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How fast should a powerline adapter connection be?

S

solvaldi

Junior Member
Hi, I am new to home networking and all that stuff so I wasn't sure what to expect. What I was trying to do was to strengthen the wireless signal in my living room downstairs from my tp-link router upstairs. I want to use my tablet in my livingroom and it is not riding the wifi signal very well. I bought a cheap pair of mixed powerline adapters off ebay (a rocketfish and an actiontec rated at 200mbps a piece) to hook up to a second router in my living room, to turn it into some sort of access point.

I am just not sure how fast such a connection was supposed to be, or how to measure it. I initially plugged both adapters in my study room where the main router was and did a speedtest (www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/), and the download speed was 2mbps (measured from a laptop hooked up to the receiving adapter). I did the same test on the desktop that is wired to the main router and it was 12mbps (btw I thought comcast blast should be a lot faster than that?). I didn't expect it to be that much of a difference especially when both adapters were in the same room with the main router.

The laptop in my living room, when connected wirelessly to the main router, can score around 10mbps by itself. I haven't seen any improvement in my tablet's wifi performance with the adapter set-up either. Before buying another pair of adapters, I thought maybe I should check if I went about the whole thing wrong. Can someone please enlighten me on the matter? Many thanks and happy new year to everyone!
 
Those Ethernet over power line adapters depend on the quality of your wiring among other factors. You shouldn't use two different brands and I'm surprised they even work because they use their own protocol I do believe. Encryption for one would be a mismatch.

Someone may chime in here and post a link to a good unit you could buy on Newegg, Amazon or ebay.

A good speedtest is www.speedtest.net, but this doesn't messure the connection speed of the adapters, but rather you Internet speed to the server you use on the site. Those tests are not always accurate either since they use multi-bonded connections and such, but it gives you a general idea.

As far as your blast performance is your router updated for DOCSIS 3.0? Have you reset your modem? Is it even a DOCSIS 3.0 capable modem? If it's old then chances are it is not. What is the model and brand of the modem? If I know the type of modem I can tell you how to access it and check your DOCSIS version.

Those are some pretty crappy speeds for Blast BTW. My laptop gets a 20 MbPS connection and we don't have blast with Comcast. We used to but decided to save some money and downgrade.
 
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Ideally they should be the same model but they should work across brands too.

Power bars kill the signal so take it off that if it's plugged into one. Even then though, 2-12 Mbps is not unusual for 200 Mbps adapters for some houses. For others you may get 40+ Mbps.
 
Hi, thank you for your replies. Mine is a motorola sb6141. Yesterday I turned off wmm (whatever that was) on my router and I got 50mbps on the main router, and 10mbps on the adapters. The guy who sold it to me claimed that he got 20-25mbps on these adapters over a 50mbps internet connection, and his connection was over different circuits (I guess mine is too).

I guess one fifth of the speed is a reasonable number? (my house is just a small townhouse) I mean I probably better off just use wireless connection but I just want to see maybe there is other reasons involved for the reduction in speed (maybe I should try bypassing the router and just connect on adapter to the modem to see if the router is holding it back)
 
The other problem is that if you're only getting 2-12 Mbps, the connection will likely be unstable. I would try the the units on the same circuit just as as a speed test.
 
Many people run fast and nicely in an open clear Track.

They can Not do the same if the Track covered with a Foot of water.

The lines that Powerline Network run On can be anything from a "dirty field" (it is never a clear field) to One covered with a foot of water.



😎
 
Actually at 10mbps it is not too bad. I mean it is not faster than wirelessly connecting to the main router but I think it is a little more stable (because the second router is closer there?).

Two things I notice: that through the adapters, the upload speed is always faster than the download speed (upload at 6mbps when download is 2mbps, and upload is a little over 10 when download is at 10).

And that it runs at 10mbps during the morning, but the connection through the adapters would either be lost for a bit or drop down to 2mbps at around 7pm (this happens to the wifi before too when I did not have the adapters). I always thought maybe it's the interference from the neighbors, which was why I went with the adapters in the first place. We don't have any major appliances running at 7pm to degrade the electrical signal so this truly baffles me.
 
To see if you do have DOCSIS 3.0 enter 192.168.100.1 into your address bar in the browser. It may not work if you're connected to the router. You may have to be directly connected to the modem to see the config of the modem.
 
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