will probably just stick to that.

Thoughts? The cost is roughly the same.

 

[cbrunny]

I picked up my first powerline kit last month and have been extremely pleased with it. It took a 2mbps internet connection to 90mbps. 2mbps was not enough for me to stream sd star trek episodes from one computer to another (though it was more likely because of wireless interference). Now I can stream everything.

If I were you, I'd go powerline for anywhere you would stream anything from anywhere. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833704139 is what I have and loving it.

 

[JackMDS]

With Wireless you can most of the time find a Good solution.

The draw back is that at times you need good knowledge and few hundred $$ to get there.

With power-line.

It either functionally works, or Not. The general probability to provide good functionality is rather low.

What to do.

If you are willing and can take the Wireless approach go for it.

Otherwise, get Powerline hardware, make sure that you can return it if does not work on you House system and give it a try.

Success stories reported by people on line means that the Powerline works in their Home, otherwise it is meaningless.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I have 5 of these ... have had them for about 2 years.

netgear 200mbps ... they're great, I get 100mbps-160mbps, and doing large file transfers I can sustain 4-6MB/s ...

I bought the newer 500mbps powerline linky These guys I get about 350-400mbps ... and transfers at about 10-11MB/s....so I assume I can stream without too much of an issue.

 

[Drekce]

With Wireless you can almost always find a solution.

The draw back is that at times you need good knowledge and few hundred $$ to get there.

With power-line.

It either functionally works, or Not. The general probability to provide good functionality is rather low.

What to do.

If you are willing and can take the Wireless approach go for it.

Otherwise, get Powerline hardware, make sure that you can return it if does not work on you House system and give it a try.

Success stories reported by people on line means that the Powerline works in their Home, otherwise it is meaningless.

This is what I'm worried about. People either love or hate powerline, and it seems 100% dependent on how their house is wired.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Buy them off Amazon, if they don't work, return them.

 

[Eug]

In many ways powerline and WiFi are similar.

In my house, on certain circuits powerline sucks. On other circuits, powerline is quite decent. In fact, I use powerline for my babycam. I can stream VGA video from the babycam for hours on end. I get occasional dropouts for a fraction of a second, but that doesn't matter for a baby cam. For SD video non-live streaming it'd work even better though since it could buffer. (Babycams don't provide buffering.)

In my house, in certain areas in the house, WiFi sucks (out of range). In other areas, it works great. For streaming video it usually works, but if I'm in certain spots I get a lot of pauses or stuttering. Furthermore, certain hardware is more flaky when streaming over WiFi. In fact, that's why the babycam is on powerline. That device is not 100% stable when acting as a streaming source on WiFi for long periods, I suspect from the heat. Occasionally after a few hours of continuous use on WiFi, it will crash.

Interestingly, distance is not as big of an issue with powerline as it is for WiFi. I had powerline going to a gazebo 200 feet away and it worked for low bitrate SD video. It wasn't sufficient for HD streaming though. However, at that distance WiFi didn't work at all.

What I would suggest is definitely get WiFi, but then also consider getting powerline as well. WiFi's big advantage is the fact you don't actually to plug anything in.

 

[skyking]

Before you give up on any wire, look at the floor plans carefully. The easiest place to run an unobtrusive wire is from a baseboard of the upper floor that is over any closet. A wire dropping into the top of a closet does not interfere with anything. Just a thought, that may get an AP into the lower floor with little fuss.

 

[s44]

I'd choose MOCA over powerline any day.

 

[Eug]

MoCA is a great technology, but the hardware is extremely hard to find and often very expensive. Another option is HomePNA over coax, but it's not compatible with certain cable TV technologies on the same line. In fact, you probably should not have cable hooked up at all outside the house if you're going to use HomePNA over coax. It's also very hard to find so that's no advantage, so yeah, MoCA is better.

I just happened to have a couple HomePNA coax devices (VDSL2 modems) and I was getting about 68 Mbps real-world between them over my RG6 lines in the house. More importantly though, like MoCA, it was 100% stable, just like Ethernet. Light years better than both powerline and WiFi.

 

[s44]

MoCA is a great technology, but the hardware is extremely hard to find and often very expensive.

MOCA adapter pair for $115

 

[Eug]

MOCA adapter pair for $115

Decent price, but no shipping to Canada. The eBay offers are generally more expensive, at least shipped to Canada. HomePNA adapters are often considerably cheaper, but is incompatible with many cable technologies.

