Using power cables for data transfer?

[La Poste]

Greetings.

Does anyone have any info or links to share about using a homes existing power cabling as a data network?

You know feeding data into a socket downstairs and then accessing the data from a socket upstairs, is it possible with the right kit?

I don't really know much about this subject and a few pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[JUD]

Powerline Home Networking - Powerline Home Networking | Pcworld

 

[Steve_P]

The local pub here does it. It's all cob walls about 1.5m thick so wireless doesn't work too well and they didn't want a load of trunking or cables all over the place. Works fine though as data is a completely different frequency to the 50hz power. Sort of makes you wonder why all that cable got run doesn't it?

 

[MarkieSparkie]

Alternative systems:

https://www.homeplug.org/home

Network Powerline Products from NETGEAR®

 

[La Poste]

Great stuff thanks fellas.

This problem belongs to my neighbour who has Sky broadband, it seems the router he has will not transmit very far, this coupled with the fact his house has very thick walls in places.

He said for some reason he cannot find a device to boost the wireless signal, he said because it is Sky is the problem.

I don't really know why he can't find a wireless booster or amplifier, I mean surely there must be on the market.

He seems to think the problem lies with Sky and you can buy a wireless booster that works for other companies routers but he cannot buy one that works with sky wireless routers.

Boosting a wireless signal is something I don't know much about I mean has anyone else had any problems with boosting a wireless signal when using Sky as an internet service provider?

Thanks.

 

[kingeri]

You can't boost the wireless signal as such, but you can use a better router! Or you can set up 'relays' to pass the signal along. The homeplug systems generally work well, the best results are obtained when transferring from socket to socket that are on the same circuit.

 

[UNG]

Have you looked at wireless wifi repeaters not sure whether the Sky router will support this though. If the Sky router has removable a antenna or antennas then you could try an antenna with a higher gain to increase the signal strength, if it has more than one removable antenna then you could try using a space diverse antenna arrangement to improve the radio propagation

 

[invincible]

I've used network plugs for years. Parents have a long thin bungalow so was worth a try. Works brilliant. Now running my home network with computer, NAS drive, blu ray and streaming hifi. I'm ok with computers but these are "Simples", plug and play. Just check your virus and firewall aren't blocking them. Have fun....

 

[dragon-av]

Have a look at solwise and devolo both make good kit that works the devolo pass through ones work well and make sure you connect to a ring directly and not via a 4 way or similar. You can get Wi-Fi access points built into the powerline receiver.

 

[Ian B]

Have a look at Power Ethernet www.powerethernet.com
Latest generation technology, with a mini hub in each socket.
Does have a small amount of standby energy consumption, which can add up if you have a house full of them.
In general though there is no substitute for a dedicated data cable wherever possible.

 

[brman]

I use solwise homeplugs (AV500 I think). They work fine although once a brownout caused them to disconnect and it needed them all to be power cycled to get the network back. Dead easy to use and much better than wireless which is next to useless in my house....

 

[La Poste]

Ok sorry to dig this old Chestnut up again.

I have found these and they look quite smart:
Product Description | Power Ethernet

My neighbour wants me to boost his wireless signal and I was thinking of using these.
Downstairs is covered by the downstairs wireless router but upstairs has big wireless blackspots.

Now if I fit these sockets and plug a wireless router in upstairs will that do it?

Will I be able to tune the upstairs wireless signal to the same frequency/channel as the downstairs without any problems?

This is my plan but I have never done it before so before I go and buy the kit has anyone any advice on running two wireless
transmitters within the same house and matching them?

Thanks alot.

 

[UNG]

To give a seamless connection on the wireless the new router would need to be set up as a wireless repeater from the existing router. Having two access points with the same channel, SSID and security key would cause interference between them

Depending on the existing wireless router can you change the antenna to increase the gain and therefore the wireless range

 

[La Poste]

I will have a look at the router tomorrow I think it's a bog standard sky wireless router, manufactured by Sagem:
Sky Wireless 'N' Router - Our best ever coverage around the home

I'm guessing the interference you speak of will come from two wireless signals reaching a computer at slightly different times.
Maybe it will be best to re-site the router somewhere more central in the house.

