Be Excellent To Each Other

So, my inlaws have a crappy wireless router that won't send signal around their house (it is quite a big house, mind, and lots of walls in between) to where their second PC is.

Rather than messing about with getting a newer fancier router I thought I'd try one of those devices that send the network connection through the mains sockets. Does anyone have any experience with them that they'd care to share, maybe a recommended brand/model (and equally, ones to avoid I suppose).

Thanks.

I've got a set. Get the fastest ones they can afford, as they're quite slow. I've not heard anyone complain about a particular model before.

I use the 200mb Netgear ones, and they're top.

Buy a cheap Netgear wireless hub to use as a repeater.

Or buy a Draytek Vigour and put some of their high gain aerials on it.

Or do both like I did (except the my Netgear doesn't act as a repeater, instead it has exactly the same setup as the Draytek so as far as wireless devices are concerned they are one and the same).

Can you use them on four plug extension cables?

Yeah. You should avoid having multiple ones going into the same main socket, and avoid having things like chargers on the same 4gang, I believe.

No, you have to put them direct into a wall socket. At least, the manual for my 200mbps DLink ones say to, and it performed like shit until I moved it to a wall socket. They're pretty cool (but run stupidly hot) and dabs were selling them for £60 a pair recently.

I thought about getting a new router, and a proper wireless card for the second PC (and maybe getting a wireless hub if extra range extension is needed) but my inlaws are unbelievably shit when it comes to electronics. Pretty much anything technological in their house is either totally broken, not working properly, or soon to be broken/malfunctioning.

So I want something really really easy. I hate fiddling with stuff at theirs, as it's often such a mess that I have to either spend ages sorting it, or the whole things falls over and is somehow even worse.

As it is just for internetting, and probably not often, and by an old woman that is rubbish at computers, do I really need a super fast set?

They look pretty easy to set up (the homeplug things), right?

It all depends what else you've got plugged into the trailer bar.

A cordless phone base, a router, and a laptop PSU. The same things as were still plugged into it after I moved the Homeplug to the wall socket next to the one the 6gang was plugged into.

Could've been the surge protector bit of the 6gang.

Anyway, now we're in a house with better electrics, I still put them direct into the wall, because then they're in the main loop, not a secondary loop spun off it.

The cordless phone will screw you.

Eh? How will a cordless base-station screw a Homeplug?

The Thetans from the base-station interfere with the Doozers that the Homeplug uses to carry the network packets.

Anything that's a transformer is meant to play havoc with signal strength, but cordless base stations are anecdotally the worst. I've experimented with mine and found that I get double the throughput if I'm sharing a fourgang with, say, a light or anything without a transformer at the socket than I do with the phone base station plugged in. I'm sure Gaywood has the science.

I've never actually read up on how they work, actually. Some sort of frequency multiplexing with the 50Hz signal as the carrier wave I think. I understand that modern linear PSUs (any plugpack PSU that weighs less than 100g or so and hence has no coils in it) piss out interference the HomePlugs don't like. I'd imagine the surge protector coils fuck it royally too.

I have a Gobot, will this make a difference?

Pow-pow!

I should take you along to meetings. Then I can just spout some old shit and then when people ask questions I don't know the answer to I can just wind up the key in your back and go get a cup of coffee.

Sounds good. What's the pay?

Relatedly, the tab I have open in Mobile Safari right now is the Wikipedia page on Powerline Ethernet standards.

What's the what now?

Kidding aside, mad "talking science until their eyes glaze over" skillz was why part of my job at $ONCE_AND_CURRENT_EMPLOYER was a pre-sales role.

Heh, you thought you could get away with stuff like that just because I was away, didn't you? Think again Star Trek boy!

HAH!

I've read up on it now. It's OFDM between 4-20Mhz, apparently. There was a bunch of stuff about modulation methods and error correction coding that I should understand (as it was background stuff for my PhD) but just made my head spin.

So on our networking theme....

Shortly I will be moving to a house in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the coverage of 3 exchanges with the promise of 512k broadband. I seem to recall talk of high quality filters helping during the ADSL max line training period.

So are expensive filters just the equivalent of oxygen free gold plated cables?

Also, worth replacing a 5 year old ADSL router at the same time? I handles max in the centre of town fine, but might it be handy to get a new router from the outset?

Good filters > cheap and nasty filters. You'd also want to start with the router connected directly to the master socket - no, better than that, to the internal socket underneath the face plate of the master socket! Then see what it'll do.

I'd say yes. Changing to a new router nearly doubled the down speed for me and totally got rid of occasional loss of service where it just wouldn't sync. I'm also 3 miles away from the exchange and the predictor thing says 512K, but I get 2800 or so on a good day.

Congrats on your house move..

Any recomendation on filters?

Cheers. I'll probably get another Draytek as the one I've had here for the past few months is simply the best consumer router I've ever used. The only time it's been down was when I did a firmware upgrade.

It'll be on the master socket but the main problem is that the house is right on the edge of coverage for 3 exchange areas so unless BT sling some fibre down the road I'm going to be stuck at a slow speed for the foreseeable.

