TRENDnet Intros Small 500 Mbps Powerline Adapter with Outlet

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jamie_1318

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Wonder how much improved these are from the ones tested in 2009?
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Powerline-Networking-Test,review-1333-5.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/powerline-wireless-networking,2470-11.html

Last time toms tested them they performed pretty abysmally. The 200mb/s rated powerline networks were transferring less than 20mb/s most of the time, and always slower than wireless g. Those are both megabits, not megabytes.
 

gamerk316

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[citation][nom]jamie_1318[/nom]Wonder how much improved these are from the ones tested in 2009?http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Powerl [...] 333-5.htmlhttp://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 70-11.htmlLast time toms tested them they performed pretty abysmally. The 200mb/s rated powerline networks were transferring less than 20mb/s most of the time, and always slower than wireless g. Those are both megabits, not megabytes.[/citation]

To be fair, who here has a 20mb connection anyway? [I do, but I've heard horror stories]
 

livebriand

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How well do these actually work? I suspect that there's at least as much interference as you get on a 2.4GHz wireless connection, and that's already bad enough. And $65? I'll stick with wifi and ethernet, thank you very much. (Yes, you need a router that supports wifi, but most nowdays do anyway.)
 

Villers

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[citation][nom]gamerk316[/nom]To be fair, who here has a 20mb connection anyway? [I do, but I've heard horror stories][/citation]

maybe im lucky but I have 30mbit, with 50mbit available in my little podunk town. Horror stories? none to report here.. just plain fast.
 

jamie_1318

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[citation][nom]gamerk316[/nom]To be fair, who here has a 20mb connection anyway? [I do, but I've heard horror stories][/citation]

Why does it matter what the internet connection speed is? The whole goal of faster networking is for sharing files. 20mb/s is fast enough for exactly one HD video stream, probably 720p. Even still why worry about bottlenecking your internet when much faster technologies are cheaper and more available. One N router will run you $60 and your laptop probably has an adapter, if not USB adapters can be had for $10.

Many people in European countries get 50mb/s as a base package. It seems silly that modern home networking anywhere is so bad that it is outperformed by the local internet service.
 

Pinhedd

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[citation][nom]livebriand[/nom]How well do these actually work? I suspect that there's at least as much interference as you get on a 2.4GHz wireless connection, and that's already bad enough. And $65? I'll stick with wifi and ethernet, thank you very much. (Yes, you need a router that supports wifi, but most nowdays do anyway.)[/citation]

Generally speaking, horribly. AC Line noise is unpredictable and can vary heavily depending on location. Not only is there a lot of noise but in many residences there's also no transformer separating each house from their neighbour which means that if the encryption doesn't work properly, anyone in a nearby house will be causing collisions and/or be able to eavesdrop. Unshielded residential wiring isn't suitable for carrying data, never has been and never will be.
 

queenfan

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If you think AC Line Noise is UNPREDICTABLE then you don't know how these devices work at all! Please find a white paper and read up on it.
 

Gigahertz20

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Powerline adapters are a huge gamble, I bought both the 200Mbps and 500Mbps Netgear/Zyxel adapters for my cousins house to test them out. Both were pretty crappy, I didn't see transfer rates higher then 5MB/sec. There are too many factors that can affect their performance, an innocent cell phone charger plugged into an outlet can cause problems or AFCI circuit breakers that newer homes have. Read the article on smallnetbuilder.

I returned them and got the Netgear MOCA adapters that network using a homes Coax cable lines that almost every home has. Speeds are great, 10MB/sec or so and the price was awesome, $150 for 4 of them off a place on ebay. I'm surprised MOCA adapters haven't taken off, so much better then powerline networking.

 

nebun

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[citation][nom]livebriand[/nom]How well do these actually work? I suspect that there's at least as much interference as you get on a 2.4GHz wireless connection, and that's already bad enough. And $65? I'll stick with wifi and ethernet, thank you very much. (Yes, you need a router that supports wifi, but most nowdays do anyway.)[/citation]
very well...i have the dlink version and i am very pleased with them....connection is very fast and reliable
 

razor512

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I have tested some of the more modern power line adapters under best case situations, (using 2 splitters and an extension cable and hooking both adapters to the same 6 foot cable)

doing that gets you around 80mbit/s on an adapter that clams upwards of 500mbit/s

But then again, there is no punishment for false advertising when it comes to networking hardware.

For example an n900 wifi adapter and a N900 router at around 4 feet, will only give around 130mbit/s or so.

I guess when they say N900 they mean theoretical speeds where those speeds can theoretically be achieved if you bypass the wifi by using ethernet.

 
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