Looking for advice on Powerline Adapters or Discs for Broadband

cambsno

cambsno

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So have FTTP and when sat in my office (where router is) getting 400+ Mbps on Ethernet or 200-300 on wifi is fine). But coverage in other rooms can be patchy.

Have a 15yo 3 storey house - if router is set to 2.4GHZ I get coverage all over, but at slower speeds. At 5ghz the Sky box does not get connected but speeds on laptop are faster.

Two options - Powerline or Discs.

With powerline I plug one into router and the other into the sky box, wired. Then would do another in sons room for his xbox.

With the discs I would set one up in lounge (middle floor with sky box) and one in sons room on top floor.

Any advice on what would be the best option?
 
I have a second WiFi router connected to a powerline adapter which gives coverage at the other end of the house from the main router and out into the garden
 
I run my Freeview Box and TV from a two-port powerline adapter and in my particular setup nothing is visible and it works fine.
 
I have a similar age house, also on 3 floors (loft conversion).
About 6 month ago I decided to switch from the standard WiFi on my BT Hub (FTTC), to a mesh system using 3 TPLink Deco 9+ units - now we have great wi-fi throughout the house and out into the garden (we have a garden office in one corner of the garden set up as a home gym, including tv with amazon firestick so my daughters can watch Youtube videos while exercising!).
Not the cheapest solution, but less than the extra it would have been to add BT mesh over the 2 years, and Amazon did a 5 months interest free offer to help spread the cost.
I opted for the M9+ over the cheaper M5 as they have an additional 5Ghz channel exclusively for connectivity between the mesh units (So you have 2.4 and 5 GHz from each mesh unit for connectivity with attached devices, plus an additional 5 Ghz channel).
Note: I have disabled WiFi on the BT hub, with the master mesh unit connected via Ethernet cable to the hub
 
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Faldrax said:
I have a similar age house, also on 3 floors (loft conversion).
About 6 month ago I decided to switch from the standard WiFi on my BT Hub (FTTC), to a mesh system using 3 TPLink Deco 9+ units - now we have great wi-fi throughout the house and out into the garden (we have a garden office in one corner of the garden set up as a home gym, including tv with amazon firestick so my daughters can watch Youtube videos while exercising!).
Not the cheapest solution, but less than the extra it would have been to add BT mesh over the 2 years, and Amazon did a 5 months interest free offer to help spread the cost.
I opted for the M9+ over the cheaper M5 as they have an additional 5Ghz channel exclusively for connectivity between the mesh units (So you have 2.4 and 5 GHz from each mesh unit for connectivity with attached devices, plus an additional 5 Ghz channel).
Note: I have disabled WiFi on the BT hub, with the master mesh unit connected via Ethernet cable to the hub
Click to expand...

Not the most technical but what do you mean by the bold part?

So the M5 has both channels but you get both plus another 5ghz on the M9 - not sure what benefit that gives me but like I said, not an expert on this!
 
First question. Is your broadband from Sky?
2nd are we talking Sky Q?
 
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Cockney said:
First question. Is your broadband from Sky?
2nd are we talking Sky Q?
Click to expand...

No. BT BB - 500mb (250 guaranteed).

Have SkyQ and have 3 mini boxes too.

The changes made today appear to be making a difference. 200+ on wifi in lounge on laptop.

Primary use would be for sons xbox, faster downloading on Sky Q (does not seem as fast as it should be but no idea how to check download speed on that) and generally improve you floor speeds.
 
I have VM 200 and using av1000 poweline with unifi AP's the max speed I am getting is between 60-70mbps, so not sure if you will get any better speeds with power line.

It is worth trying a mesh system, but running a wired solution is the best option, but getting a wire to the second point may not be an option so all you can do is try power line and mesh and see what you are happy with.
 
I went wired to solve this problem, I used a soil pipe cavity to run a cable upstairs into loft, out of the loft through my ceiling to my upstairs home office, Then a further cable back out my office into the loft, across the loft and down outside wall (external grade CAT5e cable) to back of television in living room.

There is usually a way with wired. You can then either direct connect devices or use WiFi Access Points - much more reliable than Powerline adapters
 
Get the discs.

I have 600 ish meg fibre from Virgin (obviously it never gets that fast). I've tried powerline and I've tried discs because I happened to have both from previous houses.

Solution that works: get BT Whole Home discs. Plug one into the router. Put the others where recommended in your house (there's an app that helps you site them). For anything that needs a fast connection put a disk next to it and cable into it. That's what this PC (and the XBox next to it) has. Upstairs my wife uses WiFi for her work laptop and when the VPN doesn't hobble it she's around 250Mbps.

1624952452616.png

It's not the cheapest solution but it's rock solid.

