Advice on how to optimize a powerline network

[paranoised]

Great website and forum. This is my first post and sorry for it being so long:

After a long wait, our ISP let us know that our 4 Mb/s Adsl line will be upgraded to a fiber to the home installation with speeds topping out at 100 Mb/s. When the ISP finally arrived to install the connection, it was apparent that it would not be possible to replace the copper telephone wiring into the house with the fiber lines, rather the best the ISP could do is to get the fiber line at the point of entry in the property and then we're on our own to try and get the connection inside the house. Laying fiber or Cat5e/6 to inside the premises was also rejected for technical and aesthetic reasons.

I finally decided to try the new Homeplug AV2 kit: Linksys PLEK500 Powerline AV2 Gigabit. I have one kit connected near the fiber entry point in the garage and another inside the property which is then connected to the wired home network. This could work a treat in theory, however the property is quite large (about 24,000 sqft) with the electric distribution points servicing the garage and the inside of the house respectively on opposite ends of the property which would affect throughput significantly. The other issue is that the fiber modem and the powerline kit would be housed in a garage with no air-conditioning, a major issue in my part of the world where temperatures reach to 50 degrees Celsius in the summer (122 F). I have housed the modem and powerline kit in a small server enclosure with two fans running 24/7 to help with the heat.

The set-up looks roughly like this:

The Cisco Powerline AV2 utility reports around 80/80 transmit and receive rates. The actual throughput recorded maxes out at around 42 Mb/s. The point which I have selected inside the house is the electric socket providing the highest speed by far, with the rest of the sockets tested averaging around 15 Mb/s.

Aside from unplugging all electric equipment utilizing the power network and aside from laying cable, what can I do to increase throughput in the network? Should I consider:
a) upgrading to TP-LINK TL-PA6010KIT AV600 which performed about 50% better according to the review on SNB?
b) go for the Devolo dlan 650+ which uses the earth wire to increase throughput? I haven't found any reliable reviews for this.
c) wait till September for the release of the Trendnet AV2 1200 kit with MIMO for speeds up-to 1200 Mb/s.

Ideally I would like the homeplug adapters to maintain throughput at least at 100 mb/s. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[stevech]

homeplug - your goal is 100Mbps (that's net yield at the IP layer, not raw bit rate on the HomePlug/HPNA, I asssume. The latter would be 200% or so of the net yield IP).

The key to power line IP is cleverly arranging things so the 1GHz or so RF signal imposed on the power line is not attenuated too much by certain things electrically near the powerline adapters.
Think of these things as "pinching the hose" and reducing the flow.

Things that attenuate include:

Most AC plug strips with so-called (B.S.) surge suppressors. No surge suppressor is best, for the RF case. Or just an extension cord or equivalent that is RF passive.

UPSes

Some new/fancy home entertainment systems have internal power filtering that attenuates.
Same, for some PCs and monitors.

How to deal with the above? I suggest plugging the adapter into a wall outlet. If you suspect something else using that outlet is attenuating, and it need to be "on" to attenuate... try putting the suspect device on the end of 25 ft. of extension cord, 3 prong. This 25 ft. gets some "inductance" in the line between the adapter and the offending attenuator. The inductance from 25' or more tends to diminish the negative affects of that attenuating device.

The above concept holds true too for a circuit breaker that loops through several wall outlets. The distance between the outlets that are on the same breaker has that isolating inductance effect as in the 25' extension cord.

Another gotcha in powerline IP in the US and elsewhere that use two phase power. Here, your breaker box has three mains power wires coming in.. phase A, phase B and a neutral. The powerline IP signal that's on a circuit breaker for phase A will couple nicely to other breakers on phase A and thus to all those outlets. But for the signal to get from A to B phase, there needs to be an RF bridge. This can be an accidental bridge like a long power wire from the breaker box to a 220VAC outlet i the kitchen, laundry or garage. The coupling an occur in the long 220V wire. Maybe. Or coupling cvan happen inside the 220V appliance. But that may be only when the appliance is "on".

In some bad cases, an intentional RF bridge is needed. This is a product that goes in the breaker box (electrician needed- safety).

Some people argue that this phase A/B bridging is never a problem. Others experience it but don't know it is the problem, rather than a signal attenuator - - also called a signal-sucker by lay persons.

And we have the occasional issue of a big noise producer - notorious are certain light dimmers at certain settings.

So some insights and planning are needed. And some of this is by trial and error on day 1, or any day where the population of appliances, home entertainment, etc., changes.

This can all be a non-problem. Or not. If it is, or later becomes so, patient informed troubleshooting can usually find a workaround.

