Smart mesh with powerline

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Smart mesh with powerline

mpvincent

83 posts

Master Geek

#290084 19-Oct-2021 22:57

Hi there

Got upgraded to max fibre with spark today. I connect my iPhone 12 to wifi directly to the smart modem and getting speeds in the range of 400-500mbs.

When I connect to my smart mesh when it’s connected to the modem via a powerline network tplink 1200mbs the speed drops to under 100mbs. When the smart mesh is connected through wifi to the modem the speed is around 200-300mbs.

Can anyone think of a reason why my powerline network might be much slower? I also have a desktop connected to another powerline adapter of the same type which also only gets under 100mbs with 1000mbs lan port.

Final powerline adapter is to a tv which is old and probably only supports 100mbs anyway.

All plugged into power sockets directly.

Could it be an old cat cable issue? I’m not sure what network cables I have and they could be a few years old.

Thanks

Mike.

michaelmurfy

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#2797933 20-Oct-2021 00:59

I bet the powerline adapter only has 100Mbit Ethernet. It was common on many of these kits.

I've also found WiFi in many cases to actually be better than Powerline - the last time I used Powerline was about 5 years ago.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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nztim

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#2798049 20-Oct-2021 09:54

I just did a solution for someone wanting to do something like this

Used 2x Mikrotik Audience Routers (RBD25G-5HPacQD2HPnD) which actually has 3 radios, 2x 5.8 and 1x 2.4 + 2 ethernet ports

Router 1 is connected to the ONT and provides an AP on Radios 1 & 3, Radio 2 is a PTP Bridge to Router 2

Router 2 is an AP on Radios 1&3 and PTP Bridge on Radio 2 to Router 1

This gives 500mbps speed to the 2 ethernet ports on Router 2 as well as providing extra wifi coverage

This is not a cheap solution but it is pretty darn impressive performance

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

mpvincent

83 posts

Master Geek

#2798147 20-Oct-2021 13:21

michaelmurfy:

I bet the powerline adapter only has 100Mbit Ethernet. It was common on many of these kits.

I've also found WiFi in many cases to actually be better than Powerline - the last time I used Powerline was about 5 years ago.

Thanks very much. Im confident they have gigbit ports - see following link:

https://www.tp-link.com/au/home-networking/powerline/tl-pa8010p-kit/#qrcode

I think I may have found the problem. When fibre was put into the house they could only put it into the internal garage on an outer wall. I suspect the outer wall power point im using for the powerline network might be on a different ciruit to the rest of the house. I tried a long cord going to a power point on the other side of the garage (inner wall) and speeds exceed 100mbs so that might be the problem.

I'll keep testing :)

Cheers

old3eyes

9119 posts

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#2798595 21-Oct-2021 10:43

I bought a set of these for use at home https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/NETTPL9020/TP-Link-TL-PA9020P-KIT-AV2000-Powerline-Kit-with-A

Never had any problems with it and way better than the D-Link ones I had that had to be reset every couple of weeks.

Regards,

Old3eyes

ALTRON

577 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2798718 21-Oct-2021 12:01

I have the D-link DHP-701AV KIT and it works great. In the 3 years I have had them in my place they've never given me any issues with speed, connection.
They always give the full bandwidth of my 100Mb fibre connection. They have Gigabit ports so Im be interested to see if they could mange the apparent 300Mb upgrades coming out?

Possibly because my place has single circuit power? Your results may very