Love to see the TP-Link AV2000 (TL-PA9020P KIT) reviewed!

[RogerSC]

The TP-Link AV2000 Powerline Adapter Kit (TL-PA9020P KIT) seems to be the next step up in powerline networking functionality. Would be lovely to see a review of it added to the reviews here. I'm playing with it, and found the speed to be significantly faster than what I saw with the TP-Link AV1200 (TL-PA8030P KIT) at the same place in my house. There's a good drop from the speed at the outlet where I was checking both adapters to the speed in the next room, but the speed that I see in the next room with the TL-PA9020 is still as fast or a little faster than the TL-PA8030 was at the original check point, which is impressive.

Anyways, it would be great to see the TP-Link TL-PA9020P KIT tested and reviewed here!

Thanks.

 

[System Error Message]

i could give you a brief review right now as i am using it.
Speed wise its not impressive. TP link utility reports 800Mb/s, tests are way slower at around 200Mb/s. The worst thing about it is the tp link utility, over the updates it has lost functionality and become buggier. latency is between 3-5ms, which is poor on wire but still better than a busy wifi.

The speed is far fetched from the theoratical performance. For bandwidth i find wifi to be much better if you use wifi AC, otherwise the AV2000 is better.

 

[RogerSC]

Okay, let me address some of these points. I'm looking for a streaming device that doesn't vary as much as wireless, AC or otherwise *smile*. I'm comparing it to the previous TP-Link powerline networking adapters that have been reviewed here, not wireless. I don't care about latency, what I'm seeing is acceptable to me...I'm not gaming, just streaming, like from Netflix. Not dealing with speeds of 800Mbps or more at this point. If I were looking for that kind of speed, I'd be looking at bonded MoCA 2.0 adapters. The speeds I'm seeing are better than any powerline networking adapter I've used before, and have had no problems with media buffering.

So what you're saying is interesting, but not really what I'm addressing. The theoretical performance is not of interest to me, what interests me is the actual performance that I can get. I haven't used the utility, no need, I'm getting plenty of speed and that speed is reliable enough that I don't feel the need to optimize it. I tend to stay away from those utilities anyways, they are usually buggy and not very helpful.

 

[sfx2000]

The TP-Link AV2000 Powerline Adapter Kit (TL-PA9020P KIT) seems to be the next step up in powerline networking functionality. Would be lovely to see a review of it added to the reviews here. I'm playing with it, and found the speed to be significantly faster than what I saw with the TP-Link AV1200 (TL-PA8030P KIT) at the same place in my house.

Whose chip is in the AV2000? Broadcom or QC-Atheros?

The TP-Link AV1200's were QCA-7500 based, and they performed well enough, but in my experience, had some power saving issues causing dropouts until I found a patch that disabled that particular feature...

That patch did not come from TP-Link...

 

[System Error Message]

the main point i was addressing is that the actual speeds are far from theoratical and the worst point of it all is tp-link's utility which has been deteriorating in both function and quality throughout the updates. I was unable to change the encryption with their recent versions.

 

[sfx2000]

Okay, let me address some of these points. I'm looking for a streaming device that doesn't vary as much as wireless, AC or otherwise *smile*. I'm comparing it to the previous TP-Link powerline networking adapters that have been reviewed here, not wireless. I don't care about latency, what I'm seeing is acceptable to me...I'm not gaming, just streaming, like from Netflix. Not dealing with speeds of 800Mbps or more at this point. The speeds I'm seeing are better than any powerline networking adapter I've used before, and have had no problems with media buffering.

Latency on the TP-Link TL-PA8030P's isn't that bad actually... better than WiFi - I have one run that I need to cover as I don't have an ethernet drop, and it's not a good place for WiFi... I could pull ethernet over perhaps, but the AV12o0 kit was cheaper for that end point...

 

[sfx2000]

the upside to the TL-PA8030P's is that they have onboard dumb switches - each end-point has 3 Gbe ports, and they're non-blocking at the end-point, which on the long end, makes it nice for a media center...

With the TP-Link desktop SW - here's a little tip - to set the QoS values, you need to directly attach to that end-point and set the values there - with the HPAV2 spec, it's supposed to propagate across all if one sets QoS on the master HPAV2 coordinator, but with TP-Link, it's local to the node in my experience...

On that run, I've got both nodes running the "audio or video" profile in the TP-Link PLC software... seems to work well enough for the purposes there.

 

[RogerSC]

The consensus that I see indicates the CPU is the Broadcom BCM60500 (data sheet: http://static.tp-link.com/res/down/doc/TL-PA9020P_KIT(EU)_1.0.pdf).

I agree that the theoretical and actual speeds are much different for powerline networking adapter products, but that's only an issue if you're actually expecting to get the theoretical speed *smile*...haven't tried the utility.

 

[sfx2000]

I could pull ethernet over perhaps, but the AV12o0 kit was cheaper for that end point...

FWIW - AV1200 is inflated numbers - I'll be honest, we're jumping across circuits on that run, and it's a long run across the house... no gfi's involved - I'm in an older house where code doesn't require this except for kitchen and bathrooms for GFI, so the GFI's are local to the socket in the room.

