I've been using power line network adapters for many years. All absolutely fine, till I moved the input adapter (the one connected to my modem/router) to another socket and it killed my network speed.

So my question is, is there anyway of analyzing power sockets for their potential speed or bottlenecks.

I only moved the adapter to a socket a few feet away in the same room, and I tried one in another room, both equally bad.

It was only just by luck I'm using the good one.

All my adapters are TP-Link and I know they work just fine.

Other than by trial and error, I know of no way. I also used TP-Link power line network adapters and noticed the same thing. Some sockets sucked and others were fine. I guess it comes down to how much noise is in the line which would be dependent on the nature of your home wiring. Some sockets would be OK for a while and occasionally go bad. If I pulled the unit from the outlet and plugged it back in, it would start working OK again. Like you, some sockets worked good for years. Finally ditched mine after we got our new tv cable units that have ethernet ports built in; it's ethernet over coaxial cable and is faster and much more reliable than my old power line adapters.

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I was thinking of trying a wifi to rj45 adapter like this one:

BrosTrend 1200Mbps Ethernet-2-WiFi Universal WiFi Adapter, Wireless Bridge Convert RJ45 Port to Wireless

If it wasn't so expensove I'd buy one to test, any thoughts folks?

I got locally some powerline adapters secondhand for €10 each. They go RJ45 --> Mains wiring --> RJ45 which gets you to the router. I wouldn't rush to pay big money.

There are RJ45 to wifi adapters, but RJ45 sockets don't supply any current so you need to get that from a usb port or separate supply. Unless it's a very slow usb port, you can usually grab a cheap usb wifi dongle, once you make sure it supports linux.

I'm using second hand Air Vision adapters. They are modulating 50/60Hz with a higher frequency. So a bit of inductance in the mains wiring is a good thing, and heavy current is probably not ideal. But noise between the two units is not so good. Mains connections can be dirty, which generates heat & noise. I have yet to try it, but my signal should not be available next door. If you know your house wiring well, you can probably pick good places.

Thanks for that, maybe I didn't make it too obvious I use TP-Link Gigabit powerline adapters, I got them a bit cheapr than yours, but the problem is some power sockets must have noise or some other problem because the speed is so slow, dial up connection speed. By using WiFi I can eliminate the poewrline factor.


Thanks for your comments tho'.

The example I used the BrosTrend 1200Mbps Ethernet-2-WiFi Universal WiFi Adapter is powered by the mains and has an RJ45 ethernet socket to link to your pc's ethernet port, 1200mbps is it's quoted speed

I've been using my adapeters for years, the problem is I've moved house and I think the wiring isn't as good as my old house, and it's hit and miss as to how good the power sockets are.

If you could filter the mains sockets that might help but I've never heard of such a thing.

I am not familiar with BrosTrend but I have used Netgear WiFi bridge extenders with decent results.

Make sure the power line adapter is not plugged into an outlet strip or surge protector. Switching power supplies can produce noise but if there is anything plugged nearby could be causing noise. It could also be cause by just how your house is wired.

Usually there is a master it controls the flow.
They don't usually cross from one side of the 240 line.

What do you mean by a Master? Do you mean the adapter my router plugs in to?


Or are you talking about the BT phone socket?

It's usually not peer<-->peer. One does the thinking. Don't worry - it's transparent to you, but if there's two powerline adapters, they might need two frequencies. One does the thinking.

When you plug in the powerline adapters usually the first to power up becomes master. That one controls the transmission over the power line.
Some versions of them show up on networking as a router or some device. They do have a mac so there is some portion that you can access. You usually can't access the power side of communications.

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