Anyone use one of these? I bought a house a few months ago. The router is installed near the front of the house, and I have a PC near the rear of the house. WiFi is spotty there at best. So I was considering a powerline adapter to get better internet at the rear location.

Just curious if anyone has any experience and what I should look, or look out, for? It seems a good solution but perhaps there are things I haven't considered.

Get a gigabit one if you can. Something like this would work. Note that it also has a "passthrough" feature which means you can still use your outlet (goes without saying you don't plug this on an extension cord). Other kits don't have this and you're basically losing a wall outlet when using it. Here's a few kits that are available to me locally, my kit was like the one at £45, but with passthrough for both adapters. It's only 600Mbps which isn't an issue as far as internet speeds go (max of 200Mbps with my ISP), it's only an issue when trying to transfer files between computers outside of my game room... which luckily doesn't happen often.

I tried one a couple of weeks ago. My router is across the kitchen from our bedroom, so there are fluorescents and a microwave directly in line with the device I was wanting to improve.
It was reportedly a gigabit device and was highly recommended on a few sites. The price was right so I gave it a shot.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0136Q9QJK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Our house was built in 1998, the wiring is fine. Not that big, a single breaker box.
In our bedroom, it was horrible. Any outlet, which of course are all on the same breaker, but a different breaker than where the router and source adapter was.
Tried it on the far side of the living room, about the same distance, but where it WAS on the same breaker as the source adapter and it worked brilliantly. I can't confirm it was 1Gb, but the status light confirmed a solid signal whereas in our BR it was weak but not the worst indicator. Strangely, the top status light only guaranteed 80Mbps, far from 1 Gb, so I don't know what it was really getting.

It wasn't going to work, so I sent it back. I DO think it's worth trying before going to more expensive options, like an AC router if you don't have one and/or a repeater.
Just be sure you can return it easily if it doesn't work in your situation, like with Amazon. Play around with placement some.

In the end, I managed to improve things moving my router about 5' and changing the height a foot or so. Now I get a good 5GHz signal which does better than a full 2.4Ghz signal when on a Steam Link. 2.4 Ghz just doesn't have the bandwidth for Steam Link.

*One thing I did not experiment with, that I should have, is running the adapter between the modem and the router. Using that to relocate the router might have made a huge difference and they could've stayed on the same breaker.

Hi Derek, I was in the same situation ever since our last move to a new location over a year ago.

Went with those TP-Link powerline adapters with pretty good results.

Had some connection problems from time to time during online gaming but ever since a firmware update and switching off a hidden, not documented power saving feature in those adapters they work as advertised.

Of course a connection speed of 1200Mbps is not realistic. The most I can get in my home is around 500 Mbps.
Which is more than enough for my needs.


For online gaming activities I prefer them any day over a WiFi solution.

Frank!!!! Wow, great to see you. How have you been? Miss our old get togethers.

Thanks for the info gents. It was Ice who turned me on to these things. I had never heard of them before.

RK, could it have been because your house is relatively new and uses arc fault breakers? I understand those will kill the signal for these adapters? One concern I have is the house I bought was built in 1901 or thereabouts. Some of the wiring is quite old. I have an electrician coming Sunday to have a look and give me an estimate on getting it up to standard. Maybe I can have him bury some Cat 5 in the wall and run it to the back of the house. Otherwise, I'll have to get one of these powerline adapters.

I've had mixed experience installing these in homes here,

New Homes (as in never lived in, newly complete) we installed Power Line Adapters, w/ brand new Romex etc, they worked great, especially in homes with great circuit layouts.

Older homes w/ smaller gauge wiring and confusing Circuit paths, not so much, We ended up running Cat5e in the walls and putting Network Wall Plates.

Derek, still thinking about the good times we had together on those virtual circuits in GPL and GTR2 all those years back! And we were old even then!

Got caught by the racing bug again after a break of several years and spending all my gaming time on a xB1 console during that time almost exclusively.
Now I´m back in full swing into PC gaming and trying out old and new games from different genres. Plus the costly hardware upgrades that are suddenly needed much to the joy of my wife.

