Powerline Networking

I had a piece about improving Safari performance ready to go, but just prior to posting, I discovered that my procedure was OBE.  This is a revised version of an old post written about a year ago for my old Blogger account. 

When I started using a Mac as my everyday computer, my PC went down to the basement to become a dedicated gaming/multimedia platform. With my DSL router on the second floor, I needed a way to extend the home LAN downstairs. I decided to use a Powerline solution, which uses a home's existing electrical wiring to create an Ethernet LAN.

I bought two PL-100 devices from ZyXel for about $120 from Newegg. Setup was very easy:  I plugged both units into a wall outlet and used standard CAT5 cable to attach my DSL Router and PC to their respective PL-100.  The data rate between floors was a measly 0.5 Mb/s, fast enough for surfing the web and playing online shooters, but too slow for streaming video from Netflix or Hulu.

The PL-100 cannot be plugged into surge protectors or UPS's, since these devices filter out the frequencies used for data transmission. Not surprisingly, when we had a huge electrical storm that knocked out power, one of the PL-100's popped a capicator and fried a chip.  I purchased a replacement PL-100 for $50.00 on eBay, which worked well for 6 months. After another lightning strike, the Zyxels because flaky and the connection between units randomly died at least once a week. Unplugging the devices for a half hour fixed the problem, for a time. Two months after the last incident, the downstairs PL-100 stopped working altogether.

Rather than pay for a fourth PL-100, I bought a wireless router. The lack of electrical protection on the Poweline devices makes them too unreliable given the number of storms and brownouts I see in a typical year. I think I was lucky that only two devices got killed in a 20 month period.

I miss the simplicity and directness of my Powerline connection. While 802.11g has better bandwidth, the wireless encryption introduces a latency that causes lag while playing games online. The effect is so bad that I've stopped gaming altogether. It's a mixed blessing, because while the experience of shooting virtual strangers was very cathartic, I'm getting more real work done.

I'll wait another year or two before trying out Powerline again, hoping the technology becomes cheaper and more robust in the meantime.

In the year since this was written, my need to use Powerline networking has disappeared.  I've upgraded to 802.11n and it has performed wonderfully.  Admittedly, I haven't played any online shooters to see if the latency problem has improved.  In fact, I retired my gaming PC and run most of my games on a virtualized version of Windows XP using Parallels 5 on the Mac.