Though use of MoCA instead of Powerline is not as easy on day 1, it does tend to not degrade as can powerline IP.

 

[thoma]

When the ISP finally arrived to install the connection, it was apparent that it would not be possible to replace the copper telephone wiring into the house with the fiber lines, rather the best the ISP could do is to get the fiber line at the point of entry in the property and then we're on our own to try and get the connection inside the house.

Did you leave the existing phone lines in place? Are they in use?

If the answers are "Yes" and "No", then you could repurpose your phone lines to carry the broadband inside your house.

There are HomePlug adapters that will run over "dead" (de-energized) phone lines. Because there is no device noise to interfere with the HomePlug signal, you can expect to obtain very high bandwidth from such a setup. It is certainly a cleaner signal than you can get over power lines!

There are only a couple of companies that make these HomePlug-over-phoneline adapters. One of them is Solwise, whose PL-TP-E500C costs £70 each: http://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-homeplug-pl-tp-e500c.html Since Solwise is a British company, you will probably need an adapter for the power plug.

P.S. Are you in Australia? You're using Celsius, but give area in square feet. Australia is one place that I can think of that gets up to 50 °C in the summer.

 

[paranoised]

Thanks stevech, very insightful. I have a very basic understanding of RF noise from the different appliances but I have been re-arranging by trial and error. There are certainly spikes in performance during the day in actual bandwidth observed from 35-45 Mbps (yes net yield at the IP). I'll try some of the suggestions over the weekend. As for MoCA, the house is wired for satellite TV rather than cable which I have read somewhere that is incompatible with the MoCA solutions. Also the satellite connections we have available are unfortunately too far away from the fiber connection so it won't work.

Thanks thoma for your response as well. I have shied away from doing that due to the sub-100 mbps connection in the existing solutions. I believe that there is a DIY solution by using a homeplug av1/2 kit and converting it into something that can use the phone lines at 500 Mbps, however I would prefer for simplicity's sake to buy a ready made solution. I have read elsewhere that the phone connections could be converted to Ethernet as they are in essence CAT3 cables and are able to carry a maximum throughput of 100 mbps in ideal conditions, though the signal would deteriorate over distances (which is the case here).

I'm actually in Bahrain (Persian gulf), we use an arbitrary mix of imperial and metric.

 

[thoma]

Thanks thoma for your response as well. I have shied away from doing that due to the sub-100 mbps connection in the existing solutions. I believe that there is a DIY solution by using a homeplug av1/2 kit and converting it into something that can use the phone lines at 500 Mbps, however I would prefer for simplicity's sake to buy a ready made solution.

How much money are you willing to spend?

Devolo makes a HomePlug-over-phoneline device, the dLAN 500 AVpro UNI, which has gigabit ports. Thus, it is not gated by the Ethernet connection and will give you access to the full bandwidth that the phone line will support. The problem is that it is marketed to businesses, and is priced accordingly at £200 each: http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/products/14810-devolo-1528/

Ultimately, power lines are a noisy medium. Anything that's plugged in and drawing power could inject noise onto the line. Lights, refrigerators, air conditioners, motors, pumps, televisions.

MoCA and HomePlug-over-phonelines would provide a much cleaner signaling medium, with correspondingly more predictable speeds.

 

[paranoised]

That's a great find thoma.

Yes that would be a bit too pricey. Also throughput on phone lines seems limited to 95 mbps even with this device according to at least one review. I'll have to read up a bit more on the actual throughput expected with such solutions.

Also I might need to investigate on how well shielded the phone lines are. The way its setup is that the 5 phone line connections are connected underground to the house, with 3 of them inactive and disconnected (now 4) and a single active landline which will continue to be used. I have to check whether the signal from the active landline would interfere with the other lines if I am to use one of them with a Homeplug-over-phone line device.

 

[stevech]

Don't mess with copper wire phone lines.

The ISP should, or you shouldn't accept the installation, get a router running with wired and WiFi in some room. Insist. From there, you can expand.

 

[thiggins]

42 Mbps actual throughput isn't bad, considering the distance. Assuming you have adapters plugged directly into wall sockets and have gotten rid of obvious noise sources like cellphone and other wall-wart style power supplies.

I would try the TP-LINK TL-PA6010KIT. Although it and the Linksys adapters you have use the same AV2 chipset, TP-LINK has done a better design job or is using a later firmware release. The adapter throughput doesn't fall off with distance as much as the Linksys and it seems to adapt better to line conditions, given a little time.

