Combo of adapters or suggestions to increase streaming bandwidth

[hoorah]

I've got a few media center PCs, one of which is in our bedroom. I can't get any cat5 to it so I setup a powerline ethernet connection. Unfortunately, our bedroom is on one of the new AFCI circuit breakers, and it kills the powerline speed. I get around 20Mbps, sometimes more, sometimes less. It will work okay for one HD stream (using HDHomerun Prime), but trying to do more than one stream, or trying to watch recorded tv from the downstairs PC it doesn't have enough bandwidth.

Wireless N would work, but we have a toddler with another on the way, and when he goes to bed we turn on a baby monitor which absolutely wrecks wireless in our house - every connection drops.

Is there any way to setup a wifi network that uses the powerline as a failover? I can manually enable/disable adapters but as this is a media center PC I'd like the background process to be automated.

I'm thinking about trying wireless A. We have a wireless A capable router, and a few of our laptops have wireless ABGN cards, but it seems like even with A the connection is not reliable. I havent tested the wireless A thoroughly, it just seems like when I'm using a laptop that has A and I get on in, I'll drop the connection 10 minutes later and windows will be back to trying to connect to the N network again.....

I read some articles on powerline networking, and some people suggested using a filter on the power connection for the adapter. Do these work decently? I'm using a TrendNet (I think) Powerline AV200 if it matters. I'd like to get around 50Mbps, I think that would offer decent performance.

BTW, router is a Linksys/Cisco E-3000 with Tomato firmware.

 

[Blastman]

Wireless N would work, but we have a toddler with another on the way, and when he goes to bed we turn on a baby monitor which absolutely wrecks wireless in our house - every connection drops.

Baby monitors are usually 900Mhz, but some are 2.4Ghz which can interfere with your wireless. It appears yours is 2.4. You could consider looking for a 900Mhz baby monitor if your wireless N performance is acceptable when not interfered by the baby monitor.

Alternatively, according to your info, you have a E3000 wireless router which supports dual band 2.4/5.0Ghz. You could get some wireless USB dongles/PCI cards that support dual band and put them on the 5.0Ghz band. That should solve your interference problems and would likely increase performance (over the 2.4 band) if the distance/interference between router and the cards is not too great. The 5.0Ghz band has greater performance at closer distances but doesn't punch out as well to longer distances as the 2.4 band.

 

[Blastman]

Another alternative might be to try switching channels on either your baby monitor or router and see if that helps with the interference problem.

 

[JackMDS]

Or get another Child Monitor that does not Trash WIFI bands.


😎

 

[John Connor]

5GHz is what I would use.

It's funny, WIFI is spread spectrum and according to Wikipedia spread spectrum is jam prof. Sure...

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Wifi baby monitor.

 

[hoorah]

Baby monitors are usually 900Mhz, but some are 2.4Ghz which can interfere with your wireless. It appears yours is 2.4. You could consider looking for a 900Mhz baby monitor if your wireless N performance is acceptable when not interfered by the baby monitor.

Alternatively, according to your info, you have a E3000 wireless router which supports dual band 2.4/5.0Ghz. You could get some wireless USB dongles/PCI cards that support dual band and put them on the 5.0Ghz band. That should solve your interference problems and would likely increase performance (over the 2.4 band) if the distance/interference between router and the cards is not too great. The 5.0Ghz band has greater performance at closer distances but doesn't punch out as well to longer distances as the 2.4 band.

I think I'm going to pick up a good 5ghz card and give it a shot. Like I said I've tried the wireless A with not great results but it was over a longer distance and I didn't test it thoroughly. I also had a USB wireless A adapter that never held a reliable connection but I'm suspecting the actual dongle is bad, possibly overheating.

Another alternative might be to try switching channels on either your baby monitor or router and see if that helps with the interference problem.

As far as I know the baby monitor doesn't have switchable channels (at least that I can find in the menu). The router channel is chosen to interfere the least with surrounding wifi but maybe It would work better interfering with other wifi than trying to compete with the baby monitor.

Or get another Child Monitor that does not Trash WIFI bands.


😎

These things are ridiculously expensive too! At least moreso than a small LCD screen and a wireless camera should be. We read all the reviews before hand and nobody mentioned any wifi interference. Guess all the reviewers were living in the stone age.