It looks like the pricing for Ubiquiti's access points have gone up from when I purchased them for about $100 each. Now the UAP-AC-LR model is around $170 on Amazon, and I've added a link to the Lite model which is around $120. Sad to see.
If you do a lot of things on your LAN, then it's best to separate the traffic out as much as possible. You can get one Powerline kit for example so that it doesn't chew bandwidth off of your Wi-Fi if say you use powerline to transfer files or stream a video from another computer. Then that frees up Wi-Fi to be use for a video call over the Internet because Wi-Fi is a shared medium and collisions are possible. I have a hybrid network when it comes to Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Powerline, and MoCa. I put my access point pretty much right in the middle of my house at ground level and it gets the tiny 3 room plus hallway upstairs really well as well as the entire basement. Plus I get the 2.4 GHz signal all around the yard. I connect all the phones to the 2.4 GHz. Then the tablets go on the 5 GHz because every where in the house there's coverage plus it doesn't have to deal with collisions from the phone traffic. Then I have one All In One PC that is on the Powerline upstairs in my bedroom. Also in my bedroom on the top floor I have one Ethernet drop ran from the basement where the Internet box comes in. Then on the ground level I ran 2 Ethernet ports for the Roku and wireless access point (I turned the Wi-Fi off on the DSL modem/router). And then also I have MoCa connecting the DirecTV Set Top boxes in my bedroom upstairs as well as the ground level TV. All I had to do to run ethernet from the ground level TV was cut a hole in the wall, drill down, and stick something from a unfinished utility room above the ceiling and pull it back. There is a den on the other side, so that's super easy. Then the basement TV I just hop over one bathroom and both sides of the bathroom is a utility room where the electrical comes in and on the other side is the furnace, and then I just go under the stairs where I have access to the back of the wall where the TV is. The hardest run was getting to the bedroom.
Powerline ethernet work great at my house, i recently rewired my house and i use powerline for my office and for the tv in the master bedroom. works fine, never had an issue.
That's good! They definitely can work well in some circumstances, and in some use cases even better than wifi (e.g. long runs to like a shed that has power). I used a pair when I lived with my parents for several years that got me 250-300Mbps and I was super happy with them :)
I did test that though? The bandwidth results show how the different adapters affected file transfer speeds on a local network - though in retrospect I should've also shown that graph in Mbps as well. And the speedtest.net bandwidth results showed how they affected the speeds to an external service.
Thank you so much! I was about to buy 5 powerline adapters (1 per floor) in my house but now I gonna switch to Wifi 6e Mesh with 3 devices in 1st 3rth and 5 floor.
Thank you for all the work you did to get hard data. But I try to avoid using anything but ethernet cable connections. I've seen these differences with my own eyes, but only very approximately. I tested powerline adapters a few years back to link my mother's TV (livingroom) to her modem (hall), because installing the cable was really a frustrating job. But after the first report I heard from her I sighed and went to buy a fairly long cable and some hooks to hold it discreetly along the wall...
For my setup, I go Ethernet first, MoCA second, and WiFi third. At my dad’s house, he was having WiFi range issues reaching his office. I installed two MoCA adapters (one at the router and one to his PC). On a Verizon gigabit connection, I was able to get 600 down and 900 up via MoCA 2.0 with low pings. Really good value for the money and many houses have coax run throughout.
I'm in the same boat as you - my new house has coax run to a lot of the rooms, so I ended up using some old MoCA adapters to get networking up to my office. Unfortunately mine are only 500Mbps so I can't fully utilize my gigabit connection, but it's doing fine for now. Also, how have you been? It's been awhile!
For those curious, MoCA adds about 3ms latency on top of RJ-45 ethernet's ~0.5ms latency, so expect about a 4ms ping time to your local router if going that route, which means 4ms higher ping in games. MoCA 2.5 can do 2.5Gbps and soon 3.0 will do 10Gbps, goCOAX makes some great adapters for just $60 new. Nothing compared to what Wi-Fi adds, though!
