Powerline Ethernet, inconsistent performance

On Sunday, September 30, 2012 12:48:23 PM UTC-4, Yousuf Khan wrote:

I'm currently using 3 adapters distributed throughout my home. Current

iteration uses all adapters based on the Powerline HD 200Mbps standard.

Usually I'd be getting over 100Mbps on all adapters, occasionally

dropping down to 50Mbps in the worst cases. Nowadays I'm seeing it drop

down to 5Mbps even.

That's amazingly fast!! I get 3 Mbps on a DSL line and I consider myself fortunate. Can you really get 100 Mbps? Is that throughput to the internet? The only place I've seen these kind of numbers (and not even that high) is what they call "FiOS" in the USA--fibre optic.

RL

RayLopez99 wrote:
On Sunday, September 30, 2012 12:48:23 PM UTC-4, Yousuf Khan wrote:

I'm currently using 3 adapters distributed throughout my home. Current

iteration uses all adapters based on the Powerline HD 200Mbps standard.

Usually I'd be getting over 100Mbps on all adapters, occasionally

dropping down to 50Mbps in the worst cases. Nowadays I'm seeing it drop

down to 5Mbps even.

That's amazingly fast!! I get 3 Mbps on a DSL line and I consider myself fortunate.
Can you really get 100 Mbps? Is that throughput to the internet? The only
place I've seen these kind of numbers (and not even that high) is what they
call "FiOS" in the USA--fibre optic.

RL

The Powerline thing, is LAN interconnect within your own home, carried
over the power wires in the walls of the house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines

In North America, PLC is used for building LANs within your
own house, using the power wires in the walls.

*******

Whereas ADSL/VDSL use telephone copper wire, for broadband
connections to the telephone central office. ADSL2+ runs
at up to 24Mbit/sec, while VDSL can reach 100Mb/sec but is
not very common. And lots of places have ridiculous bandwidth
caps on it. So even if your broadband connection has a
high speed, you can't really use it continuously at that
speed for very long. If you were thinking of downloading
DVDs at 100Mb/sec, the bandwidth overage charge at the
end of the month from the ISP, would have you wishing
you'd rented the DVDs at $1 a piece.

Paul

On 30/09/2012 3:30 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
NOTE: I omitted the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips newsgroup originally
in the OP's post from my reply. By name, it doesn't seem a related
newsgroup (and I don't visit that newsgroup to know that it is related).


"Yousuf Khan" wrote:

I've had a powerline ethernet setup for several years at my home. I
usually find their performance more consistent than Wi-Fi, especially
when streaming video. But right now I'm not experiencing usual conditions.

I'm currently using 3 adapters distributed throughout my home. Current
iteration uses all adapters based on the Powerline HD 200Mbps standard.
Usually I'd be getting over 100Mbps on all adapters, occasionally
dropping down to 50Mbps in the worst cases. Nowadays I'm seeing it drop
down to 5Mbps even.

I haven't added too many new electrical appliances my home, as far as I
can tell, but the quality of the electrical lines seems to have gotten
noisier for no apparent reason. What can be done to improve the
situation? The house is 30 years old.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwa...-network-speed
Section 3
/(You might be able to read this article. I block Facebook crap so
their frame blocks out content in the article.)/

http://www.connectedhome.infopint.co...line-ethernet/
See text following "In order to achieve excellent, stable home
networking performance".

http://support.plasternetworks.com/w...rline-isolator
"Effects of Noise and Attenuation on the Powerline"

Thanks, but a lot of the articles are about problems with HomePlug
standard, and my adapters all conform to the Powerline HD standard. In
fact, a couple of the articles even talk about replacing the HomePlug
with Powerline adapters as the solution! By that measure, I'm already
running the solution to my problems.

Powerline sends an RF signal over your power lines. Anything else that
injects RF into those same lines can affect your Powerline network.
Maybe your refridgerator compressor kicked in when you noticed the
network degradation. Maybe you got a new electronic gadget and left its
wall wart plugged in all the time. Maybe you added another computer
(see below on PSU capacitors). That doesn't mean just RF sources you
add but from around your residence, too.

Well, things such as the refrigerator have been around for many years.
I'll check the various rechargers (wall warts) to see if they are
plugged in directly (as opposed to through surge protectors).

This problem is not an intermittent fluctuating one, it's now a constant
reduction in speed.


Yousuf Khan

On 30/09/2012 3:37 PM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 9/30/2012 11:48 AM, Yousuf Khan wrote:
snip

I haven't added too many new electrical appliances my home, as far as I
can tell, but the quality of the electrical lines seems to have gotten
noisier for no apparent reason. What can be done to improve the
situation? The house is 30 years old.

Yousuf Khan

Don't forget that electrical noise will propagate from all homes
attached to the same power line transformer, as in up on a power pole or
in a ground based cabinet. You might not have added any new electronic
equipment but who knows what the neighbors have added.

