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Powerline networking

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 3:59 pm
by aclawson
Today's Meetinghouse Technologies newsletter features using powerline networking (such as HomePlug) solutions to connect computers in meetinghouses. Note that HomePlug can cause interference with amateur radio stations in certain circumstances - it isn't a deal breaker by any means but it is something that needs to be considered.

http://p1k.arrl.org/~ehare/bpl/HomePlug_ARRL.pdf

http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/7273

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2011 5:13 pm
by russellhltn
aclawson wrote:Note that HomePlug can cause interference with amateur radio stations in certain circumstances

I'm sure it works the other way around as well. In fact any "noisy" device that is plugged into the wall could potentially cause problems.

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 7:53 pm
by jkentner
aclawson wrote:Today's Meetinghouse Technologies newsletter features using powerline networking (such as HomePlug) solutions to connect computers in meetinghouses. Note that HomePlug can cause interference with amateur radio stations in certain circumstances - it isn't a deal breaker by any means but it is something that needs to be considered.

http://p1k.arrl.org/~ehare/bpl/HomePlug_ARRL.pdf

http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/7273

I have tried the 85Mbps powerline adapters at home and for basic web surfing it is okay. However, if you try to push any media, it is barely more reliable than wireless. I have since tried out a pair of 500Mbps powerline adapters, and they will support media, but still are not as reliable as a wired connection. My 2 cents worth...

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:20 pm
by quintonrhq
I have tested powerline units from Zyxel in a stake center environment and would not encourage use. A large building typically uses 3 phase power. The powerline signal moves poorly across different phase branches so that only half of the building will work at all. If there are 'interesting' loads on the same branch, data rates will be impacted. Any load that has a filtering effect will reduce performance. Bridging phases is not a trivial problem - better to just do it right and run a wire. Also, the units will sometimes just need to be reset, no reason why but you get to do it.
Several buildings with this technology have now been converted to a wired system and a little less RFI doesn't hurt.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 1:33 pm
by troywo
We too tried out a powerline network solution in our stake building - it did not run across the very minimal distance we where hoping to cover. We attributed this failure to the fact that we were trying to span two different areas of the building which were tied to two seperate electrical breaker panels.