I'm looking at wifi range extenders but the reviews seems to go from good to rubbish for the same products, there seems to be reliability issues with these range extenders.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-WS32...0BJU/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1345070439&sr=8-8

I shall keep digging, if anyone has any advice it would be appreciated.

 

[UNG]

The interference is caused having two co-located wireless systems on the same frequency (channel) they interfere with each other if they do work wireless speed and throughput is greatly reduced because of transmit and receive errors

There are a number of ways to direct wireless signal, aluminium foil can be used to direct the signal from an omni antenna in the direction where it is most needed. A big problem with some newer built properties is the foil backed plaster board they are sometimes constructed with this can create a bit of a Faraday cage for wireless signals

Some router / access points have antennas that are connected using reverse SMA connectors these allow antennas to be connected in a space diverse configuration a few metres apart using pre made leads available from the likes of CPC or Maplin

The routers with built in antennas have little scope for improvement other than adding a wireless repeater if it's supported

 

[La Poste]

Actually the way I am thinking at the moment is advising the guy to buy a more powerful wireless router.

Adding bits and pieces to a system will just add more things to go wrong and from what I have read about these repeaters they seem nothing but trouble IE they will work with some kit and not with others, some work OK with Ipads and not Windows 7 machines etc.

I've only just started reading about it but at a glance the most flexible system seems to be to have a separate modem that plugs into the power cables through one of these power ethernet systems, then the wireless router can be plugged into any of the house sockets, a bit of trial and error will reveal the most successful place to run the wireless router from.

I will haveto do some reading on powerful wireless routers, does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[brman]

Depending on how bad the problem is I think you are right. Getting a single wireless access point somewhere in the centre of the house without too much around it is better than messing around with different antennas and repeaters.

On the other hand, if you can't find a place where you can get coverage of all the house then you might be forced to go with a repeater.

There is no reason why you should not use powerline/homeplug to get your "wired" network to wherever you want but they still aren't as reliable as a wired network (in my experience of homeplugs anyway) so if you can get a cable there then even better.

That said, I just about managed to get house wide coverage on my wlan using a high gain antenna but I still use homeplug for a couple of the PCs at the far side of the house as they can be a bit flakey and slow on wlan.

 

[La Poste]

This problem of coverage seems to be common with Sky broadband users, the Sagem router they use do not seem to be very powerful.

Sky's terms and conditions forbid you from using anyone else's equipment but their own but there is nothing to stop you daisy chaining two routers as long as the house point of entry router is Sky's own one.

It seems the best way is to use the Sky provided Sagem and disable the wireless, then connect with an ethernet cable to a more powerful router.
Such a pity I got rid of my old BT home hub, I think that was a far better router than this Sagem.

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/atta...er-how-connect-two-routers-together-v1.00.pdf

 

[UNG]

Actually the way I am thinking at the moment is advising the guy to buy a more powerful wireless router.

Adding bits and pieces to a system will just add more things to go wrong and from what I have read about these repeaters they seem nothing but trouble IE they will work with some kit and not with others, some work OK with Ipads and not Windows 7 machines etc.

I've only just started reading about it but at a glance the most flexible system seems to be to have a separate modem that plugs into the power cables through one of these power ethernet systems, then the wireless router can be plugged into any of the house sockets, a bit of trial and error will reveal the most successful place to run the wireless router from.

I will haveto do some reading on powerful wireless routers, does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

A lot of the problems are caused by poor set up and a lack of understanding of the deployment of the technology. In some cases to optimise Wi-Fi you have to go beyond the plug and play boxes to overcome the problems contained within a building that attenuate the wireless network.

In some cases carefully placed aluminium foil can improve wireless propagation as most routers use omni directional antennas and a lot of the signal can be going in the wrong direction, routers with detachable antennas can be useful as you can use different types of antennas and use space diverse configurations to optimise the network

 

[La Poste]

I think a wireless router with the capability of upgrading and directing the antennae is the way to go.

All these additional add-ons just spell trouble to me. No doubt there will be loads of annoying home phone calls from the client stating
"My wireless has dropped out again, can you come over and fix it" and so on.