That said, 100 Mbps over a long distance using current generation adapters is not a sure thing. What is the distance between the two adapters anyway?

 

[azazel1024]

Have you considered just using a couple of wireless bridges? The garage appears close to the residence even though it is a large house and garage (I am assuming they are to scale). I would assume you could at least run cat5e or 6 from one side of the garage to the other. Use a powerline injector or POE switch to power a wireless bridge on the outside of the garage (you can always disguise it with some clever and thin cover (just don't use metal!) if it would be objectionable on both ends. Then run cat5e/6 in to the house from a bridge on the house and can always plug in a power line adapter once in to the house itself. That would, I assume, get rid of several hundred feet of electrical wire that could be attenuating things. It might also give you a bit more flexibility as to what circuit the powerline adapters are plugged in to, or you might just setup your router right where the wireless bridge cat5e/6 cable comes in to the house if that works for you.

Just a thought.

 

[paranoised]

What is the distance between the two adapters anyway?

Thanks thiggins. Physical distance is about 250 ft, actual length of wire connecting those two points I'd expect to be much longer. I have chosen those two spots because they're the closest to the electric distribution boxes for outdoors and indoors respectively and provided the best sustained speed in my testing. Would you think that I would be better off waiting for the MIMO adapters based on the new chipsets by Qualcomm and Broadcom? Although I am skeptical on whether there'd be any tangible benefits over existing solutions over larger distances.

Have you considered just using a couple of wireless bridges?

Thanks azazel1024. I have, however my neighborhood is littered with access points and also I don't like the latency penalty. Pinging the fiber optic modem through the home plugs yields around 2-3 ms of latency only.

 

[abailey]

Thanks thiggins. Physical distance is about 250 ft, actual length of wire connecting those two points I'd expect to be much longer. I have chosen those two spots because they're the closest to the electric distribution boxes for outdoors and indoors respectively and provided the best sustained speed in my testing. Would you think that I would be better off waiting for the MIMO adapters based on the new chipsets by Qualcomm and Broadcom? Although I am skeptical on whether there'd be any tangible benefits over existing solutions over larger distances.



Thanks azazel1024. I have, however my neighborhood is littered with access points and also I don't like the latency penalty. Pinging the fiber optic modem through the home plugs yields around 2-3 ms of latency only.

Set up properly a wireless bridge should not have any more latency than powerline adapters. I have 2 clients, one with a 1 mile connection and one with a 1.75 mile connection. The pings from the inside router from one building to the inside router at the next building are between 2 and 4ms. Both powerline adapters and wireless use almost identical technology. At my building we have a 1 mile link to our research facility and pings across it are 1ms, but we use a full duplex wireless bridge. At the distances you are talking about a wireless bridge would give you much more throughput than a powerline adapter.

 

[thiggins]

Powerline products typically spec 300 ft range. But that's just to put some number out there. That said, 40 Mbps @ 250ft isn't bad.

You can wait for the AV2 MIMO products. But they will have their own set of problems at the start. They have been a long time coming. Maybe they are trying to get it right the first time. Or maybe it's just really tough to get consistently higher performance.

If you can't wait, the TP-LINK adapters are a good next step. I was impressed and that takes a lot.

 

[azazel1024]

If you are deadset on powerline, I'd go with Thiggins suggestion. They seem like very good adapters.

For the wireless bridge, you are mentioning 250ft. How powerful are these neighbor networks? I live in a relatively rural area with one neighbor around 130-150ft from her house to my house (maybe 80ft between garages). I can pick up her network at -87dBm sitting at my kitchen table or -85dBm sitting on my couch in the next room. If I go to the otherside of my house I can pick up my backyard neighbor and other side neighbor's networks as there is no garage between us, but they are 200 and 250ft away respectively, and come in at -90 and -88dBm respectively. Windows generally doesn't show any of the networks, just InSSIDer, because the signal strengths are too low.

If I step outside, the signals are stronger, but unless I walk to the edge of my backyard, from my back deck close to the center of my house, I can pick up all 3 plus an extra network. The strongest is at -82dBm. From my property line the strongest one is -72dBm, this compared to my outdoor AP coming in at -70dBm at the weakest point in my backyard (different channels though and different locations of strongest versus weakest. In most parts of my backyard, my wireless is 20-40dBm higher strength than my neighbors networks and is only cochannel with one of them).

You mention 250ft from your garage to the main structure. I'd assume that the property lines extend at least a little beyond that, so I'd assume all of these neighbor networks are probably 300+ft away, so they should be nice and weak if you can pick them up at all.

