Powerline Ethernet, inconsistent performance

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

In article , Same Guy wrote:
Sun, 30 Sep 2012 12:48:22 -0400: written by Yousuf Khan
:

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.

Check to see what lights are on when the BW drops. I had an issue where
halogen lights in the bathroom would render the Homepug network
unusable, so I moved the adapter to a plug in the hallway (which is on
another circuit breaker) then ran CAT cable to the laptop and now have
no problems.

Another option, bring the adapter and the device that will connect to
that adapter to the same room as the adapter nearest the modem/router
and then have them find each other. Once you have that working as
desired, then move them back to the desired location. I have no idea
why, but this worked for me when I added a new laptop and it wouldn't
connect to the Homeplug network.

I only have 2 adapters on my network, so there may be a dynamic with the
3rd adapter, or the device connected to it, that I am not considering.

Hopefully this will help and good luck.

I have seen laser printers when active, bring a powerline network to its
knees.

On Sep 30, 12:48 pm, 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.

So's mine, 10 older. I've heard is the Romex electrical conduit from
that period is better, perhaps heavier for better efficiency. Ground
faults and fuses are the most apparent changes in code, although I'm
more into "as is," no bank inspections, and money on the barrel when
it comes to sales. Not that I'm scared of electricity, but when I'm
in a hardware and ask a question about electrical replacement parts, I
can usually understand bull**** is when someone's trying to feed it
me. If it were me, I'd want to know what exactly might noise be --
intermittent motor usages, the washer or dryer, my w/heater I wired to
run 30minutes twice a day from a timer box;- semi-intermittent, the AC
unit and refrigerator, lights and entertainment gear. Obvious timing
correlations upon a premise of inducement of noise into the wirings
within. Then there's w/out. I once got so ****ed at the TELCO, I
told them I'd set the goddamn modem up on a card table, in the back
yard, from dangling wires from the telephone pole. They wanted me
first to pay monthly money for an added service contract, "just in
case" there was a home issue apart from their responsibilities leading
to the junction box outside. Nevermind (that it gets worse). Next. How
do you measure signal strength and from what level of ambient floor-
level noise, or run-length carrier drops to know if location will
affect performance. When I called in for another internet
subscription option, ditched the TELCO for a cell phone, they brought
along a laptop, which I'd presume measured such ratios for acceptable
quality. Not that I'd try on him such measures, I'm making up, those
guys are always subcontractors, these days, and it's hot and dirty
work without much slack. I usually keep quiet until I see it
functioning. And, by then, all they're interested in is hauling ass.

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"

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.

Something I never investigated before (because I use wired Cat5 instead
of rely on Powerline or wifi in my home) is whether there could be a
problem with creating a signal path whose sum of individual wiring paths
were longer than 100 meters. Ethernet and its CSMA/CD scheme
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier...on_detec tion)
assume a maximum delay in end-to-end propagation, to avoid excessive
reflection, and limit attenuation. With all of your home wiring getting
used as a single segment in the network, all of the power cords also
getting used as wiring stubs off your power circuit, and all wiring
inside appliances added, too, it could be your single segment network is
too long. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet#Varieties,
I'll assume Powerline doesn't equate to twinaxial or fiber transmission,
so your single path network could exceed 100 meters (328 feet). It
seems likely that all the wiring in your house (A/C lines, power cords,
extension cables, wiring inside appliance and electronic gear) could
easily exceed that length.

From the plasternetworks article, I found it interesting that just
adding another computer in your home (by plugging it in) could cause a
problem due to the capacitors inside the PSU. You could try using a UPS
but I doubt it would help unless it's the expensive and heavy kind that
incorporates an isolation transformer (but then that adds more wiring to
your Powerline network which comes back to maybe the Ethernet
transmission distance becomes too long).

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.

VanguardLH wrote:


From the plasternetworks article, I found it interesting that just
adding another computer in your home (by plugging it in) could cause a
problem due to the capacitors inside the PSU. You could try using a UPS
but I doubt it would help unless it's the expensive and heavy kind that
incorporates an isolation transformer (but then that adds more wiring to
your Powerline network which comes back to maybe the Ethernet
transmission distance becomes too long).

I've had problems like that here, but the ATX power supply
in question was actually defective. It was injecting a
tremendous amount of noise into the wall. So much in fact,
it was causing my ADSL model/router to reboot constantly.
The "warning" I was seeing (so I had some clue what was coming),
was when the affected ATX supply was plugged in, I got a herringbone
pattern on my old analog TV set. So I knew a year or more before that,
that there was something funny about that supply. But it
just got worse with time, and eventually it was taking out
the ADSL. I examined the design, and it did have full filtering
on the primary side. So it was making that level of noise,
and managing to push it through the filter network as well.

My current ADSL modem, is no-where near as stable as the old
one. The old one would have kept running, even if there was
a meltdown happening around it. The new one (as the rental one
had to go back to the old ISP), a feather could tip that one over.

Even things like CCFL bulbs, you never know what crappy
circuits (so called "ballast") are hiding in the base.
I've had three of those fail, and make a "capacitor" stink
when they fried. Very few lighting solutions now, are "simple"
inside. Only the traditional incandescent light bulbs can be trusted.

Paul

On Sep 30, 3:38 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.

Sounds like my *wondrous* $60/US Hong Kong shortwave unit;- really is,
stacks up against a Grundig or any of the tradition names selling for
three times more. Tuning to any band, other than FM, however, and
what I get to hear sounds exactly like Jodie Foster in the blockbuster
_CONTACT_, when it was her destiny to tune into alien life forms
broadcasting 3D imagery on her astrological oscilloscope.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Yousuf Khan wrote in part:
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.


Some things to try:

1) Check your house/panel ground. They can "weather" and
need tightening/clean-up. Bad grounds are bad news.

2) Make sure all devices are on the same 110V rectification.
Most N.American houses are served from center-ground transformers
with two hot lines, +110V and -110V 180' out-of-phase which can be
used by high-draw appliances (stoves, driers, AC) to make 220VAC.
Approximately half the 110V circuits are on one rectification, the
other half on the other (usually alternating breakers). If you plug
a device into the other hot, it can only get signal by crosstalk
and bleed-through 220 draws. You're lucky to get poor signal.

3) Several houses usually are on the same transformer. [New]
Noisemakers in those houses can affect your signal (as posted
side-thread). You could try to use your other hot, or it may be
possible to install filter caps near your service entrance.


-- Robert

On Sep 30, 4:23 pm, Paul wrote:

My current ADSL modem, is no-where near as stable as the old
one. The old one would have kept running, even if there was
a meltdown happening around it.

I've *two* high speed DSL, ActionTEC GT701D models in great shape.
One's still factory shrink-wrapped in the original box, I liked the
first so much. But, they do have a reputation for connecting into
virtually anything known, do it all by default automatically, too,
hardly ever have a need to override that to get into setting
configurations, and never get even a hint hot because they're "green"
-- the perfect modem (real popular in China, too) -- until, of course,
the TELCO raises basic unlimited local rates by a 300%, and the line
gets pulled. Very common these days in USofA. And that just doubly
sucks. You with crappy modems and me with great modems I can't use.
(I've been through the rentals/loaners, reason why I bought these.-(

You might map your cabling and insure that the boxes are on the shortest
runs of cable. Generally the feeds to a room are split among several
circuits so everything doesn't go dark if one get overloaded and trips.
You would also want them on the same side of the line.

Switching power supplies and fluorescent lamps create havoc on power
lines.