The thing with Sky is you haveto use their wireless router as the point of entry into the house.
This is Ok, you can use the Sky router as a modem then connect with an ethernet cable a beast if you can find one, the beast being a main wireless router with a monster directional aerial.

All I have to do is find the right monster router and get then them communicating with each other.

I don't know much about aerials and broadcasting, I'm quite looking forward to finding out though.

A powerful wireless router with a detachable and upgradeable aerial is the answer.

 

[UNG]

The increase in power comes from using higher gain antennae, the actual radiated power of the wireless router is limited to a level set by ETSI About ETSIthis is to avoid co channel interference although increasing the antennae gain will increase the output power if done correctly it should not cause problems to other wireless networks located nearby

If the router has multiple antennae then setting these up in a space diverse configuration can improve a wireless network to great effect with little increase in antenna gain other than to overcome the cable losses, this creates an effect similar to having multiple wireless routers in the same network without the configuration issues

 

[La Poste]

Here's something to look at:

WN2000RPT

I don't know how successful it is and I am guessing it transmits on a different channel to the main router so you might experience drop outs as your wireless equipment moves from one channel/router to another while you roam around the house.

 

[brman]

Something to add, if you haven't already done so then you should check there isn't any interference from neighbouring wifi. An app like wifi analyser on a android phone is very useful to check he isn't transmitting on the same channel as a neighbour which will not help his performance at all.

I live in a low density area and from my study I can pick up 6 neighbouring setups, 3 of them on channel 6!

 

[La Poste]

Wi fi analyzer is a great app, I shall have a bit of fun with it this evening.

 

[La Poste]

I'm having a lot of fun with it, I didn't realise there was so much going on in the airwaves and the 5ghz band has loads of channels.

 

[UNG]

It is a good App use it quite a bit myself, if you think there is a lot going on using that App then you would be even more surprised using a full spectrum analyser with a high gain antenna you can even find leaky microwave ovens

With regard to channel selection routers are normally set to automatically channel hop to optimise wireless connection if you are prepared to periodically check and modify the settings then switching to manual channel setting can significantly improve wireless performance you need a minimum of one channel separation to avoid co channel interference

 

[brman]

yes, the trouble with wifi is that is a fairly unregulated band, so shared by things like security systems and radio control models. A lot of these other systems use frequency hopping so it is hard to predict where the interference will come from.

the auto channel selection on access points (I don't think it is really channel hopping...) can help but, as UNG says, it is sometimes better to monitor the band yourself and manually select a channel in a quiet area. The only trouble is if a neighbour changes his router onto your channel you might not notice unless you regularly monitor it.
All reasons why I prefer wires!

 

[UNG]

Can be quite frustrating if frequency hopping and spread spectrum wireless is deployed in close proximity as one totally wipes out the other

Leaky microwave ovens are also a good source of interference

 

[Ian B]

Ok sorry to dig this old Chestnut up again.

I have found these and they look quite smart:
Product Description | Power Ethernet

Those ethernet over power sockets work well in my experience. Just be aware that the mini-hub inside draws a very small amount of standby current whether in use or not, so a couple won't make a lot of difference but if you used them all over the house it might add up a bit.

You will need to use a different wireless channel though as advised above.

 

[i=p/u]

my router can work out in street, new router maybe

 

[La Poste]

Thanks for the replies everyone much appreciated.

It turns out it was an older model Sky wireless router that was placed right in the corner of the house so all that is needed is an upgrade to Sky's latest wireless router the "Sagem 2504N" which is faster and also more powerful. If this new router is placed in a more central location then all problems should be solved.

It was quite interesting looking into this, the Android Wifi analyser is a great tool.

The powerline adapters seem Ok but home networks based on house wiring can't really transfer data at high speed in the same way a dedicated Lan cable can, I think speeds of 17MB/S were the norm using home plug whereas Sky's new router transmits around 144 MB/S and of course if you recommend home plug and you didn't install the house wiring you will be relying on someone else's joints, and there are a lot of joints in a ring main that could affect your signal.

Sky are due to bring out a new wireless router late this year or early next year and it looks very nice.