I really wonder why these MoCA adapters aren't more popular. They're compatible with most cable technologies, they're more stable than powerline, and they're faster than powerline in the real world, but nonetheless, powerline is much more widely available and cheaper.

 

[BuffaloChuck]

Jack's original argument towards PowerLine is my practice, too - buy a kit locally so I can return it, if necessary, take it to a site and plug it in.

It's going to work within a few minutes, or it won't. No gnashing of teeth, no virgin sacrifices, no new cuss-words affect it. I 'walk' the Receiver Unit around to different locations and see which places work and which won't, then make the decision based on that.

But the joys of CAT wiring is soooo nice.

 

[s44]

Decent price, but no shipping to Canada. The eBay offers are generally more expensive, at least shipped to Canada.

I assumed OP was in the US.

 

[Drekce]

Before you give up on any wire, look at the floor plans carefully. The easiest place to run an unobtrusive wire is from a baseboard of the upper floor that is over any closet. A wire dropping into the top of a closet does not interfere with anything. Just a thought, that may get an AP into the lower floor with little fuss.

Now that I think about the layout of the house, this may be a possibility. I'll have to relook.

 

[Drekce]

I assumed OP was in the US.

I am in the US. The house is going to have satellite TV, but I may have the installer run new coax lines for that, so I can probably use the current line for this.

 

[JackMDS]

May be that for few $$ more the installer can add Cat6 to his wire too.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'd just find a way to run cat6. I can see it being hard to do in a multi story home though, but when there's a will there's a way. Are you planing to repaint any rooms? May as well cut drywall where you need and run a bunch of jacks now then you can patch and paint. Another option is running in corners then you install crown molding to hide the wires. For verticals you could probably even do crown too if you find some that's symetrical, or just cut a piece of wood with two 45 edges that will fit nicely and paint it same color as baseboards, or wall if you have the same paint.

If it's really not an option look at Unify APs. You'll still need to run some cat6 to them but at least you can run it where it will be easier.

Personally though I find it's better to keep the main network on wired, then have a separate wireless network that restricts access to most of the internal network and is only used for basic internet access, and maybe email and a few other local server services. That way if someone manages to hack it (let's just say a WPA2 exploit comes out like did for WEP) then they will have limited access to your network.

 

[s44]

If it's really not an option look at Unify APs. You'll still need to run some cat6 to them but at least you can run it where it will be easier.

Personally though I find it's better to keep the main network on wired, then have a separate wireless network that restricts access to most of the internal network and is only used for basic internet access, and maybe email and a few other local server services.

That's UniFi. And I second the suggestion no matter what he does on the wired end. (One AP on a middle floor should probably do it, though.)

Problem with running the wireless totally/almost isolated is that it restricts your own tablet/phone uses... or at least makes them more of a pain to set them up.

 

[Drekce]

Update:

Thanks for all if the input. I ended up running cat6 to all of the locations where I would have a cluster of devices. The tip about going from a second story closet down was the lifesaver, as there would have been no other way to hit my main TV spot without doing that, and I may not have thought about it.

Everything is running great, and I'm much happier with gigabit at my end points than what I would have gotten with any other solution.

 

[Drekce]

Oh, and the DirecTV installer who came to my house said I needed RG6 run to the TV, but there was no possible way to get it there based on the layout. I told him to leave because I wasn't going to get their service if it wouldn't work in my living room. I ran it myself along with the cat6 and then had then come back out...

 

[skyking]

copper is the best, man. Glad I could help out.

 

[kevnich2]

Oh, and the DirecTV installer who came to my house said I needed RG6 run to the TV, but there was no possible way to get it there based on the layout. I told him to leave because I wasn't going to get their service if it wouldn't work in my living room. I ran it myself along with the cat6 and then had then come back out...

Nice job! Wired is and will always be better than wireless/moca/powerline for in home network solutions. It just works. Also on the wireless side, I also side with the unifi AP. They're just rock solid and right in line with pricing for home use. Though I do use them for business deployments all the time. Just can't beat the price.

 

[Enigma102083]

While running cat5 maybe problematic, could you do two or three runs to appropriate locations? A Unifi 3 pack would probably cover everywhere you need.

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