Powerline legal in NZ?

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s540201

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#61482 17-May-2010 19:54

I have not seen the said products in the market, as the technology is delivering 200Mbps over the wires at homes. Is there any reason that it's not popular here?

The chief benefits of the said technology:
1. No more SSID, encryption, etc to configure. Even required, a PC utility will set the encryption on each adapter unit.
2. No worries on strangers tapping your bandwidth
3. Continue to upgrade to wifi-N so each corner of your home is covered
4. Plug-and-play, plug in to the nearest powerpoint and you get the broadband access

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#331034 17-May-2010 19:59

I think its just not widely known IMO. Great idea, could certainly use one for the living room. And since wifi is so widely available now, and Telecom gives those routers out which are basically pre-configured, people just haven't researched alternatives to it I guess.

nate

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#331061 17-May-2010 21:00

s540201: I have not seen the said products in the market, as the technology is delivering 200Mbps over the wires at homes. Is there any reason that it's not popular here?

They are available. I use them at home and have been for quite some time.

s540201:4. Plug-and-play, plug in to the nearest powerpoint and you get the broadband access

Not quite right. I'm not a sparky but I know that some power plugs in a house won't work, possibly because they are on a different circuit.

tardtasticx

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#331067 17-May-2010 21:06

Oh and to the question in the title, I assume they would have to be legal since they sell them quite openly.

nzsouthernman

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#331069 17-May-2010 21:08

Hi All.

I use a pair in my house to get my MythTV frontend in the lounge connected to my backend in my office. Perfectly legal, and while the signal can be sniffed down the line it fades quickly. 200mbps is in ideal circumstances, I usually get 50-80mbps between my two as our house's wiring is *very* old.

Much more reliable than WiFi. I can't speak highly enough of them.

D.

oxnsox

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#331106 17-May-2010 22:24

Cost??

cyril7

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#331183 18-May-2010 08:45

Hi, these devices are perfectly legal in NZ, as others have said they work pretty well, however unlike a dedicated data circuit (ie cat5 cable and associated networking switchs) they are not as predictable, they sometimes dont work within a house even on the same phase, or if they do they may give poor throughputs and suffer latency issues due to packet resends, much like WiFi. However that all said most folk find them to work very very well, so expect them to become more common.

As for cost, here is a pair, and extra terminals are around $100ea

http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=386088

Cyril

Linuxluver

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#331186 18-May-2010 09:00

The power socket network has been around for a decade at least, but probably got off to a bad start in NZ for a couple of reasons:

1. Cost. They tended to be expensive compared to other options.
2. Power sockets - most older houses (or cheap newer) tend to have only one or two power points in each room and people already have them loaded up on power bars with numerous appliances.

So if you add together the cost of the units and the possible cost of having the house re-wired to make them practical (for many people)....then they become an expensive option compared to ethernet under the floor or around the walls, or Wifi...which is the cheapest of all at present in most home-based situations.

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s540201

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#331190 18-May-2010 09:12

Thanks guys for your feedback.

If you are interested, we can share the costs to get the best deals! Let me know if yiu are keen in the following models:
1. adapter with wifi
2. adapter with pass through socket
3. adapter with LAN ports

If not wrong, 20kg will be the most economical shipment charge.

Cheers

nate

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#331264 18-May-2010 11:17

Linuxluver: So if you add together the cost of the units and the possible cost of having the house re-wired to make them practical (for many people)....then they become an expensive option compared to ethernet under the floor or around the walls, or Wifi...which is the cheapest of all at present in most home-based situations.

Completely agree. One mate I had Homeplug's installed for had terrible trouble with them. We ended up running at 30m cat5 cable under the floor, it now works without any issues.

Ragnor

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#331331 18-May-2010 13:02

High price and real world throughput is no way near 200Mbit/s are the two main reasons.

For low throughput requirements it's much cheaper to use wireless.

For high throughput requirements like streaming a 1080p movie from a NAS to a HTPC you really need gigabit ethernet.

gehenna

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#331336 18-May-2010 13:14

Ragnor: High price and real world throughput is no way near 200Mbit/s are the two main reasons.

For low throughput requirements it's much cheaper to use wireless.

For high throughput requirements like streaming a 1080p movie from a NAS to a HTPC you really need gigabit ethernet.

I've had no problems streaming 1080p movies from a WHS over EoP devices that I own. So I'm calling that statement out as rubbish

cyril7

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#331342 18-May-2010 13:21

Hi, yes I should clarify, I have dont quite some testing with PLC chipsets (as used in these devices) for a client who wanted to integrate them into a product. My findings were that, they may work well today but maybe not tomorrow. They never ever gave 200Mb/s your simply dreaming to think so, figures of 25% of that are more realistic.

Power lines are noisy, there is no getting around that, and various devices in your home can produce noise in an erratic fashion that both limits the ultimate performance and can result in variable results over time in a unpredictable manner.

Earlier and lower throughput versions of PLC modems used narrow frequency usage, however this has major issues in that the impedance of the power line (and noise conditions) can be very frequency selective and moves about with the load in your location, this means as a transport media a powerline is very very unstable.

Latter versions of this technology (as used in the modems being discussed here) uses broad frequency OFDM techniques, so as noise and line impedance issues cause parts of the band to be unusable then other parts can be used. The down side of this is that throughput can vary from instance to instance, as can latency as the modem tries reshaping its path.

My conclusion, is that they can be a useful technology, however I personally would not use one unless I really really had to. Run a cable of cat5/6 its 100% reliable and 10x the performance at all times.

Cyril

raytaylor

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#333196 22-May-2010 01:51

I have successfully used them in old concrete buildings where installing wifi wont work through walls.
The main problem that I find is that you cannot plug them into a 4 way strip without loosing half the bandwidth, and most of them are not designed well - big fat clumpy boxes that cover the other plug on a double wall socket.

Whenever we install them, we make sure that the client doesnt need anymore than 10 mbits. The 200mbit claims just dont work out - the most installations will only get about 30 mbits out of them.

Ray Taylor

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Ragnor

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#333202 22-May-2010 02:37

gehenna:

I've had no problems streaming 1080p movies from a WHS over EoP devices that I own. So I'm calling that statement out as rubbish

Hmm that's interesting what make/model are you using?

It would be interesting to see some throughput tests.

Satch

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#333357 22-May-2010 19:47

Here are the reported quality measurements for my 4 Powerline adaptors. How do these relate to actual throughput speeds? How do I test the throughput of each?

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