Are newer power line adapters worth trying?

[jea101]

MY sister-in-law has one room in her house that only gets 80 megabit on 5 GHz WIFI AC and even less on 2.4 GHz.
Several years ago we tried a pair of Trendnet TPL_421E2K/A AV2 1200 adapters. The were even slower than WIFI and less stable.
Is it worth trying a pair of AV2 2000 adapter?. Any brand better than another?

 

[L&LD]

They are not worth trying at all, ime. Not even worth the gas/wait time, to buy and return them.

It's not just how slow they are. It's how much the 'performance' varies even during a single file transfer that makes these annoying to use for me (or even recommend them to anyone).

 

[Tech9]

only gets 80 megabit

What your sister-in-law can't do with 80Mbps connection? What's the issue you are trying to fix?

 

[agentpatience]

The AC700-1200 Powerline adapters work great for me with 100 ft run. They work better if they are on the same circuit.

 

[Tech9]

@jea101 was using an RT-AC66U B1 router in 2023. If still the same - router upgrade may result in better speed at the same distance. Makes more sense than PLAs.

 

[krkaufman]

MY sister-in-law has one room in her house

What’s the coax situation in her house, and that room (or adjoining rooms), specifically? MoCA would be a superior option to Powerline, if direct Ethernet isn’t available but coax is.

 

[Crimliar]

Whether powerline adapters are worth trying depends on what country you live in, how good your wiring is, and what else is in the walls! They generally work pretty well on a "ring main" within a single circuit. They work far less well where each outlet has its own wiring feeding back to the fuse box, or where you are crossing from one ring main to another. A second issue to watch for is that phone cabling for ADSL/VDSL running in parallel to the power cables in the walls can cause problems for both!
*I've seen powerline networking work fantastically and I've seen it crawl slower than a snail on fly paper!

 

[L&LD]

Yes, but that very variability is what is so frustrating with PLAs.

 

[tgl]

I had one spot in my old house where I used powerline to connect two spots that were on different floors but on the same power circuit. Zyxel G.hn adapters were a tad flaky in that use, but after awhile I replaced 'em with TP-Link TL-PA9020P-KIT AV2000, and those were rock-solid. The whole thing is very much a YMMV situation, as the other respondents say. I would not bother trying if you can't arrange for the connection to go between two outlets on the same circuit --- but if you can, it might work OK for you.

 

[agentpatience]

If your power comes in on the same leg at the panel chances are you will be able to get very close to the speeds of your bridge/router. I have tested the DLink AV1000 and it will provide excellent performance around 3 story house and into the garage and basement with ease. These are an older device that I bought online for 20 bucks and reached where WIFI was struggling. You can find a pair of them for very cheap and they do work much better than the ones that came out years ago.

 

[jea101]

I don’t if there is an actual need for more than 80 megabit. They have a fairly new MAC
laptop that is used to work from home in that room.

They have Spectrum 300 download/10 up. Spectrum overprovisions 20%.
On a wired connection or with a good wireless connection speed tests
show over 350 megabit.

I checked the wireless signal with WIFI analyzer on my phone and it is
much lower in the problem room.

wifi analyzer open source - Android Apps on Google Play

Enjoy millions of the latest Android apps, games, music, movies, TV, books, magazines & more. Anytime, anywhere, across your devices.

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What is needed is a wireless access point in the problem room.
There is no coax to the problem room or the rooms next to it for MOCA.
The don’t want to remove and replace the drywall to run an Ethernet cable.
A wireless bridge that uses directional antennas should work but looks bad.

If newer powerline adapters work problem solved for less than $200.

 

[degrub]

try a pair of netgear powerline 2000

Powerline 2000 Extender

Use your existing electrical wiring to extend your Internet access to any room in your house. Just plug the Powerline 2000 + Extra Outlet into any electrical outlet then plug in your new network connection. It’s that easy. With 2000Mbps speed, the Powerline 2000 adapter is perfect for connecting...

www.netgear.com

i had good luck with some 40 year old wiring in my mother's house. Used as backhaul for a pair of ASUS 68 AC wireless routers. Best i recall, getting 2-300 Mbit/s
You have to have a 3 wire plug though (L-N-G)

Make sure you buy from a store that will take back , no fee, if they don't work.
There are pretty good panduit (covered wall channel) available that might make CAT5e a reasonable solution.
Alarm installers are usually good at routing/fishing hidden cables in existing construction.

 

[jea101]

Using WIFI analyzer on my cell phone I found that the other side of the room from the desk had a
much stronger signal from the main router.

I decided to try a wireless “bridge”.

The main wireless router is a Spectrum SAXIVIR WIFI 6 with 4 streams on both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands

I used a Netgear R6850 in bridge mode to “connect” to the main wireless router via 5GHz.
I connected a second R6850 in access point mode to the first R6850 with a short Ethernet cable.
The second R6850 use a different SSID and 5GHz channel.
I still had slow speed on the second SSID until I separated the two R6850s by a few feet.
My educated guess is than routers with two 5GHz radios use ban pass filters to prevent interference
between the radios.

Now I can get 300 plus running the Ookla app on my cell phone.