Hi All,

I mentioned here a while back about a friends place that has two CU's
one for the old part of the house and one for the new (both connected
to one meter).

I put a pair or the Delovo dLan 14M units in for them and think I can
remember them working, all be it at less than full speed.

I happened to be there again today and basically they hadn't been
bothering with the 'remote' PC as they had a netbook but they could do
with it again so I had a look again for them.

The connection utility seemed to see both units ok but the throughput
was dire, so I plugged the remote one into a long extension lead and
into the old house wiring (so on the same CU as the local unit) and
away it went at 14M. ;-)

So, I think I remember talk of something that could 'bridge' the CU
(hv caps or somesuch, assuming it was some of the active stuff in
there causing issues) but is there an official solution like that
please?

Cheers, T i m

The back story: The building is (now) long and thin and they have PC's
at opposite ends of the building. When they had ADSL I put the router
in the middle and with some jiggery pokery (long / active USB leads
and WiFi dongles near the windows etc) managed to give both machines
reasonable service. Now they have gone to cable and it's at one end of
the (listed) building it's made things much more difficult. The router
is 'n', as is the Netbook but the signal is still pretty weak (it
hardly makes it through two walls).

"T i m" wrote in message
...
Hi All,

I mentioned here a while back about a friends place that has two CU's
one for the old part of the house and one for the new (both connected
to one meter).

I put a pair or the Delovo dLan 14M units in for them and think I can
remember them working, all be it at less than full speed.

I happened to be there again today and basically they hadn't been
bothering with the 'remote' PC as they had a netbook but they could do
with it again so I had a look again for them.

The connection utility seemed to see both units ok but the throughput
was dire, so I plugged the remote one into a long extension lead and
into the old house wiring (so on the same CU as the local unit) and
away it went at 14M. ;-)

So, I think I remember talk of something that could 'bridge' the CU
(hv caps or somesuch, assuming it was some of the active stuff in
there causing issues) but is there an official solution like that
please?

Cheers, T i m

The back story: The building is (now) long and thin and they have PC's
at opposite ends of the building. When they had ADSL I put the router
in the middle and with some jiggery pokery (long / active USB leads
and WiFi dongles near the windows etc) managed to give both machines
reasonable service. Now they have gone to cable and it's at one end of
the (listed) building it's made things much more difficult. The router
is 'n', as is the Netbook but the signal is still pretty weak (it
hardly makes it through two walls).



http://www.labnol.org/software/incre...aluminum/8064/

--
The man who smiles when things go wrong
has thought of someone to blame it on.

"T i m" wrote in message
...
Hi All,

I mentioned here a while back about a friends place that has two CU's
one for the old part of the house and one for the new (both connected
to one meter).

I put a pair or the Delovo dLan 14M units in for them and think I can
remember them working, all be it at less than full speed.

I happened to be there again today and basically they hadn't been
bothering with the 'remote' PC as they had a netbook but they could do
with it again so I had a look again for them.

The connection utility seemed to see both units ok but the throughput
was dire, so I plugged the remote one into a long extension lead and
into the old house wiring (so on the same CU as the local unit) and
away it went at 14M. ;-)

So, I think I remember talk of something that could 'bridge' the CU
(hv caps or somesuch, assuming it was some of the active stuff in
there causing issues) but is there an official solution like that
please?

Cheers, T i m

The back story: The building is (now) long and thin and they have PC's
at opposite ends of the building. When they had ADSL I put the router
in the middle and with some jiggery pokery (long / active USB leads
and WiFi dongles near the windows etc) managed to give both machines
reasonable service. Now they have gone to cable and it's at one end of
the (listed) building it's made things much more difficult. The router
is 'n', as is the Netbook but the signal is still pretty weak (it
hardly makes it through two walls).



http://www.labnol.org/software/incre...aluminum/8064/

--
The man who smiles when things go wrong
has thought of someone to blame it on.

"T i m" wrote in message
...


The back story: The building is (now) long and thin and they have PC's
at opposite ends of the building. When they had ADSL I put the router
in the middle and with some jiggery pokery (long / active USB leads
and WiFi dongles near the windows etc) managed to give both machines
reasonable service. Now they have gone to cable and it's at one end of
the (listed) building it's made things much more difficult. The router
is 'n', as is the Netbook but the signal is still pretty weak (it
hardly makes it through two walls).


Put a wireless repeater in the middle, its easier.

The other obvious way is to plug another two adapters in to the separate
circuits and connect them with a twisted Ethernet cable (unless the adapters
do auto polarity).