In my main home i have a mesh wifi network with the amazon eero. i just built a shop approx 200 feet away from my home. i ran an underground ethernet cable to the shop, im looking for everything to be on one network so when i walk out the house my phone will stay on one wifi network once i get into the shop. how would i do that or what would you recommend for my set up?
You could stick a wireless access point on the end that's in your shop. They can be setup to keep everything on the same network. Sorry for the late reply!
You probably have stuff plugged into your wall plugs causing interference. I had dsl speeds on my initial setup but all I had to do was plug my tv into the powerline 120v plug instead of in the second outlet above it.
Good catch! When I did my testing I did make sure to use outlets that weren't in use by anything else, but I did have stuff on the same circuits which may have affected things
I've been looking into this since I have a use case which demands wired internet on my PC, but only one (technically two) places I can position the router due to only having one working cable internet jack. I guess though that I'll continue just putting my computer where it currently is.
Yeah that might be the best way to go, unfortunately. You can try to get a good wifi setup, but they can get very pricey and wouldn't be as good as using an ethernet cable. If you've got coax run throughout the house though you could try using MoCA adapters, which would let you use those coax cables for internet.
@@BitGoblin The problem is that for streaming my PC to my Quest 2 for wireless PCVR, it really does need he computer to be plugged in to an Ethernet connection.
what about the jitter?, that's something you really need to take a look for gaming, high latency with less jitter (powerline) is usually better than low latency with a lot of jitter (wifi)
Honestly, that is something I didn't think of for this video (oops!) but I'm working on adding a proper jitter test/analysis for my future networking videos. Thanks for pointing that out! I don't have any definitive jitter results for these tests, but some of the ping test results from them are (note that I ran the tests three times each and averaged out the results, so they're a little different from the charts in the video): Basement Powerline (same room/circuit) - 1.380361ms/2.753673ms/5.689611ms/663.056µs Basement WiFi (same room as AP) - 954.333µs/2.189572ms/4.129908ms/814.547µs Living room Powerline - 1.570147ms/3.5463ms/7.29174ms/1.130341ms Living room WiFi - 3.934139ms/5.620408ms/9.543954ms/966.258µs In the best case scenario for both of them, even though my WiFi edged out powerlining, the standard deviation was around 20% higher for WiFi which would suggest that the jitter was worse. But since the ping results were pretty good all around in this scenario it really feels like splitting hairs, and realistically you'd probably be using a standard ethernet cable if you're sitting really close to the rest of your networking setup. In the living room scenario which would be a more feasible use case for both (one floor up from my networking gear, on a different circuit for powerlining), I actually saw a flip in the results with the WiFi falling behind in average, min, and max ping times, but pulling ahead in the standard deviation which would suggest less overall jitter. It's worth nothing that in the video results I did have one way worse result in the powerlining tests here in terms of the max and stddev where a few packets like REALLY slowed down (relatively speaking) to around 35-40ms, and it was happening frequently enough in my testing that I felt it was worth keeping one of those results in there for the "average" experience.
Dang I still don’t know what to go with my router is a lil far from my PS4 an I’m not able to get the connection I used to have while it was in my room an in need of one of these but still don’t know what to go with due to all of them have mixed reviews? Or would a WiFi booster be better ? Juss need something to improve my gaming experience
Wifi booster would probably be your best bet. Or, ideally if you can afford it, you can get a decent wireless access point from like Mikrotik or Ubiquiti which would be much better than the wifi on your router.
I don't understand, I can't find a proper powerline adapter speed test on youtube. Your local network speed is less than 400Mbps. Something is wrong with that, something is fishy, it's faulty. The local networks speed groups are: 10/100/1000Mbps/2.5Gbps/5Gbps/10Gbps/20Gbps ... so on. You have a Gigabit local network that works only with 400Mbps (you should measure at least 940...960Mbps), so it's not properly configured or something is faulty. Then you plug you powerline adaptor to this faulty WAN. Meh. The test is unusable.
