Poor Broadband Speed

agh55

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Hi, I updated recently to 300MB BB speed, previously having 76M max. Unfortunately my hub had to be placed on the ground floor of my home ( previously in my office) Speed is perfect on my tablets / mobile devices on that floor, and I'm getting 300MB when I connect a laptop directly in to the hub. However my office is on the next floor, I'm only getting 40MB max through a Powerline adapter. When I switch to WIFI, I get 68MB.

I only realised that my by PC's WIFI card has only one channel 2.4M. In my office I'm getting 260MB on my I-Pad.

The Powerline adapters are new and were provided by my BB Provider and the spec show they can handle speeds of up to 1GB, cost £89.

I'm going to purchase a new PCI dual WIFI adapter, can any one please give advise on what one to purchase or should I go for a USB WIFI adapter and also what realistic speeds should I expect through a Powerline adapter. Thanks
 
From what I have heard, Powerline adaptors speed can be dependent on the mains wiring e.g. different circuits.
For a Wi-Fi adapter, support for 802.11ac is good.
 
From what I have heard, Powerline adaptors speed can be dependent on the mains wiring e.g. different circuits.
For a Wi-Fi adapter, support for 802.11ac is good.
thats true and also, it used to be the case that, the speed quoted on the plugs is a one way speed, in that you can expect to 1/2 the advertised speed to get a relisitic actual speed. I am not sure if this is still the same but certainly teh last time I looked into Powerline that was the case.
 
I doubt that has changed.
 
thats true and also, it used to be the case that, the speed quoted on the plugs is a one way speed, in that you can expect to 1/2 the advertised speed to get a relisitic actual speed. I am not sure if this is still the same but certainly teh last time I looked into Powerline that was the case.

Nah, the box speeds are link rates without any over the overheads so you wouldn't even get half that in actual data transferred in perfect conditions. You're looking at maybe 300-400Mb/s maximum under good conditions.

40Mb/s is fairly low for an AV2 1000 powerline setup, but certainly sub-100Mb/s speeds would be common and while a newer standard would boost the speed a bit it's unlikely to go all the way up to 300Mb/s in the same situation, maybe 150Mb/s or so from AV2-2000 or G.hn.


Wi-fi is probably your best bet as you know the signal is strong enough in that room to do 250Mb/s+.

Generally when buying network hardware you want fairly recently released hardware to get the latest chipsets, but not those that are the first implementations of a new standard. With wi-fi I'd also avoid the very small adaptors as a tiny aerial will impair performance.

USB 3 or PCI-E won't make any difference, both connections are capable of well over 300Mb/s. USB adaptors do have the advantage that they can all be put on an cheap extension cable in a favourable position (big metal objects like a computer case can interfere with aerial performance) although most PCI-E cards do let you use an aerial on a cable.
 
Hi thanks to all who responded. I purchased a PCI WIFI adapter and now I'm getting 270M in my office, great result.
Disappointed that my new Powerline Adapter only achieved 40M max. I checked my consumer unit and both the sockets for the hub/ WIFI adapter and the Desktop / WIFI adapter were both on the same power rail. I previously had problems when i purchased a WIFI extender and the room I needed to use it in was on a different power rail, signal was virtually non existent.
Is there any evidence that RCD devices within the consumer unit instead of hard fuses can have an effect on signal.
 
I would say any part of the power distribution could cause problems, they were never designed for high frequency signals.
 

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