On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:26:03 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:



"T i m" wrote in message
.. .


The back story: The building is (now) long and thin and they have PC's
at opposite ends of the building. When they had ADSL I put the router
in the middle and with some jiggery pokery (long / active USB leads
and WiFi dongles near the windows etc) managed to give both machines
reasonable service. Now they have gone to cable and it's at one end of
the (listed) building it's made things much more difficult. The router
is 'n', as is the Netbook but the signal is still pretty weak (it
hardly makes it through two walls).


Put a wireless repeater in the middle, its easier.

Hmm, that's a thought, although I was happy to get away from wireless
in that particular house.

The other obvious way is to plug another two adapters in to the separate
circuits and connect them with a twisted Ethernet cable (unless the adapters
do auto polarity).


Another good thought. ;-)

I'm not sure if they have 'easy' access for a cable between the two
mains ccts but I can find out (assuming the units will work like that
etc).

Cheers, T i m

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 06:00:46 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 12/08/2010 00:42, T i m wrote:

So, I think I remember talk of something that could 'bridge' the CU
(hv caps or somesuch, assuming it was some of the active stuff in
there causing issues) but is there an official solution like that
please?

RCDs seem to have some influence - although even going through several
it should be possible to get some throughput.

And I think we have at some point (when I first installed them) but it
seems not to be the case now or that's it's marginal.

One option to look out for
was there were some higher power output homplugs produced for
"difficult" circumstances. Solwise used to do them, but discontinued
them due to lack of interest IIRC.

Shame.

Not sure if they still have stock.

Can't see any mentioned but it did give me some other ideas, seeing
how cheap their Homeplug Wireless AP is.

If we replaced the upstairs Homeplug (currently running from the 'old
house' mains) with their AP version there is a chance that the
upstairs PC would see it as most of it is clear line_of_sight (~20m).
However, there is also the bit where the two parts join through an
upstairs landing before you can get to the old house wiring and that's
another ~10m of walls and rooms etc.

I guess I could stick a std AP / Router in there temporarily and see
what the signal is like at their furthest away PC.

Rather than extending the mains from old to new as we are doing now
(on a long extension lead) we could run Ethernet back the other way
but there is still this landing that needs to be traversed and that's
not going to be easy (or desired by them).

Do we know if units of the same spec from different suppliers are
interoperable? Like the Solwise and Devolo units?

We went for the 14M twin pack as at the time their broadband was only
~6M (BT) and they didn't do ant inter PC stuff. We also went for those
on the grounds that there might be a better chance of them working
than the faster units if the environment was 'difficult' but then they
stopped doing the 14M Wireless AP. ;-(


Cheers, T i m

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:07:35 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:


Can't see any mentioned but it did give me some other ideas, seeing
how cheap their Homeplug Wireless AP is.

Email and ask - I bought some a few months back for
a similar circumstance.

Ok, I'll see how it goes before I disturb them yet.

I wanted a link to an outbuilding where that means traversing three CUs,
three RCDs, 2 MCBs, and one HRC fuse. When I tried previously, the
standard infineon homplugs seemed to work ok, however when deployed in
anger the actual throughput was very unreliable even though the reported
data rate was not too bad.

That's the sort of thing I was seeing.

Swapping in a pair of high power units did
not improve the reported speed, but made a massive improvement to the
reliability.

Ah, ok. Maybe I'll drop her a line. ;-)


If we replaced the upstairs Homeplug (currently running from the 'old
house' mains) with their AP version there is a chance that the
upstairs PC would see it as most of it is clear line_of_sight (~20m).
However, there is also the bit where the two parts join through an
upstairs landing before you can get to the old house wiring and that's
another ~10m of walls and rooms etc.

I guess I could stick a std AP / Router in there temporarily and see
what the signal is like at their furthest away PC.

Would it be possible to drag through a length of cat5 somewhere to make
a bridge? (even if you did it outside the building?)

Outside yes but I'm guessing they wouldn't like it. I mentioned the
loft myself but that was also not possible for some reason (but I can
ask again and possibly look myself).

Rather than extending the mains from old to new as we are doing now
(on a long extension lead) we could run Ethernet back the other way
but there is still this landing that needs to be traversed and that's
not going to be easy (or desired by them).

Loft space etc?

Indeed, I'll try again.

Another option to consider is the use of the new one gig homeplugs.
These use meshing technology, so that if you have more than two, they
actually aid each other to achieve better throughput.