I once lived in a place where the neighbors water heater thermostat was
arching so badly that it would jam the internet AND the cable TV feed at
our place when it was active. It took a while to track down due to it
being intermittent but fortunately the interference was so bad that a
portable AM radio could be used to track down the source.

I've usually found that there is no danger from neighbours because our
own breaker box filters out anything from outside. In fact, I've seen
even within some houses with multiple breaker boxes (i.e. somebody added
an addition to the house), that you can't get a signal through between
two plugs on different breaker boxes.

However, inside apartment buildings that might not be the case, as
sometimes adjacent apartments might share a single breaker.

Yousuf Khan

On 30/09/2012 3:30 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
NOTE: I omitted the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips newsgroup originally
in the OP's post from my reply. By name, it doesn't seem a related
newsgroup (and I don't visit that newsgroup to know that it is related).

I had included it because there are often a lot of electrical engineers
on that group.

Yousuf Khan

On Oct 1, 5:48 pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
I've usually found that there is no danger from neighbours because our
own breaker box filters out anything from outside. In fact, I've seen
even within some houses with multiple breaker boxes (i.e. somebody added
an addition to the house), that you can't get a signal through between
two plugs on different breaker boxes.

However, inside apartment buildings that might not be the case, as
sometimes adjacent apartments might share a single breaker.

Yousuf Khan

My breakers -- they're gold. They hide them behind glass classes,
locked, w/ alarms. A single 20amp flip-breaker costs $75-120US. When
I trip one, once in a blue moon, I grab one of my handy-dandy Cree LED
flashlites -- go out to the garage, above the circuit box, to the two
main-service fuses/filters feeding the circuit box below -- and pull
that.

When a breaker is tripped through excessive current, even having
removed current of that leg isn't enough;- restoring the circuit path
by flipping back the tripped breaker to on causes current present to
blow it permanently. Taking out the main service first, restoring,
flipping back the tripped breaker with no power, and not a problem;-
it'll also trip itself next time, functionally, although I'm not
saying I necessarily enjoy pushing my luck, either.

Seriously, when I last looked for a breaker I called a place quite a
distance away, a big bunker spread over acres and acres of land in an
industrial area. A private home salvage operation pulling materials
from homes that had been through fire & catastrophe and other acts of
nature. I found a 60-amp 220V to replace the dryer's 30-amp service
for $10, maybe 15 bucks. I like plugging a couple welders into it,
and wasn't in the mood to play the local hardware stores $1000 for a
ef'n fuse or rewire in a separate service.

"Yousuf Khan" wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

"Yousuf Khan" wrote:

I've had a powerline ethernet setup for several years at my home. I
usually find their performance more consistent than Wi-Fi, especially
when streaming video. But right now I'm not experiencing usual conditions.

I'm currently using 3 adapters distributed throughout my home. Current
iteration uses all adapters based on the Powerline HD 200Mbps standard.
Usually I'd be getting over 100Mbps on all adapters, occasionally
dropping down to 50Mbps in the worst cases. Nowadays I'm seeing it drop
down to 5Mbps even.

I haven't added too many new electrical appliances my home, as far as I
can tell, but the quality of the electrical lines seems to have gotten
noisier for no apparent reason. What can be done to improve the
situation? The house is 30 years old.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwa...-network-speed
Section 3
/(You might be able to read this article. I block Facebook crap so
their frame blocks out content in the article.)/

http://www.connectedhome.infopint.co...line-ethernet/
See text following "In order to achieve excellent, stable home
networking performance".

http://support.plasternetworks.com/w...rline-isolator
"Effects of Noise and Attenuation on the Powerline"

Thanks, but a lot of the articles are about problems with HomePlug
standard, and my adapters all conform to the Powerline HD standard. In
fact, a couple of the articles even talk about replacing the HomePlug
with Powerline adapters as the solution! By that measure, I'm already
running the solution to my problems.

From what I read, HomePlug is the standard (definition) and Powerline is
a variant of that standard. As mentioned, somewhere on the packaging
for Powerline you might find HomePlug mentioned.

This is like mentioning SCSI but not bothering to mention which version
(SCSI-1, SCSI-2, SCSI-3). The same when you say PCI which could be PCI
v1, PCI v2.0, or PCI v2.1. You might be using the old version but you
can get gear that supports the newest version. Perhaps "Powerline"
implies a later version of Homeplug.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication
"The most widely deployed powerline networking standard is from the
HomePlug Powerline Alliance. HomePlug AV is the most current of the
HomePlug specifications and was adopted by the IEEE 1901 group as a
baseline technology for their standard, published 30 December 2010."

Homeplug is the technology. Powerline is a later version of it. So
you're probably at the latest branch of that technology. That still
doesn't obviate the problems with induced line noise, signal distance,
and other problems that continue to plague Homeplug technology and why
businesses won't use it.

If you're unwilling to route CAT5 cables through your home, you sure you
don't want to go to wifi?

