Powerline networking and old houses
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 - 4:11pm
I have a very old house - roughly 1906. The wiring has been partially updated in places, but there's a lot of old stuff and a lot of thick walls. The walls make me want to not run ethernet downstairs to my new 360, and I've never been completely satisfied with the behavior of my home wireless networks.
So I'm thinking about buying some powerline equipment - either a slinglink or one of the new linksys adapter kits. I can find roughly zero information on how this behaves in old houses. Does anyone have any experience with powerline networking in old houses or any insight into whether I should expect this to work?
I didn't even know these products existed! I am in a similar situation, my home is circa 1919 and most of the wiring is simply awful. Let us know how it goes if you go with powerline stuff. I am very curious.
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I think I may have some old linksys powerline boxes that I can send you, they never sell at garage sales (which is why I'm not sure if I finally ditched them this last year or not). While they may not be the latest/greatest they'll at least let you know if it works *at all* in your home before you invest in newer models. PM me if you're interested LG.
Also keep in mind there are also phoneline networking devices available if that wiring in your home is newer.
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Thanks for the offer, but I'm hoping to be on Live by this weekend, so I'll probably pick something up in the next couple of days. I just need to figure out what to buy.
My phone wiring is less convenient and less robust than my electrical wiring. Until recently, much of it was literally held together with masking tape.
I can't speak to how they perform in old houses but in new houses they work great, as long as its a direct run and not through a surge protector (dedicating a wall plug for it can be inconvenient). I have a Panasonic model.
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I figured I'd just try it myself and see what happens. I picked up a Slinglink Turbo kit for ~$80 at Best Buy. Other than having to re-organize my mess of plugs, installation was trivial. Downloads seemed slower than I expected them to be, so I may unplug my 360, plug in my laptop, and run some speed tests tonight.
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Where's Guru when you need him?
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What happened to Guru?
Haven't heard from him in a while. He can't resist this many tech and "my new rig" posts.
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Guru got pissed off when Certis upbraided him for going personal (yet again) in that Vista thread awhile back. Haven't seen him since.
I think powerline networking works best in older houses, actually. Definitely give it a try. I'm pretty sure Guru liked the Panasonic models best. This was an area of special expertise for him, as he apparently works for a company that makes the chipsets.
Well, the answer appears to be that it works, but not all that well. It's fast enough that I don't encounter significant lag when playing GTA4 online, but it's slow enough that I'm hovering around/below the "adequate for TV" line in the media center bandwith test. Of course, they don't label the y-axis of the graph with useful numbers, so I have no idea what that actually means.
Did you get the fast flavor? What model did you buy?
I bought this.
Ah, ok. That's the old flavor. If I remember correctly, you wanted these instead.
I got the Panasonic offering for my new apartment. They work very well so far for streaming to my XBMC. I haven't got internet installed yet, so hopefully they'll work fine for WoW/GTA4.
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I got a pair of these and they work great.
We've had 'em in use for 4 months without a hitch.
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There are several generations - the Slinglink Turbo's neither the new hotness nor the old bad ones. They also had the advantage of being $30 cheaper and something I could pick up on my way home from work. Because I wasn't convinced they were going to work, I wanted to make sure I'd be able to return them.