So like I explained in the video, the WAN speed test I used to automate the testing was funky and limited the bandwidth pretty majorly, though it did still show consistent results with the local file test. Everything seemed to be cut in half. The first bandwidth test I showed using a 10GB file over the network adapter better showed the capabilities of the adapters. This had ethernet completing the transfer in 97 seconds (~820Mbps which seemed to be what my laptop's drive capped out at), and the powerline test in the same room completed in 341 seconds, or ~235Mbps. I really should have converted that graph to transfer rates though to be clearer with what it was showing.
Good point, they are different technologies and wireless usually can't compete. But I did feel it was a fair comparison considering wifi is another way to connect your devices to your network, and at least where I'm from is a lot more common than powerline adapters, and the idea there is whether it'd be worthwhile to switch from wireless to powerline or vice versa. Plus, my wifi traded blows with powerlining, albeit my setup is fairly strong and well above the average household; two Ubiquiti UniFi APs > standard ISP router/AP combo.
It looks like the pricing for Ubiquiti's access points have gone up from when I purchased them for about $100 each. Now the UAP-AC-LR model is around $170 on Amazon, and I've added a link to the Lite model which is around $120. Sad to see.
If you do a lot of things on your LAN, then it's best to separate the traffic out as much as possible. You can get one Powerline kit for example so that it doesn't chew bandwidth off of your Wi-Fi if say you use powerline to transfer files or stream a video from another computer. Then that frees up Wi-Fi to be use for a video call over the Internet because Wi-Fi is a shared medium and collisions are possible. I have a hybrid network when it comes to Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Powerline, and MoCa. I put my access point pretty much right in the middle of my house at ground level and it gets the tiny 3 room plus hallway upstairs really well as well as the entire basement. Plus I get the 2.4 GHz signal all around the yard. I connect all the phones to the 2.4 GHz. Then the tablets go on the 5 GHz because every where in the house there's coverage plus it doesn't have to deal with collisions from the phone traffic. Then I have one All In One PC that is on the Powerline upstairs in my bedroom. Also in my bedroom on the top floor I have one Ethernet drop ran from the basement where the Internet box comes in. Then on the ground level I ran 2 Ethernet ports for the Roku and wireless access point (I turned the Wi-Fi off on the DSL modem/router). And then also I have MoCa connecting the DirecTV Set Top boxes in my bedroom upstairs as well as the ground level TV. All I had to do to run ethernet from the ground level TV was cut a hole in the wall, drill down, and stick something from a unfinished utility room above the ceiling and pull it back. There is a den on the other side, so that's super easy. Then the basement TV I just hop over one bathroom and both sides of the bathroom is a utility room where the electrical comes in and on the other side is the furnace, and then I just go under the stairs where I have access to the back of the wall where the TV is. The hardest run was getting to the bedroom.
Powerline ethernet work great at my house, i recently rewired my house and i use powerline for my office and for the tv in the master bedroom. works fine, never had an issue.
That's good! They definitely can work well in some circumstances, and in some use cases even better than wifi (e.g. long runs to like a shed that has power). I used a pair when I lived with my parents for several years that got me 250-300Mbps and I was super happy with them :)
@@BitGoblin it's a semi temporary solution until I decide to spend money on ubiquity
Bro, why didn't you test the internet speed? How much would you get in all of them, and how much speed do you lose with wifi and powerline!
I did test that though? The bandwidth results show how the different adapters affected file transfer speeds on a local network - though in retrospect I should've also shown that graph in Mbps as well. And the speedtest.net bandwidth results showed how they affected the speeds to an external service.
Thank you so much! I was about to buy 5 powerline adapters (1 per floor) in my house but now I gonna switch to Wifi 6e Mesh with 3 devices in 1st 3rth and 5 floor.