A bit like 'n' of the airwaves? ;-)

You can station a
third unit midway between two end points and it will act as a bridge.
With more on a net, a greater number of potential signal paths that can
be exploited.

Ok, thanks.

Do we know if units of the same spec from different suppliers are
interoperable? Like the Solwise and Devolo units?

If they use the term "Homeplug" then they should. Although its worth
noting that the various standards can not always talk to each other,
although they can share a set of wires. For example the 14 and 85 Mb
units are based on the 1.0 spec and don't have[1] to interoperate with
the "AV" (200Mb) and AV2 (600Mb) spec units. (the latter can talk to
each other).

[1] its optional in the spec

Ah right.

We went for the 14M twin pack as at the time their broadband was only
~6M (BT) and they didn't do ant inter PC stuff. We also went for those
on the grounds that there might be a better chance of them working
than the faster units if the environment was 'difficult' but then they
stopped doing the 14M Wireless AP. ;-(

With all things being equal, that is sound logic, however as
is often the case, not all things are equal!

Tell me about it.

As the speed ramps up on
new generations of device, so does the other associated technology, so a
higher spec unit will often perform at least as well or better than the
slower spec.

Ok.

Another thought then (and I did consider this when I first installed
these units but as the Stage1 'seemed' to work at the time I didn't go
on).

The old building is quite deep front to back. Going f/b, l/r ...

Front = Lounge and study.
Middle = Recptn, hall towards the back, stairs, downstairs loo.
Back = Kitchen, store room.

The new bit is built off level with the hall and back but going off to
the right about 2 times again the width of the main building.

Currently the cable enters the lounge, previously the ADSL / Router
was in the hall and served the PC in the study and the PC at the
furthest end on the 1st floor (doh).

Now they have the cable, modem and 'n' router in the study and the
WiFi doesn't even serve the kitchen, let alone the remote PC.

Would it be possible to 'remote' the router from the cable modem using
the Delovo plugs and then see what the WiFi coverage is like from
(say) the bedroom nearest the new extension (the furthest of the old
house wiring). The Study would be seen diagonally through a floor, as
would the kitchen (for the Netbook) and the remote PC about 30m+ line
of site down the building?

At least they could make use of the kit they have (I just need to
remember if the remote PC still has wireless or not).

Cheers, T i m

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:12:34 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 13/08/2010 08:23, T i m wrote:

Do we know if units of the same spec from different suppliers are
interoperable? Like the Solwise and Devolo units?

Following on from that, you may find this interesting:

http://www.homeplug.org/news/pr/view...04bdbab2 0829


I did, thanks.

T i m

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:58:02 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 13/08/2010 19:27, T i m wrote:


Now they have the cable, modem and 'n' router in the study and the
WiFi doesn't even serve the kitchen, let alone the remote PC.

Would it be possible to 'remote' the router from the cable modem using
the Delovo plugs and then see what the WiFi coverage is like from
(say) the bedroom nearest the new extension (the furthest of the old

Yup that ought to work. In fact Solwise do a box that is a homplug unit
with WiFi and Ethernet, so you can plug it in to extend WiFi to new
areas via the homeplug network.


Yep, I saw that but that would probably require buying two units as
the existing system is 14M wouldn't it?

Cheers, T i m

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:54:36 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 13/08/2010 20:05, T i m wrote:
On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:58:02 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 13/08/2010 19:27, T i m wrote:


Now they have the cable, modem and 'n' router in the study and the
WiFi doesn't even serve the kitchen, let alone the remote PC.

Would it be possible to 'remote' the router from the cable modem using
the Delovo plugs and then see what the WiFi coverage is like from
(say) the bedroom nearest the new extension (the furthest of the old

Yup that ought to work. In fact Solwise do a box that is a homplug unit
with WiFi and Ethernet, so you can plug it in to extend WiFi to new
areas via the homeplug network.


Yep, I saw that but that would probably require buying two units as
the existing system is 14M wouldn't it?

I think there was a 14/85 version of it... not sure if its still current?

They (Devolo) did a 14M version of the AP but it was very expensive.
You can still get them on eBay but they are still expensive there as
well and it would be cheaper to upgrade the lot to summat else
(especially from Solwise). ;-)

And whilst that's not out of the question it can be complicated
explaining it all to someone when they only recently bought summat.

Luckily, I warned them of the potential issues /before/ I got them for
them and I'm sure I can sell them for them as well.

Cheers, T i m