August 21, 201114 yr I'm interested in using it for my laptops to stream videos and I've got a couple of questions. 1. Any brands anyone can recommend over any others? 2. Do you have to use a CAT6 cable? 3. Does wireless on the router matter?
August 21, 201114 yr I've had mixed luck with the netgear 200mb units. In my old house they worked fine....Pretty much 100mb ethernet speed. New place the speed is crap, not able to stream anything more than xvid 750mb rips over them so I switched to proper ethernet.
August 21, 201114 yr Author I read that from some other posts...What causes them to stream like a champ vs. when they don't?
August 21, 201114 yr It all has to do with the electrical lines. Usually the newer houses do a bit better. I would try the 500 mbps versions they tend to do better, even with the crappier electrical networks. Check out the Small Net Builder reviews. They looked at two models. One did better then the other...
August 22, 201114 yr 2. Do you have to use a CAT6 cable? no, 5E should do fine up to GB speed 3. Does wireless on the router matter? No, but remember that these units will turn your electricity cabling into one big Ethernet switch/bridge. So, what one should be aware of, is that the speed of that bridge is shared with/between all powerline outlets. Also, the advertised speed is that of the bridge (at best it is bi-directional, with two outlets). That means a 200mb powerline adapter could have an Ethernet port that supports only 100mb (duplex). Just be aware of that when make a purchase. Your router should support at least GB LAN connections as should your Powerline device. An alternative to Powerline is Ethernet over Coax...less polluting your house with EMV, because coax cables are shielded
August 25, 201114 yr Used the netgear powerline - worked well for getting lower pings than wireless and more stable of a connection when I was rooming. I plugged into a OpenWRT router which helped me abstract my network from the folks who renting a room to me. Speed - it worked well enough for internet (10-20mbps was no problem). Media streaming of all sorts seemed to work well enough. When I got my own place though I am hard wired gig because I really liked that. In summary:For dropping internet to local router/switch - GREAT! For media streaming (1080/720 from NAS) - Does the job. Minor to no quirks. For transferring large files from NAS and back - leaves more to be desired. Go wire gig ~ dpc
August 25, 201114 yr Used the netgear powerline Were you using the 85mbps, 200mbps, or newer 500mbps model? The SmallNetBuilder article got 60mbps as the absolute worst-case scenario in their testing of the 500mbps model, with 100mbps being attainable... (NewEgg reviews seem to support their numbers as well)
August 25, 201114 yr That makes sense. I was getting about that when I used 200mbps units. I found it was perfect for streaming SD, useable for 720p, but no good for 1080p.
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