Revisiting powerline networking
Not dead yet.
As wireless has become more and more capable, powerline networking has become progressively less popular with home users. From its heyday a decade ago, powerline networking has become something of a niche product – but we’re going to argue that it’s one that’s still worth considering for many home users. For loungeroom/entertainment room setups or for linking wireless mesh nodes, powerline products can still find a useful place in many homes.
So what is powerline networking again?
Many of you young-uns may never have heard of it, so here’s a quick primer: powerline networking uses your home’s integral power cabling to digitally link devices. You plug powerline adapters into powerpoints around your home, and they created a digital bridge between them, using the copper electricity cables in your walls and ceiling to transmit data between adapters.
It’s mostly used when somebody wants wired networking for security and performance reasons (especially if Wi-Fi is struggling in their home). The ideal solution in that scenario is to string twisted pair Ethernet cables between devices – something we covered back in the February issue this year – but that’s not always feasible or desirable. Not everybody can crawl through an attic or under the house to run cables, or wants ugly Ethernet cables running across the floor.
So powerline networking is an alternative. It uses the cables that are already in place. After plugging the powerline adapters into the power points, you then connect devices directly to the adapters.
So say you have a router in your study that connects to the internet, but you would like wired networking to the entertainment room where your smart TV and game consoles are. You could buy a pair of powerline adapters, and plug one into a powerpoint in your study, and the other into a powerpoint in your entertainment room. They generally sit flush against the wall.
Then you connect an Ethernet cable from the adapter in your study into a LAN port on the router. And you connect Ethernet cables from your adapter in the loungeroom to your console and smart TV.
Powerline networking performance
At the moment, powerline products are available in speeds ranging from 500mbps (AV500) to 2gbps (AV2000). But much like wireless performance numbers, that’s mostly a theoretical number. Actual performance will be much, much lower. How low depends on the quality of the electrical wiring in your home and the distance between the adapters (measured in cable length, not point-to-point).
There’s no great rule of thumb, but our anecdotal experience is that you can practically expect between one fifth and one quarter of the listed speed, with maybe as much as a half of the listed speed possible for clean home networks and close adapters. So getting 400mbps out of a 2000mbps adapter is not unreasonable (and is likely to be much faster than your internet connection can deliver).
So why would this be desirable over wireless, which now has theoretical listed speeds sometimes exceeding 5gbps? The simple answer is consistency, reliability and latency. Wireless is a shared medium, and as such is subject to sometimes wild fluctuations as EM interference and other competing wireless
networks fight for each other for space.
Powerline, on the other hand, tends to be rock solid, delivering consistently low latency and a flat performance curve. There may be glitches – certain high power devices like dryers might cause fluctuations in performance when initially switched on, but by and large it’s very reliable. And no, they do not use much power themselves, usually only a few watts, with the newer AV2 models also having a sleep mode.
One very important thing to note here is that powerline products do not do well with power boards. You should always connect them directly to the wall socket if you can. You can use extension cords, but you will take a performance hit for it.
Security
Powerline networking devices have the inherent security of any wired device – that is, the need for physical proximity to connect to it. But (unlike Ethernet), they also have additional encryption – as with Wi-Fi, transmissions over powerline are also passwordprotected and encrypted.
When you buy powerline adapters in pairs, they’re typically already configured to use the same password, making the whole thing very plug and play, and you can add additional adapters using a Bluetooth-style pairing button or a software password configuration tool.
Powerline products and what to look for
In spite of their niche status, there are still plenty of powerline adapters being made, and many with advanced features like integral switches with multiple Ethernet ports (which are great for the entertainment room scenario where you might want to connect two or three devices to the powerline network) or even Wi-Fi access points built in.
Current manufacturers include D-Link, Asus, TP-Link and
Netgear (important note: don’t confuse powerline networking with power-over-Ethernet; they’re different things – kind of the diametric opposite of each other – but might come up together in a search).
Mostly they’re bought in paired starter kits (since you need at least two to be useful) with additional single adapters available. For very cheap AV500 and AV600 devices, you might be able to get a starter kit for as low as $50-$80, though for more powerful (1gbps+) pairs you’re often looking at $150 or more. We’d recommend going for the latter – given that performance will nowhere near reach the specified number, having the extra headroom of a faster adapter is really useful. AV2 adapters are also a better bet than AV adapters, with support for low-power sleep modes and MIMO (similar to Wi-Fi MIMO).
It goes without saying (but we’ll say it anyway) that you must buy adapters manufactured for
Australian electrical systems.
That means the right plug, power and frequency.
You should also check the quality of the Ethernet ports on the adapters. They should be gigabit Ethernet (1gbps). If the Ethernet ports only supports 100mbps, that should be a hard pass in this day and age.
We’d also highly recommend getting adapters with AC pass through. That means that the adapter has an AC socket on it into which you can plug additional devices, so you’re not sacrificing a precious wall socket for your powerline networking. You can plug power boards into these sockets if you need even more power points.
Finally, we recommend models with multiple Ethernet ports. As noted above, they’re really useful for connecting to areas where there are multiple fixed devices such as an entertainment room or a study that might have several networked computing devices such as PCs and printers.
You’ll also need to make sure that you have the requisite Ethernet cables to connect from the adapter to the devices you want to bridge.
Just one more note – check the returns policy and warranty before buying any powerline adapter. You may get the product home to find that it just doesn’t work well for you. Maybe the hidden electrical wiring in your home is just too far gone, or the distance between two points too far. Be prepared to return the product if it doesn’t work out!