powerline extenders

[Dick.1]

I've just had a pair of these fail on me

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/bt-broadband-e...pack-a20lt

Some sort of "power" fault I imagine, as the "working" lights are on but "dim" with no output via the Ethernet socket.

Currently running things fine on the "old" set that bt upgraded me to these (500mps) last year

Out of warranty so nothing to lose (strangely BT only warrants the equipment it supplies at the start of a contract for 12 months no matter how long your contract is.

Has anybody been inside one of these/repaired one ?

Cheers

Dick.

[Mark Hennessy]

Not those particular units, but it sounds like a classic case of dried up capacitors in the PSU.

Whether you'll be able to get at them depends on the construction, but if you can easily access the PCB, changing the caps should provide a cure. Good quality, low-ESR types should outlive the originals.

Though nothing beats a Cat 5 cable if you can find a suitable route A to B. Easier said than done, naturally, but I'm about half way through flood-wiring this house (taken about 10 years so far!)

[ppppenguin]

Otherwise known as RFI generators, to the annoyance of the amateur radio community.

[Refugee]

I found a redundant gas pipe and removed it to reveal a lovely duct to run my cables through. The phone line is close to the gas meter so there are just a couple of spurs and a point close to the boiler.
The house had gas lights when it was built new so it was an easy job.

[Nick]

Cat6e or better if you can.

When we did our self-build a few years ago I put in plastic ducting to loads of places, but we use almost none of it.

We use Devolo 500Mb/s powerline plugs and it works just fine.

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
My next door neighbour had powerline extenders which caused havoc with Medium wave and up to around 15 MHz. The problem then resolved when he moved out in April.
I too have Cat 6 cables installed one from the house to the shed.
As a Vintage enthusiast etc I'd not even consider Powerline Extenders, cable option only for me.

[Mark Hennessy]

Even basic Cat 5 cable is good for 1 Gb/s.

Cat 5e has improved crosstalk specs, but the performance is identical to 5 in real-world applications.

Cat 6 can do 10 Gb/s, but only up to 55 metres. Whereas 10/100/1000 Mb/s travels 100 metres on Cat 5 or better - hence no need for 5e or 6 if you're not going beyond 1 Gb/s.

Cat 6e is not a recognised standard, but Cat 6A is. It increases the distance 10 Gb/s Ethernet can go to 100 metres.

Cat 7 and Cat 8 exist, but I've yet to see these in the wild. At work, I'm used to seeing Cat 5 (older installations), 5e, 6, 6A and fibre. There is a lot of fibre in big buildings like BH, as you might imagine...

So in summary, unless you think you might use 10 Gb/s Ethernet in the future, Cat 5, 5e or 6 will be absolutely fine. I seriously doubt that Cat 5 has been offered for sale in the last decade, but if you found a "box end" for free, there's no reason not to use it. Cat 5e is ubiquitous and cheap. Cat 6 is considerably more expensive, and harder to work with, so it's not something I'd consider using in a domestic installation unless I was offered a "box end" cheap or free.

I know that someone is alleged to have said "640K ought to be enough for anybody", but at home, it's really hard to see Gb Ethernet being inadequate for quite some time yet. Domestically, for the average user the trend is the opposite, with most devices using slow wifi today - but that's fine for basic browsing on a tablet or phone. In a corporate environment things are obviously different - at least where I work where uncompressed broadcast video is moved over Ethernet networks all day every day - but given that uncompressed video will never be delivered to the home, it seems that 10Gb/s at home is for niche applications only (freelance video producers, perhaps?).

YMMV, naturally.

[Nick]

The only time I use 1Gb (or close to it) is when the backups are running and it's moving data from SSDs to the NAS (also SSD) in another building. That all uses 1Gb (true wire speed) switches.

Note that just because a switch or router has ports that can clock at 1Gb/s, that does not mean that the device will forward data at anything like that speed - its all a bit of a con. Most low-end devices are pretty slow port-to-port.

I only used wired infrastructure (Cat 5e) in the bedrooms where, due to the house being all modern with foil-backed plasterboard and my not wanting to put strong WiFi in the kids' bedrooms when they were smaller, the Faraday shield effect of the construction means that the main house WiFi is not great - we also have DECT repeaters in the house as even they have very limited range for the same reason.

Using the Devolo 500 & 200Mb/s stuff, I don;t get any noticeable interference on my AM radios...

[Mark Hennessy]

Yes, that "Gb" LED is only part of the story. Though wi-fi is much worse in this regard

When I moved over to Gb networking, I was pleasantly impressed by the speed increase. Not necessarily the sustained transfer rates, but more things like browsing shared folders on other machines or the NAS box - it's barely any slower than browsing a local hard drive - especially useful when looking at big folders full of photos in "thumbnail" display mode. At work, I've only got 100 Mb/s to my desk (thanks to the switch in the VoIP phone) and it's noticeably slow by comparison. I think that with current devices, Gb is the "sweet spot", and will continue to be so for a good few years yet.

I have a set of Netgear powerline adaptors, and while I don't use them routinely, they didn't seem to affect radio reception for me. But then, reception around here isn't great. Too many switched-mode power supplies, etc, and too many neighbours with similar devices. HF ballasts in modern light fittings can be a problem - the HF fluorescent light here makes a 300V sine(ish!) wave at 100kHz (varies with the brightness setting), so that does a good job of wiping out LW - as does my computer monitor down here. Anecdotally, I'm not yet convinced that powerline adaptors are significantly worse than a cheap SMPSU - I must devise some proper experiments one day...

[Dick.1]

The extenders that failed on me are designated 500mbs (supplied by BT)

The "spare" ones from the stores (shed) are 200mbs & seemingly work just as well when streaming video/films & BT Sport

My connection into the house tests at around 52/54mbs  (BTW) & is a declared connection speed of not less than 51mbs.

The bungalow has foil backed boards throughout but the wifi signal is good even in the garden which is the full width of the building & to the garden bench circa 22/23 metres

And long wave etc... works fine on my tuner & cheapo portable dab radio also works fine with supplied aerial (extendable rod)

Never had any issues with RFI in the 8 years we have been here


Dick.