That's a good choice, wifi 6e is definitely the right move!
how long does it take to clean ur house damn😭😭😂
@nickisreallyhim some say my house I'd still dirty to this day 😅
@@nickisreallyhim haha it's a family house but i'm the technical one and is my duty to give all 4k available for they tvs
Thank you for all the work you did to get hard data. But I try to avoid using anything but ethernet cable connections. I've seen these differences with my own eyes, but only very approximately. I tested powerline adapters a few years back to link my mother's TV (livingroom) to her modem (hall), because installing the cable was really a frustrating job. But after the first report I heard from her I sighed and went to buy a fairly long cable and some hooks to hold it discreetly along the wall...
Yeah I can't say I'm surprised. They are pretty flaky at times, and it's just not worth the hassle really.
For my setup, I go Ethernet first, MoCA second, and WiFi third. At my dad’s house, he was having WiFi range issues reaching his office. I installed two MoCA adapters (one at the router and one to his PC). On a Verizon gigabit connection, I was able to get 600 down and 900 up via MoCA 2.0 with low pings. Really good value for the money and many houses have coax run throughout.
I'm in the same boat as you - my new house has coax run to a lot of the rooms, so I ended up using some old MoCA adapters to get networking up to my office. Unfortunately mine are only 500Mbps so I can't fully utilize my gigabit connection, but it's doing fine for now.
Also, how have you been? It's been awhile!
For those curious, MoCA adds about 3ms latency on top of RJ-45 ethernet's ~0.5ms latency, so expect about a 4ms ping time to your local router if going that route, which means 4ms higher ping in games. MoCA 2.5 can do 2.5Gbps and soon 3.0 will do 10Gbps, goCOAX makes some great adapters for just $60 new.
Nothing compared to what Wi-Fi adds, though!
Where the inlets you used to plug in the powerline adapters on the same electrical phase?
For me it was in my basement, since most of my rooms are run on their own circuits
For powerlines to work well you need to actually have a decent power line circuit
Yep! At my parents house it worked really well for me, but everywhere else I've tried it wasn't great
In my main home i have a mesh wifi network with the amazon eero. i just built a shop approx 200 feet away from my home. i ran an underground ethernet cable to the shop, im looking for everything to be on one network so when i walk out the house my phone will stay on one wifi network once i get into the shop. how would i do that or what would you recommend for my set up?
You could stick a wireless access point on the end that's in your shop. They can be setup to keep everything on the same network.
Sorry for the late reply!
You probably have stuff plugged into your wall plugs causing interference. I had dsl speeds on my initial setup but all I had to do was plug my tv into the powerline 120v plug instead of in the second outlet above it.
Good catch! When I did my testing I did make sure to use outlets that weren't in use by anything else, but I did have stuff on the same circuits which may have affected things
I've been looking into this since I have a use case which demands wired internet on my PC, but only one (technically two) places I can position the router due to only having one working cable internet jack. I guess though that I'll continue just putting my computer where it currently is.
Yeah that might be the best way to go, unfortunately. You can try to get a good wifi setup, but they can get very pricey and wouldn't be as good as using an ethernet cable.
If you've got coax run throughout the house though you could try using MoCA adapters, which would let you use those coax cables for internet.
@@BitGoblin The problem is that for streaming my PC to my Quest 2 for wireless PCVR, it really does need he computer to be plugged in to an Ethernet connection.
Oh I see. That makes sense lol
what about the jitter?, that's something you really need to take a look for gaming, high latency with less jitter (powerline) is usually better than low latency with a lot of jitter (wifi)
Honestly, that is something I didn't think of for this video (oops!) but I'm working on adding a proper jitter test/analysis for my future networking videos. Thanks for pointing that out!
