Home networking - powerline vs wifi to ethernet bridge? Ethernet switch vs router vs splitter vs... ?

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Home networking - powerline vs wifi to ethernet bridge? Ethernet switch vs router vs splitter vs... ?

rivamon

4 posts

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#248109 10-Mar-2019 20:09

Hi all, First post!

Come to my limit with google searches... I can read the product numbers but not sure what all the terms mean! Would much appreciate any advice...

We have fibre coming through a Calix T072G HGU ONT with 4 GB ethernet ports. This is wired to a FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7360 modem/router which has at least 2 GB ports, think the others might be 10/100.These are in the living room.

I have a WD My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 (I know these don't have the best reputation) which I want to set up in my home office downstairs so I can have an Ethernet connection to my laptop (through a dock).

So, questions -

1) powerline vs wifi to ethernet bridge? Is a range extender OK as a wifi to ethernet bridge? (I see wirecutter recommends TP-Link TL-WPA8630 V2 or TP-Link AC750 Wi-Fi Range Extender RE200)

2) How to get the laptop and NAS to talk to each other? Ethernet switch vs router vs splitter vs... ?

WD recomends GB connections between NAS and ? and Laptop

Diagram:

Is there a device can do 1 & 2 together !?

Cheers.....?

antoniosk

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#2195278 10-Mar-2019 20:38

Wifi is basically a wet noodle in terms of consistency and stability; it can be made to work but you lose a LOT in the radio link to error correction and retries, and it will cut the airside bandwidth down. if you can avoid it... avoid it! You mention the connection downstairs, which implies a 2 level house. If you're spending money, powerline will be a little better but also comes with it's own foibles (mainly to do with the quality of your inhome power lines, number of bridge points between downstairs fuses and upstairs fuses etc). Google is full of stories where the night is dark and full of the terrors if your house is old ;-)

You should be able to plug the WD into fritz directly, as the four ports on the back are technically a switch. Very limited but it will still switch nonetheless. You could connect it the 100mb port, and once the first backup is complete, the incrementals should go relatively quickly.

How fast is your internet?

________

Antoniosk

davidcole

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#2195285 10-Mar-2019 21:01

Any way of running a network capable (or cables) where you want the power line network? They’re ok at a push but can bottleneck. But they’re better than wifi.

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michaelmurfy

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#2195735 11-Mar-2019 11:42

All ports on the Fritz!Box are Gigabit however out of the box some ports have "green mode" enabled. You can disable this under Home Network/Network Settings/Lan Speed:

Never use range extenders. If you wish to extend your wireless then you're better to buy another Fritz!Box from 2degrees and put them in mesh mode. Just note, this can, and will impact your wireless speed.

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shk292

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#2195761 11-Mar-2019 12:02

If your main use of the NAS is from the laptop, then you definitely want these on the same switch. A simple 5-port Gb switch is very inexpensive and allows direct connection of all devices on it regardless of upstream connection to internet etc.

I used to be an advocate of powerline solutions, but recent experience has put me off them. If you can't run ethernet, I'd use a mesh solution - either the Fritz mesh as mentioned above, or something like the TP Link Deco, which has an ethernet connection for client devices such as your switch.

rivamon

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2196108 11-Mar-2019 21:11

Thanks All!

@Antonios Yes, it's a two story house with a concrete floor in between. 1980's house so wiring shouldn't be too bad.. I've got the NAS plugged into the Fritz for now to bulk transfer, long term it can't stay in the lounge though. Fast.com shows 100 mbps through ethernet (is this as good as it gets?) , ~80 through wifi in lounge and ~33 through wifi downstairs.

@David not at the moment for wiring up, just moved in as a tenant...

@Michael, thanks for clarifying! wasn't sure about ports 3 and 4, my GUI is slightly different:

Was excited to look up the mesh option and updated the fritz OS but unfortunately my fritz isn't supported! Or did you mean having the second one set as a repeater?

@shk292 thanks for the advice on the switch. If I got a TP link Deco, I could just use the two GB ports, right? Or would a switch be faster? The tp link powerline i'm looking at has three GB Ethernet ports

-----

Think I'm nearly there, just need to decide on powerline vs mesh. I guess the Decos would replace the fritz and be faster so would be a better network overall. Looks about $75 more for the Decos vs the powerline...so maybe powerline wins in this case!? will mull on it and let you know how it performs if/when the decision is made!

Thanks for the great experience for a first post!

shk292

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#2196114 11-Mar-2019 21:20

Yes, if you only need two ports in a location I think you could use two on the Deco. I assume these will pass traffic straight through without going near the wireless.

I also had a powerline adapter with four ports which I used in a similar way, this was quite a good solution although last time I tried it, speed over the power line was very slow. It seems a little unpredictable what speed you'll get with powerline

hashbrown

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#2196256 12-Mar-2019 07:56

rivamon:

Diagram:

Is there a device can do 1 & 2 together !?

One of these in media bridge mode will do 1 & 2 together.

https://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=2272275

It's sold as a wifi extender, but it's not operating as a wifi<->wifi bridge in this mode, so you won't get the performance hit.

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antoniosk

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#2196328 12-Mar-2019 09:31

rivamon:

Thanks All!

@Antonios Yes, it's a two story house with a concrete floor in between. 1980's house so wiring shouldn't be too bad.. I've got the NAS plugged into the Fritz for now to bulk transfer, long term it can't stay in the lounge though. Fast.com shows 100 mbps through ethernet (is this as good as it gets?) , ~80 through wifi in lounge and ~33 through wifi downstairs.

Think I'm nearly there, just need to decide on powerline vs mesh. I guess the Decos would replace the fritz and be faster so would be a better network overall. Looks about $75 more for the Decos vs the powerline...so maybe powerline wins in this case!? will mull on it and let you know how it performs if/when the decision is made!

Thanks for the great experience for a first post!

The concrete floor will be reinforced with steel rebar... and the combination of the two can be an absolute killer of radio signals like wifi. Wifi is pretty weak... 🙃

Powerline technology used to struggle when one plug was on a different circuit loop and fuse to the other end. The technology could also suffer from 'dirty' power, where poor quality transmission from the substation would introduce a lot of interference into the copper wiring... again bad for the way powerline works. Unfortunately there's no easy way to know whether it's going to be successful or not until you give it a try, which means putting the $$ down.

Mesh networks in your context will still use wireless to bridge the devices together, but their software might be a little more clever around tuning radio to get performance.

The standard for Fast Ethernet is 100/100mbps, but in practise will be slightly less. The real thing is you are using the NAS for backing up - saving information - from your widgets, and over wifi the network link will be wobbly. I've used Western Digital and Synology in the past, and when the network was wobbly their software would abandon the save file and try again... meaning huge amounts of wasted space on the disk until I cleaned it out. Your experience may be different.

Maybe see if a friendly local computer shop will let you borrow some powerline adaptors before you commit to purchase? I cant see the big box retailers being that helpful.

________

Antoniosk

rivamon

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2240913 19-May-2019 19:12

Thanks for all the advice! Great first time experience, sorry about the slow reply.

Went for D-Link DAP-1650 (https://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=2272275) in bridge mode.

Works great for NAS and I get better performance with docked laptop through the D-link than with WiFi direct.

Cheers!