Powerline sends an RF signal over your power lines. Anything else that
injects RF into those same lines can affect your Powerline network.
Maybe your refridgerator compressor kicked in when you noticed the
network degradation.

Well, things such as the refrigerator have been around for many years.

The degrade hence the need to replace the motor not just for wear but
the startup caps might need replacing, too, just like the startup caps
in your A/C compressor unit. Existing appliances will change in time
regarding their RF behaviors.

I'll check the various rechargers (wall warts) to see if they are
plugged in directly (as opposed to through surge protectors).

That won't matter unless those surge protectors are actually surge
suppressors which include line conditioning (and much more expensive
than the typical under $50 surge protectors you buy at retail stores.)

Did you ever add a UPS that is an isolating unit? That is, does it
contain an isolation transformer? These are much more costly than the
typical UPS than you buy in stores (which are actually an IPS). A true
UPS with an isolation transformer often includes sinusoidal output
rather than the stepped (noisy) output of the typical UPS. While the
stepped wave isn't a problem for the switching power supplies in
computers, it causes additional heat in typical (non-switched) power
supplies inside other electronics. As a consequence of the isolation
and line conditioning of the output of a true UPS with sinusoidal
output, noise is eliminated; however, what I don't know is if an
isolation transformer would cause coupling problems with the RF signal
for the Powerline networking. That is, maybe Powerline won't work
across a transformer due to damping (attenuation) of its RF signal.

This problem is not an intermittent fluctuating one, it's now a constant
reduction in speed.

Don't know if you have an oscilloscope with a good range to see all the
noise on each circuit in your house; else, you're stuck doing the trial-
by-error approach of unplugging everything one at a time and test. I
know some folks walk around with a portable AM radio to find the
noisiest locations in their home; however, I don't if the AM radio would
be most sensitive at its low or high frequency range (530kHz - 1710kHz
for mediumwave AM radio) or if you need to tune to some resonance
frequency of your current A/C frequency (which may not currently be
exactly 50 or 60 Hz). You can get an RF meter but they aren't cheap.
I've read about renting RF meters but wouldn't know where to find such a
place, especially in your area. Maybe there's an electronic test
equipment sales and rental shop in your area. However, if you don't
know how to use this tool and if its use isn't self-evident then there's
no point in buying or renting an RF meter.

Of course, if someone else on your feed line is generating noise then
it'll be coming into your house. While you might have a whole-home
surge arrestor at the electrical service's point of entry into your home
(often in the power meter), that won't abate noise coming in. I've been
in locales close to an industrial zoned area where lathes were running
and I had lots of noise, like someone was always running a hair blow
dryer, and I had to add noise arrestors all over (because I didn't own
the home and couldn't modify the service point entry). Then, oh joy, in
another location I had to deal with a shortwave operator.

"VanguardLH" wrote:

... the typical UPS than you buy in stores (which are actually an IPS).

Er, that'd be SPS (standby power supply) that snap from the A/C line to
battery power in a few milliseconds rather than the always-on real UPS.

"Yousuf Khan" wrote:
I've had a powerline ethernet setup for several years at my home. I
usually find their performance more consistent than Wi-Fi, especially
when streaming video. But right now I'm not experiencing usual conditions.

I'm currently using 3 adapters distributed throughout my home. Current
iteration uses all adapters based on the Powerline HD 200Mbps standard.
Usually I'd be getting over 100Mbps on all adapters, occasionally
dropping down to 50Mbps in the worst cases. Nowadays I'm seeing it drop
down to 5Mbps even.

I haven't added too many new electrical appliances my home, as far as I
can tell, but the quality of the electrical lines seems to have gotten
noisier for no apparent reason. What can be done to improve the
situation? The house is 30 years old.

Yousuf Khan

Have you added any light dimmers in any of the branch circuits?
Those throw off a horrendous amount of RFI, at least the ones meant
for incandescent lights. They turn nice smooth AC sine waves into
truncated sine waves (with the feet and tales chopped off), and the
fourier transform of the result has frequencies all over the spectrum.
I once installed a ceiling fan in the kitchen of a house I had, and when
my car approached the carport, which was 70 feet from the kitchen,
the output of the car's AM radio turned to noise if the fan's dimmer
was on.

*TimDaniels*

"RayLopez99" gasped:
Yousuf Khan wrote:

I'm currently using 3 adapters distributed throughout my home. Current
iteration uses all adapters based on the Powerline HD 200Mbps standard.
Usually I'd be getting over 100Mbps on all adapters, occasionally
dropping down to 50Mbps in the worst cases. Nowadays I'm seeing it drop
down to 5Mbps even.

That's amazingly fast!! I get 3 Mbps on a DSL line and I consider myself fortunate.
Can you really get 100 Mbps? Is that throughput to the internet? The only place
I've seen these kind of numbers (and not even that high) is what they call "FiOS"
in the USA--fibre optic.


I believe Yousuf Khan is saying that the Powerline as a local LAN is that fast,
not necessarily that he gets that speed from his ISP.

*TimDaniels*