If you ever would like to play a game we both can agree on count me in!
Maybe something slower like a turn based strategy game played by e-mail for a start?

I don't know anything about home wiring to answer that, but it wouldn't make much sense to me for them to create the technology that wouldn't work with a standard breaker box. Sometimes you just have to get creative and move things to get "around" the problem area. Like I described, even moving the router a foot or two up/down or around can make a difference in certain situations.
There are simple repeaters that might get you fixed up. Plug in an outlet and sync up, maybe go into a menu to configure some options. I used this one for a while:
https://www.amazon.com/Dual-Band-Wireles...7ZWNXNQ2Q6E70JA
It was great for getting around the problem area for HD streaming to the bedroom. It just wasn't quite enough for the steam link, which is very demanding. Once I moved the router around, that was enough for the 5GHz. I had hoped the powerline adapter would be a better option, but for me it wasn't.

I'd still give the powerline adapter a shot. You can always return it. If it works, it may be your best bet. You could even hook up a wifi access point to it instead of just your device to get wifi around the house. Cheaper than an hour of labor for an electrician.

Note that there are powerline adapters that also function as WiFi extenders....

Just built a new box a month back, the details are in a thread a little lower down the list. I was pretty much only playing strat games and RPGs the last few years, but with the new PC I got back in to F4 and that's what I've been playing lately. The only racing sim I've driven the past few years is Asseto Corsa, which I see you also have? I do miss the competition in our GPL leagues.

Yes, count me in too, it will be good to catch up. I don't know what to suggest. Do you fly F4? Maybe some PBEM Combat Mission or something like that?

As for the powerline adapter I appreciate the feedback. I'm not looking for blazing speed, just a stable connection for flying F4 and other MP stuff. The PC won't be in this room forever, I am converting another room to an office/guitar room/driving-flying 'pit. But that's far from done.

These things aren't too expensive so seems worth a punt. I'll know more after the electrician on Sunday.

Push comes to shove, run a cable from the router to the PC via the ceiling or something...

Yeah, we'll make that plan B

I have to have the wiring upgraded in certain rooms of the house, and who knows what the electrician will find. That's not up my alley so I need a pro. The previous owner upgraded the electric in some rooms --kitchen, master bedroom--, but not others so it's sort of a mish-mash. I need to get that taken care of ASAP as it worries me. Need to get it up to standard. I don't see why he couldn't or wouldn't run some Cat 5 while he's at it.

But if for some reason he won't, I'll get a powerline adapter.

Just curious but wouldn't these power line adapters be putting your hardware at risk from a power surge not protected by your surge protector/ups?

Not sure what you mean. With a passthrough adapter, the adapter itself is plugged onto the wall socket, then I plug the surge protector/UPS into the adapter. If there is a power surge, the adapter might go poof! but I don't see how the rest of the hardware is at risk.



Is there a certain distance after which the cables lose signal or degrades in performance?

Most answers out there say Cat 5 limit is 100 meters. Cat 6 limit is considerably longer, but I would imagine Cat 5 should be sufficient for nearly every home installation.

Thanks CB, that will be more than adequate for my home.

Update: So the first electrician declined the job. Not a good sign. Need to get number two in soon.

As for Nixer's question, which is a good one, truth is I don't know. From what I've rad most (some?) of these powerline adapters are fused. And there is also the option to run the Cat 5 through surge arresters or something similar.

But it's a fair question that I really should know the answer to.

They also advise you to plug the adapter directly to the outlet, not through a surge protector.

Living in central FL lightning country I run all my important electronics thru DUAL surge protectors.

Prolly overkill but oh well.

I got FPL surge protection, on the outside of the house.

Since then, I've not had a single device lost to lightning. Of course, the last time I did it came through the cable, not the power lines. Fried my hub and my network card in my PC, although somehow the cable modem itself survived.



The Jedi Master