I have these but you can get faster ones now

BT Mini Whole Home Wi-Fi, Pack of 3 Discs, Mesh Wi-Fi for Seamless, Speedy (AC1200) Connection, Wi-Fi Everywhere In medium to large Homes, App for Complete Control and 3 Year Warranty: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

You may want 4 dishes for a 3 story - I have a 5 bedroom house and wifi is great everywhere (>200Mbps) except the conservatory.
 
Be careful what you wish for - LOL

Don't forget the larger the wi-fi coverage the greater chance you have of hackers gaining access to your network.
So make absolutely certain you have really good security.
 
cambsno said:
No. BT BB - 500mb (250 guaranteed).

Have SkyQ and have 3 mini boxes too.

The changes made today appear to be making a difference. 200+ on wifi in lounge on laptop.

Primary use would be for sons xbox, faster downloading on Sky Q (does not seem as fast as it should be but no idea how to check download speed on that) and generally improve you floor speeds.
Click to expand...

Same config as me. Sky Q sets up its own mesh system at 5ghz to transmit tv between boxes. If thas not operating well then it's up to sky to provide boosters.
As its not a sky router the Q system wont distribute your 2.4ghz. The BT discs are a full mesh system you can add to.
Whatever make powerline you get is very dependent on your house wiring configuration and quality.
I use the BT discs and run ethernet from disc to pc or x box.
Sky Q can be very tricky hard wired or powerline with a BT router. The BT router seems to struggle with local ip addressing.
I went back to Bt discs and just got a couple more. Use the BT app to check and test your mesh.
My sky Q download speeds seem to vary. I suspect this is down to traffic bottle necks at sky end.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Get the discs.

I have 600 ish meg fibre from Virgin (obviously it never gets that fast). I've tried powerline and I've tried discs because I happened to have both from previous houses.

Solution that works: get BT Whole Home discs. Plug one into the router. Put the others where recommended in your house (there's an app that helps you site them). For anything that needs a fast connection put a disk next to it and cable into it. That's what this PC (and the XBox next to it) has. Upstairs my wife uses WiFi for her work laptop and when the VPN doesn't hobble it she's around 250Mbps.

View attachment 322684

It's not the cheapest solution but it's rock solid.

I have these but you can get faster ones now

BT Mini Whole Home Wi-Fi, Pack of 3 Discs, Mesh Wi-Fi for Seamless, Speedy (AC1200) Connection, Wi-Fi Everywhere In medium to large Homes, App for Complete Control and 3 Year Warranty: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

You may want 4 dishes for a 3 story - I have a 5 bedroom house and wifi is great everywhere (>200Mbps) except the conservatory.
Click to expand...
Snap.
 
BT disks works for us when powerline kept dropping out..

We run four disks including the main one and the TV, desktop and audio system each plug into their own disk.

They run on 2.4gHz and I assign the least congested channel to the setup. I also run the X Box on the 5gHz channel from the BT router and my son reports no lag.

When we move I intend to hard wire as much as possible but keep the disks in play too. I'll likely upgrade to the new BT offering with the extra 4g hub given we work from home a lot now.
 
cambsno said:
Not the most technical but what do you mean by the bold part?

So the M5 has both channels but you get both plus another 5ghz on the M9 - not sure what benefit that gives me but like I said, not an expert on this!
Click to expand...

So each of the three WiFi bands has a maximum bandwidth it can support, for the M9+ it's 400 Mbs for the 2.4 Gh, and 867 Mbs for each of the two 5 Ghz bands.
On an M5 its similar, but just one 5 Ghz band.

So when you connect a device to one of the mesh units (excluding the one connected directly to the router), you use some of that bandwidth.

On the M5, you actually use double the bandwidth - because you have the connection from device to mesh, plus the additional bandwidth for the mesh unit to then connect to the main mesh unit
On the M9+, your connection used bandwidth from the first 5GHz band, then it uses the second 5Ghz band to connect back to the main mesh unit.

If you only have a small number of devices connected, it's not a problem (as you have a lot more bandwidth in the WiFi then in your broadband), but if you have a large number of devices (it's reporting 24 devices connected for me at present) that can soon reach the point where things start slowing down.
 
sirch said:
I've been using powerline adaptors for a decade or more and never had a problem with reliability.
Click to expand...

I consistently had issues with two different sets of Powerline adapters (all adapters same brand each time), where the connection between the adpaters would just drop out, causing the adapters to have to be reset. It might be my mains wiring or maybe I was just unlucky.

Its also worth using a channel sniffer to see what channels your neighbours wi-fi is on, and making sure you don't clash.
 
For best results, both! Wire in any non-mobile device (e.g. your Sky box and son's XBOX, smart TVs, etc.) - ideally with a direct Ethernet connection to your router, but I have also had good results with Powerline adapters. If you're also concerned with patchy Wi-Fi for mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops, etc.) then I'd recommend investing in a mesh systems, wiring the mesh devices into the router if you can too.
 