Wireless bridges are highly directional (5-10 degrees), so unless one happens to be pointed very close to a neighbor's house, it isn't going to pick up any of their signal, nor is it going to broadcast any signal at a neighbors. A couple of them mounted outside each structure pointed at the other with only 250ft of distance, I'd pretty much guarantee they'll link at maximum speeds, which for most bridges means you hit pretty much port speed of ~100Mbps. Or if you get ones with gigabit ports and something like 5GHz bridges, you might be able to hit 150-200Mbps.

 

[stevech]

Wireless bridges as recommended above have a built-in 12dBi or better directional antenna. That makes a big difference in range.

 

[fistv]

How does the power get from the garage to the house ? Underground or above ground ? If under ground did they run it inside a conduit or just direct bury it ?

 

[azazel1024]

Just out of curiosty, why are you wondering? In the case of conduit, even if you could run wire through the existing conduit, its against internation electrical code to run low voltage and standard/high voltage wiring through the same conduit.

There isn't really a prohibition against doing that with exposed wire (in the case of running with above ground wire), but shielded or better yet fiber would probably be the way to go running it with a couple of hundred feet of exposed mains wiring. Though it does take care of the whole "unsightly" factor if you are running it with existing exposed wire.

 

[fistv]

Just out of curiosty, why are you wondering? In the case of conduit, even if you could run wire through the existing conduit, its against internation electrical code to run low voltage and standard/high voltage wiring through the same conduit.

There isn't really a prohibition against doing that with exposed wire (in the case of running with above ground wire), but shielded or better yet fiber would probably be the way to go running it with a couple of hundred feet of exposed mains wiring. Though it does take care of the whole "unsightly" factor if you are running it with existing exposed wire.

If it was underground conduit I'd run fiber with ethernet to fiber converters at either end provided I could get a non conducting snake through it. I would probably do the same thing if it was above ground say from eve to eve. I've done a lot of fiber at large venues like race tracks and such, mainly for remote cameras and waps as well as POS [point of sales] stuff.

 

[azazel1024]

Makes sense. And of course I even mentioned running fiber along aerial wiring...but didn't even occur to me that of course you can run fiber in conduit with mains wiring.

Sigh. One of those days (weeks?).

 

[fistv]

Makes sense. And of course I even mentioned running fiber along aerial wiring...but didn't even occur to me that of course you can run fiber in conduit with mains wiring.

Sigh. One of those days (weeks?).

My son used his ferret on an empty 6" 300ft conduit the contractor forgot to put pull strings in, I put him in, my son at the other end sat there rattling a can of treats, he made it in under a minute dragging the string attached to his harness so we could pull the heavier 1/2" nylon stuff through. The electrical contractor bought us dinner when we pulled 3 extra's through for his stuff.
I've seen installers blow a ping pong ball with a shop vac w/string attached but only in empty conduit.

 

[azazel1024]

My son used his ferret on an empty 6" 300ft conduit the contractor forgot to put pull strings in, I put him in, my son at the other end sat there rattling a can of treats, he made it in under a minute dragging the string attached to his harness so we could pull the heavier 1/2" nylon stuff through. The electrical contractor bought us dinner when we pulled 3 extra's through for his stuff.
I've seen installers blow a ping pong ball with a shop vac w/string attached but only in empty conduit.

Okay, that is fricken awesome about the ferret!

I've seen the ping pong ball/shop vac trick once before on empty conduit.

I am just pissed that my townhouse the conduit my main water line was running through jogged 90 degrees twice from the street hook-up in to my house. Polybutlyene line cracked and was leaking and it was nearly 3 grand to replace. If I could have just straight run a new line through the conduit, I would have replaced it myself and taken the day to dig at the street to run a new line in, but nope. It had to jog. I don't/didn't have the gear to pull a new line through. Though the plumbing company did of course.

I have quite a while before I am converting a shed to a 1 car dettached garage on the other side of my property (~100ft from my garage, ~120ft from my house proper). Demo-ing it, extending the pad and building the garage. I know I want power out there (it is wired, but it doesn't work. Its direct bury from a previous owner, probably broken line as near as I can tell) and I want data and plan to do fiber. I was tossing around the idea of running coax as well, but I think I'll stick with fiber in the same conduit as the mains, probably 240v 20a service using 12awg (just within the v-drop limits at that distance using 12awg) and run two fiber lines for the sake of redundancy, probably all in 1 1/4" conduit. Probably run some 1/4" nylon rope through in case I ever need to run anything through in the future. Enough for power tools, ceiling fan(s), some LED lighting, Window A/C unit and a low powered baseboard heater (like 700-1400w).