DIYbanter - View Single Post - How good/bad is powerline networking, especislly with more than two devices?

Chris Green

wrote:
On Friday, 19 July 2019 12:48:33 UTC+1, bert wrote:
Whenever I've looked at the small print they have all said they must be
on the same circuit.

The other day on Youtube or a Web page I saw someone who'd measured the speeds.

On the same MCB (circuit) is preferred.

Across two MCBs but on the same RCD (busbar) performance drops, but still useful.

Across two RCDs (on different busbars) performance falls *markedly*.

Most houses will have one smoke detector circuit throughout the whole house
for interlinking purposes, so that might be one to put the powerlines on
(with the caveat that most powerline adapters have built-in 13A plugs and
13A sockets ought not to be put on lighting circuits).

"Most houses ..." seems a little hopeful! :-) I think in reality very
few houses even have interlinked smoke detectors and there isn't a
requirement for interlinked (wired or radio) alarms to be on the same
or dedicated circuit.

The other thing is that most 'mesh' or multi-access-point systems need
some form of proprietary controller software to kick user devices off a
weak ap and force them to find a stronger one -- most consumer devices
don't auto-search for a better point and reconnect. *Reducing* wifi power
output on the access points can paradoxically give better performance,
as it encourages the devices to drop off the weak signal and reconnect
to a stronger.

Isn't the 'move client to a stronger access point signal' software in
the mesh access points? That's the whole point surely.

I think various options of OpenWRT will handle this and are a lot cheaper
than a proprietary solution - BT Hub 5a or Plusnet Hub One are available
for peanuts online and someone on ebay will reflash them for £13 inc return
postage (which saves soldering and using a TTL serial connection to rewrite
the boot loader).

I ran OpenWRT on a Mikrotik router for quite a while but didn't find
it a very practical router OS in the real world. Not that I've found
any proprietary ones much better I must admit.

--
Chris Green
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