I'm seeing 100Mbps constant across that link when testing, which is good enough - across the ports on the end-points (recall, the TL-PA8030P has an internal Gbe switch, we see 900 Mbps across the ports there from device to device on that node)

 

[sfx2000]

I was unable to change the encryption with their recent versions.

You can change the group name - but you can't directly change the PW - mash the button on the adapter directly, and it'll change for you across all the HPAV2 peers in the group... in TP-Link's SW, it's the Network Name, which is entered on the System tab...

Once done, might have to unplug/replug, but hey, at least this is easier than the MOCA stuff...

@RogerSC - speed across that AV1200 link...

 

[System Error Message]

that looks very different from the tp link utility i used. Is it a very old version?

What i meant to say was that despite trying to change the network name for encryption, it just didnt apply, nor did resetting work. The utility also had many features stripped down and i couldnt reenable the LEDs.

 

[sfx2000]

And... once one has a working solution, don't futz with it... after a few hours of testing, this is what worked best for that run - again, set both end-points to the same values.

I do have an AP hanging off the remote end-point on ethernet, the latency chart I mentioned above is to that one...

Router -- <switch> -- HPAV2 Local -- HPAV2 Remote -- AP/bridge...

To that end, I have another WiFi end-point attached to the remote AP on the end of the HPAV2 link...

As you can see, it does add a bit of latency...

Router -- <switch> -- HPAV2 Local -- HPAV2 Remote -- AP/bridge - (wifi 802.11n 2.4GHz) - remote client

But still acceptable... not twitch gaming fast, but good enough - it's a media player after all... it'll still pull 100Mbps across that link with a legacy 802.11n 2*2:2 connection to an N300 class AP on the remote end.

Anyways, hope this helps out to set some expectations...

 

[sfx2000]

And @System Error Message. @kvic and others - it's nice to have a quantified network...

Having carrier grade experience, I've brought similar tools into my LAN - which makes it a bit easier to sort things.

I'm not as crazy as some of the folks on reddit's homelab...

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/

there, things can be a bit odd - similar to some of the servethehome forums

But worth watching...

 

[majeedun]

Whose chip is in the AV2000? Broadcom or QC-Atheros?

The TP-Link AV1200's were QCA-7500 based, and they performed well enough, but in my experience, had some power saving issues causing dropouts until I found a patch that disabled that particular feature...

That patch did not come from TP-Link...

I also have discussions, but not sure if it's from the AV1200 or my MacBook Pro mid 2012.
How did you get the patch for disabling power save?

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

 

[RogerSC]

Took a look at the utility, unusual for me *smile*...have never even bothered to download the Netgear Genie app, even after years of using Netgear routers *smile*.

About as I expected. The transfer rates given by the utility are well worth ignoring, way off. Very little functionality of interest, will remove it from my computer shortly. However, after several days of using these powerline networking adapters, I'm happy with them...would like to see them reviewed, though, to learn more about them. And to share the performance that I'm seeing here with others.

 

[System Error Message]

ah i see, the utility for the 9020 is very different from the 8030. the 9020 will give you more performance but tp link really needs to improve the utility as that for me is one of the main problems with the 9020. In the UK the 9020 kit costs around £100.

 

[sfx2000]

ah i see, the utility for the 9020 is very different from the 8030. the 9020 will give you more performance but tp link really needs to improve the utility as that for me is one of the main problems with the 9020. In the UK the 9020 kit costs around £100.

TP-Link has two versions of the utility for Windows - the older one that I posted screen shots of, and a newer one that is, for lack of a better word, of less utility... (it's essentially full-screen, someone put some effort into it, but it takes much more screen and disk space than the older one - special note here is that they essentially do the same job, and they're standards based, so one size fits all).

 

[sfx2000]

How did you get the patch for disabling power save?

Found it indirectly from the TP-Link support forums - it's windows only as the patch is built on an older version of MS Visual Studio...

I posted a link to the patch in one of the other threads - so might help to do a search for it...

 

[Nigel Jones]

I did have to use the powersave patch on one unit - simply because I was using it as a repeater only - nothing connected.

The utility doesn't seem to work on Windows 10 'insider' - occasionally one adapter appears then goes away. Probably a blip in the current windows code.

Performance wise I have 221/21 Mbps broadband and the adapters consistently deliver this - I have 4, in a 3 storey 3 bedroom house. I vaguely remember testing and was maxing out around 300 Mbps. My internode link speeds are between 900 & 1300 Mbps from memory

So generally good enough/ best one can get for now, but as above way off the spec. Actually my AV200s got 70 Mbps or so, so a 1/3, so I was kinda expecting these to do 700 or so. optimistic!

Just as well I didn't take the 330 Mbps service, now I think max is around 380 Mbps... Maybe more testing needed first.

oddly enough I did have one issue today. i was getting slow ethernet pings and needed to power off/on the powerline connected to the router. odd. all ok now. Looking to see if there's any newer firmware than that shipped, and there isn't, so contacted tplink support