I don't have any definitive jitter results for these tests, but some of the ping test results from them are (note that I ran the tests three times each and averaged out the results, so they're a little different from the charts in the video):
Basement Powerline (same room/circuit) - 1.380361ms/2.753673ms/5.689611ms/663.056µs
Basement WiFi (same room as AP) - 954.333µs/2.189572ms/4.129908ms/814.547µs
Living room Powerline - 1.570147ms/3.5463ms/7.29174ms/1.130341ms
Living room WiFi - 3.934139ms/5.620408ms/9.543954ms/966.258µs
In the best case scenario for both of them, even though my WiFi edged out powerlining, the standard deviation was around 20% higher for WiFi which would suggest that the jitter was worse. But since the ping results were pretty good all around in this scenario it really feels like splitting hairs, and realistically you'd probably be using a standard ethernet cable if you're sitting really close to the rest of your networking setup.
In the living room scenario which would be a more feasible use case for both (one floor up from my networking gear, on a different circuit for powerlining), I actually saw a flip in the results with the WiFi falling behind in average, min, and max ping times, but pulling ahead in the standard deviation which would suggest less overall jitter. It's worth nothing that in the video results I did have one way worse result in the powerlining tests here in terms of the max and stddev where a few packets like REALLY slowed down (relatively speaking) to around 35-40ms, and it was happening frequently enough in my testing that I felt it was worth keeping one of those results in there for the "average" experience.
Hi, great video. Theoretically, would it be possible to send analogue video and audio from one room to another using the copper wiring in your home?
Thanks! Honestly I'm not sure, I'd assume there is a way to do it but that's not something I'm very familiar with.
Theoretically it's possible, but my biggest concern will be safety if you are talking about home brew solution on life AC wires.
Great video
Thanks! :D
Dang I still don’t know what to go with my router is a lil far from my PS4 an I’m not able to get the connection I used to have while it was in my room an in need of one of these but still don’t know what to go with due to all of them have mixed reviews? Or would a WiFi booster be better ? Juss need something to improve my gaming experience
Wifi booster would probably be your best bet. Or, ideally if you can afford it, you can get a decent wireless access point from like Mikrotik or Ubiquiti which would be much better than the wifi on your router.
@@BitGoblin thank you
You're welcome!
Powerline will beat wifi on long distances. Ex. Router at garage 150' away frome house access point , here is where it beats wifi.
Yeah, there definitely are some situations where powerlining is better, just not in a lot of common home scenarios :)
I don't understand, I can't find a proper powerline adapter speed test on youtube.
Your local network speed is less than 400Mbps. Something is wrong with that, something is fishy, it's faulty.
The local networks speed groups are: 10/100/1000Mbps/2.5Gbps/5Gbps/10Gbps/20Gbps ... so on.
You have a Gigabit local network that works only with 400Mbps (you should measure at least 940...960Mbps), so it's not properly configured or something is faulty. Then you plug you powerline adaptor to this faulty WAN.
Meh. The test is unusable.
So like I explained in the video, the WAN speed test I used to automate the testing was funky and limited the bandwidth pretty majorly, though it did still show consistent results with the local file test. Everything seemed to be cut in half.
The first bandwidth test I showed using a 10GB file over the network adapter better showed the capabilities of the adapters. This had ethernet completing the transfer in 97 seconds (~820Mbps which seemed to be what my laptop's drive capped out at), and the powerline test in the same room completed in 341 seconds, or ~235Mbps. I really should have converted that graph to transfer rates though to be clearer with what it was showing.
I mount your to try cables tv the same power line
Should not include WiFi in this comparison, wired always better than wireless
Good point, they are different technologies and wireless usually can't compete. But I did feel it was a fair comparison considering wifi is another way to connect your devices to your network, and at least where I'm from is a lot more common than powerline adapters, and the idea there is whether it'd be worthwhile to switch from wireless to powerline or vice versa. Plus, my wifi traded blows with powerlining, albeit my setup is fairly strong and well above the average household; two Ubiquiti UniFi APs > standard ISP router/AP combo.
@@BitGoblin I got your point. Of course wireless has the advantage of flexibility and convenience. For phone and tablet, no choice beside wireless.