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I don't know if anyone has tried this but I am considering getting a sky router and feeding it from my bt router with some changed settings. Just to see if I can spoof sky Q into relaying the BT 5 and 2.4 through their boosters.
 
Cockney said:
I don't know if anyone has tried this but I am considering getting a sky router and feeding it from my bt router with some changed settings. Just to see if I can spoof sky Q into relaying the BT 5 and 2.4 through their boosters.
Click to expand...
Based on my friends experience with his Sky router, I'd advise against it.
Every time he had a few of us round to chat, etc, it would run up against a limit on the number of connected devices, preventing anyone else connecting, and sometimes disconnecting devices that had been connected but had not been active for a bit.
Lent him an old 3rd party router I had from several years back, and plugged it into an Ethernet port on his Sky router (in much the same way as you were thinking of), problem went away.
 
Thanks for the inputs. I think i will get a couple of Powerlines ad see the impact.

Everywhere seems to get speeds of around 200mb apart from Xbox (90), Sky (varies but around 20/25) and daughters room (25), so powerlines for the Sky & Xbox should get most up to a decent level. Otherwise am putting up discs over the house for probably minimal benefit.
 
Oh well, tried the powelines, which are now on their way back to Amazon!

Plugged in, and speeds on sons xbox were around 55 up and down. On Wifi it was much the same up (maybe a tad faster) but over 100 down!!!! There was a difference on the sky box, from 25 to 50 but not worth it IMO.
 
Mesh is the way to go!
 
cambsno said:
Plugged in, and speeds on sons xbox were around 55 up and down. On Wifi it was much the same up (maybe a tad faster) but over 100 down!!!! There was a difference on the sky box, from 25 to 50 but not worth it IMO.
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Hmm... I'm wondering what make and model of Powerline adapter you tried, as I'd expect rather better than that. That said, give me a completely solid 50 Mbps Powerline connection for Sky and XBOX over the patchy 200+ Mbps Wi-Fi you mentioned any day (50 Mbps is enough for 4K streaming, and gaming needs stability and low latency over speed).
 
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SteveA said:
Hmm... I'm wondering what make and model of Powerline adapter you tried, as I'd expect rather better than that. That said, give me a completely solid 50 Mbps Powerline connection for Sky and XBOX over the patchy 200+ Mbps Wi-Fi you mentioned any day (50 Mbps is enough for 4K streaming, and gaming needs stability and low latency over speed).
Click to expand...
I agree. On gaming, ping is everything.
 
SteveA said:
Hmm... I'm wondering what make and model of Powerline adapter you tried, as I'd expect rather better than that. That said, give me a completely solid 50 Mbps Powerline connection for Sky and XBOX over the patchy 200+ Mbps Wi-Fi you mentioned any day (50 Mbps is enough for 4K streaming, and gaming needs stability and low latency over speed).
Click to expand...

It was TPLink, seemed decent. Did a number of speed tests and latency was about the same on xbox wired v unwired.
 
cambsno said:
Oh well, tried the powelines, which are now on their way back to Amazon!

Plugged in, and speeds on sons xbox were around 55 up and down. On Wifi it was much the same up (maybe a tad faster) but over 100 down!!!! There was a difference on the sky box, from 25 to 50 but not worth it IMO.
Click to expand...

Yep. Can't remember the stats on my TP power links but the BT mesh is perfect. Mesh through the house and cable the important stuff (there's a socket right on the back of the disks). If you run enough stuff at once then the wifi will saturate but real world it will be fine.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Yep. Can't remember the stats on my TP power links but the BT mesh is perfect. Mesh through the house and cable the important stuff (there's a socket right on the back of the disks). If you run enough stuff at once then the wifi will saturate but real world it will be fine.
Click to expand...

For me its just overkill. Rarely getting less than 100 speeds on anything other than Sky, which I can live with - if there was a £50 option to boost that then fine but mesh I cant see adding any benefit to other devices I use.
 
cambsno said:
For me its just overkill. Rarely getting less than 100 speeds on anything other than Sky, which I can live with - if there was a £50 option to boost that then fine but mesh I cant see adding any benefit to other devices I use.
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Well, after that post I'm confused as to what your problem actually is!
I think I'll leave you guys to it. :wave:
 
SteveA said:
Well, after that post I'm confused as to what your problem actually is!
I think I'll leave you guys to it. :wave:
Click to expand...

Was just frustrated that one room and the sky boxes were slower than the rest - an easy fix to that would be ideal but if not something I can live with.
 
I have a couple of Deco M5s, coverage is now really good. No more Facetime dropouts! The M9s should be even better.
 
I use Deco4's and have no problems with them.
 
We have the bt wholehome discs and they work well for us, need 4 discs to cover the whole house but think that's because all of our walls are brick
 
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