Does anyone know anything about those "Lifeline" boxes that plug into your phone line, for "Oh crap I felldownhipwentboom" moments? They've had one put in at my girlfriend's parents', and the ADSL is now dead.

I've got a terrible feeling that it operates on some of the same non-voice frequencies as ADSL, so even if I fix whatever mess the installer made of the microfilter situation, the innernehs are going to remain limp.

But then equally, something would presumably need to have been done in the exchange should that be the case, and it should've flagged up as already having a conflicting service (ADSL) on it.

Edit: Hm, actually, on the surface it looks like it could be a normal phone service device. More research needed, the government/council pages that are turning up are understandably short on technical details.

Edit: Aha! The manufacturer of the unit sells a branded, no-doubt stupidly overpriced standard microfilter for the lifeline units.

Generally those are an autodialler triggered by a simple radio pager. The latter might interfere with your wifi if you're unlucky (although I don't think it's very likely), but otherwise it should have no noticeable effect on the ADSL side of it. So yeah, it's probably because the installer's left something unplugged or buggered up the filters or whatever.

Ordered a new Draytek and a BT approved filter. Router is now 20 quid more than last October when I got one for the office. Gah!

Still, they are worth it. Didn't go for the high gain aerials this time as out in the country I shouldn't need it. + I can use my old Netgear as an extender for the garden if need be.

Meanwhile back at the office I tried to change my Wi-Fi channel today as recently I'd had reception problems at my desk. Changing the channel did result it better reception (or so my scanning software claimed) but everytime the Mac prompted for the password, I entered it and it timed out. Most odd. Channel 6 with ropey reception is fine, Channel 8 which is clear has real problems. Not sure what the issue could be as the Iphone also hated it.

The main problem is that the office router is on the ground floor next to the phone socket and all the walls are stone and thick. + There's so many wireless networks nearby. I was surprised how far the signal went when I measured it today, but the problem was it simply gets corrupted by all the other signals making it worse than useless. Gah.

Still at least there's a reason for it. My parents in law have a Netgear with an internal aerial and it's the shittest thing you've ever used. Appalling coverage in the middle of nowhere with no competing signals.

Note that there are only three WiFi channels.

Well that's a load of cock. 10 Channels squeezed into enough spectrum for 3. My signal is being crushed in all sorts of directions.

Wish I could just manually programme a device like I can with my radio mics*.




* Anyone getting me started on the subject of Ofcom and their ludircous proposal for "digital" radio mics can GTFF.

No. A set of 85mbps ones should be more than sufficient. In fact, depending on their broadband speed, a set of 14mbps ones might be just as good, but I don't think they're cheap enough that it's worth getting them over the 85mbps ones.



Yes. Plug your router into one, plug your PC into one, and they'll act as if you've just connected a network cable directly from the router to the computer -- no other setup required (unless you want to delve into the security settings, in which case you hook each one up to the PC in turn and run the supplied software -- however there's no real need to do this unless you live somewhere where there's a chance other people might have access to plugs on the same ring main, eg. a house converted into flats or something like that).

The overheads are higher than other methods (well, maybe not than the increasingly "busy" 2.4GHz), 200mbps ones don't do anywhere near 200mbps. Interference on the power lines is fairly ridiculous (those little transformers mentioned before, fridges) so packet resends happen quite a lot.

In my old flat, I couldn't get better than 10-15mbps out of them and it fluctuated wildly, even turning as much off as possible. I think that was the electric underfloor heating in the bathroom more than anything. I haven't done a port-port test in the new house but it's a damn sight better, better than my 16mbps ADSL anyway.

Besides, my 200mbps ones were £60 a pair last time I looked, so why not?

Oh - and turning on encryption is wise; allegedly they can turn the powerlines into a massive, local area broadcast antenna, and BT Vision users have been getting visits from the council telling them to disconnect the in-package homeplugs. Now, if they are broadcasting, there's only one thing they can be broadcasting.

I've got cheap ones.

I've ordered the £6.50 one from the bottom of the page when I ordered my router as it says it's been tested by BT. No idea what it is like yet:

http://www.dcdi.co.uk/Active-Hardware/Draytek-Routers/c-1-141-142/?gclid=CIWFsfjEz5oCFQkEZgod7Bof2g

Just to reopen this top has anyone bought some recently? there are some for £40 a pair on Amazon.

The reason I ask is I need to run internet on a pc in my spare room, but the wireless dongle i have doesnt work too well there (the pc is sweet too so that doesnt help). Alternatively, I have a spare wireless ADSL modem/router, and also a wireless router (not modem).

Can any of these be made to bridge the connection wirelessly?

Wireless is great to the other devices in my flat.

ta

See if you can get an alternative firmware for the router, that can make it act as a wireless bridge.

My 200mbps Homeplugs are shit slow today, only managing 23mbps between 100mbps devices connected to them. Might be the O2 router, I suppose.

Is the magnet in my Marshall Valvestate 8080 having any effect on my wireless card? The two are about 30 inches apart.