Power line networking - What has your experience been?

[WackyDan]

I intend to have the house fully wired in another year or two once I pull a damaged ceiling down and have access to the floor trusses and such...

Until then, I need to get Ethernet to the garage for two projects.

- IP camera installation
- Ethernet burial to shed. * Not crazy - placing a NAS back there as a mirror to the NAS in the house. Fuck the cloud.

I originally thought of using another wireless router I have here as wireless to ethernet repeater/bridge...

Now I'm thinking of using powerline networking to bridge the gap between my router/switch in my house to the IP cameras I'm installing inside and outside the garage. Seems like they might work more reliably and have more foolproof setup. Again, this setup will only be used for another year or so until I hard wire the garage.

So what brands/models have you used and what has your experience been? Any specific recommendations. I'm not new to networking as I work as a systems engineer in my day job.

 

[Eug]

My experience has been:

1) Good
2) Mediocre
3) Terrible

Depends on which rooms and circuits used, and for what purpose. If your setup gives you #1 or #2, an HD IP camera would work reasonably OK (probably with occasional dropouts). However, even a "good" connection may not necessarily work well for a NAS, unless your data requirements are low.

I do what you do in terms of NAS backups. I have my main NAS in my home office, but a secondary backup NAS in a wiring closet on the opposite side of the house. However, my setup is all Gigabit. Truthfully though, only the initial backup is the big pain. My NAS backs up incrementally, so I suppose a good powerline ethernet connection can handle incremental backups, as long as the data requirements are reasonably small. I just wonder what the NAS wil do if the backup is interrupted by a connection drop. Will it just continue on when the network reconnects? Or will the backup just fail after a certain time out period?

Also note that even if your tested speeds are decent (eg. 40 Mbps) when you first hook it up, that can change dramatically during the day depending upon the interference. Don't necessarily expect the connection to work properly if you decide to plug in a vacuum cleaner on the same circuit to clean up the car.

BTW, I've tried a couple of consumer IP cameras over WiFi, and they sucked. They'd overheat and lockup with continuous usage. OTOH, my consumer IP cameras would work 24/7/365 streaming video to my NAS for storage over Ethernet.

 

[WackyDan]

Yup... I'm playing with a Foscam camera at the moment. It is both Wifi and ethernet but the wifi is real buggy to get working right and I had to force my router to strictly B/G mode which kinda sucks.

I could have the secondary NAS backup initially in my computer room and then move it to the shed, so no biggy there. Just looking for a somewhat workable solution for the next 12-24 months.

Plan is to have the powerline adapter feed a POE switch for the POE cameras and NAS.

Thanks for your input.

 

[Eug]

Just buy a pair of mainstream branded Powerline/HomePlug AV "200 Mbps" units from a store with a good return policy.

It may work well for you, but then again it may be absolutely terrible.

Note that there is now Powerline/HomePlug AV2, but I personally have never seen any of the AV2-certified products in the real world.

AV2 is reportedly a "500 Mbps" class product. There are other "500 Mbps" products available but they are all proprietary, and so far most haven't performed much better than the 200 Mbps stuff in real-world (noisy) conditions.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/othe...lnetbuilder-ces-2013-wrap-up?showall=&start=1

That said, cnet liked the Netgear Powerline XAV5501. It's also proprietary, but gave them real world speeds over 100 Mbps, although I'm not sure how exactly they tested it. Probably in much-better-than-average conditions.

http://reviews.cnet.com/bridges/netgear-powerline-av-500/4505-3304_7-34799068-2.html

Then again I see real world reports saying they get similar ballpark speeds to 200 Mbps AV, which is usually well under 50 Mbps, and often under 25 Mbps, with periodic dropouts.

 

[AFurryReptile]

My experience, with Xyxel, Netgear, and Belkin devices has been bad across the board.

In all cases, the device gets hot, the device drops packets, the device is highly dependent on where you plug in it... just not reliable at all.

 

[JoeMcJoe]

I have Zyxel 500 Mbps Powerline devices to an external garage. Get between 40 and 80 Mbps over them.

Make sure both lines where you plug in the power are on the same 110 feed/side of your 220 panel. This helps with the speed, also place the devices on the closest socket to the breaker panel, keeping the circuit as short as possible.

 

[skyking]

I have had limited experience, My first set from zyxel failed after a month or so. Back to the egg for an exchange. the replacement is not exactly reliable either. A second set I purchased at the same time is still doing OK.

 

[SecurityTheatre]

Sounds like wireless is still the way to go...

 

[Vincent]

I've used 500mbps powerline adapters for quite a while and have been pleased with them. For me the key advantage over wireless is that powerline always works. With wireless, low-throughput general web browsing is fine, but if I saturate the network with hundreds of MBs of sustained traffic, the connection dies and I have to reboot.

In particular I have used the Zyxel and Netgear 500mbps adapters. The Zyxel ones typically report a higher link rate, but I never really did any tests. I've never tried 200mbps adapters.

You can get a pair of Trendnet 500mbps powerline adapters for $70 with a promo code from Newegg:

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemai...53113-_-EMC-053113-Index-_-Header-_-ClickHere

Be careful--some of the cheaper 500mbps powerline adapters only have 10/100 ethernet ports, but the Trendnet pair above has gigabit ports.

 

[XavierMace]

I installed a pair of Netgear ones in my parents house for Netflix Streaming on the PS3. It worked OK but after a year they decided to just run cables.

 

[Elixer]

My experience, with Xyxel, Netgear, and Belkin devices has been bad across the board.

In all cases, the device gets hot, the device drops packets, the device is highly dependent on where you plug in it... just not reliable at all.

Pretty much this.
Not worth all the trouble.

 

[Doomer]

Hit or miss. I recently use PLN to try and extend wireless coverage using a AP at the other end. PLN kept dropping the connection even tho both units were on the same network. It dropped the connection frequently enough to render the AP unusable.

 

[JoeMcJoe]

Pretty much this.
Not worth all the trouble.

For some.

For me powerline is more reliable than wireless.

Digging a trench outside was a little more trouble.

 

[marcplante]

You have to think about the electrical topology of your house PLN fails after too many Hops (ie junction boxes) across the house. I've gotten drastically different results in adjoining plugs in the same house. OK for basic data transfer. I wouldn't want to rely on it for video streaming of any sort. grab a couple connectors with a return policy and run a few speed tests.

Can you find ANY way to run a single Cat 5 connection across the house to set up the remote hub? maybe run something outside in a conduit or other protection until you can get your interior work done? rather then go down, you might go up and sneak the line under the bottom edge of your roof shingles to give it a protected path across the house then run it down a corner on the back of a downspout to your target at the other end of the house. sounds like you're already going outside anyhow for the shed. Think creatively about the topology.

Maybe rethink where your original access point is if you have more than one option for the core coax drop. You just need a couple divers spots to support the Wireless N network.