Home Improvement → Future Proofing home networks

You're obviously not around neighbors hogging spectrum.

If you're the only one in range wireless works great, but a lot of people have neighbors and smart meters competing for the 2.4ghz spectrum.

Once place I lived I was forced to use channel 13 just for my wifi network to work at all.

Also, I transfer huge files between my server, laptop, and desktop all the time and that is done much faster over wired gigabit than even 300mbps wifi.

Ya, STP is probably overkill for a single family home.

I detect some of what we see around here between wired and wireless telco and it's related functions. Wired requires a person and here Verizon is union and Verizon Wireless employees are not. Wireless does not require a human (Verizon Home Connect) so they are cut out. Naturally the human is going to trash wireless to protect their own job. Some of which I see in this thread.

I see anywhere from 10-13 available networks on my laptop right now.

I can see 20+ wireless networks where I live (an apartment). If I'm more than 30 feet away from the WAP, I'll be lucky if my phone can even stay connected, let alone pass data though.

Wireless is great for devices which are always on the move (laptops, phones, etc), but when streaming lots of data far from the WAP, you're better off with a wired connection whenever possible.

Ok, maybe wireless works decently when in the presence of only other wireless networks as they are designed to work around each other.

Many of us have more than others wifi clogging up our 2.4ghz band around us. Like SmartMeter's, Cordless Phones, Fixed Wireless ISP's, room to room Audio/Video transmitters, certain analog wireless security cameras (X10).

Microwaves, certain car reverse cameras, bluetooth, zigbee, list goes on.....

I wonder, why haven't we discussed Ethernet Over Power?
They're a good alternative to WIFI or having to run wires through the walls.

They don't beat wired LAN, but they could certainly beat WIFI especially if the WIFI frequency is overcrowded.

Because ... it sucks?

Okay.
I never tried it myself since I have no issue with WiFi or running Cat6 in other rooms.
However I did read a lot of good stuff about it on Amazon reviews (hundreds of reviews, with 4+ stars average).
»www.amazon.com/Livewire- ··· er+power

IIRC, there was something about it not being able to cross to the other leg, or i it did, the quality was greatly diminished. I may also be remembering an early version and this has since been fixed. I think the main reason why EoP never really took off is that MoCA came around. When you consider that every major room is likely to have some kind of coax drop, it makes sense to use that. Sure it doesn't have the flexibility of using theoretically any outlet in the house but generally all you need to do is get in the room, from there you can run an ethernet drop where you need to go.

Powerline Ethernet is a quick and easy fix for those locations where you either forgot to bring in your wired LAN or where wifi reception is an issue. I haven't used it as the exclusive LAN but it is certainly possible to use it as such by using more then two powerline ethernet adapters. I'm using a pair of adapters to "temporarily" reach a location until I get around to wire it properly. It has been working so well (several years now) that there hasn't been any incentive to get around to fish that Cat5e cable and it looks pretty permanent for now.

To best understand its limitations forget about thinking that they are turning romex into network cabling. A better way to look at Powerline Ethernet is to think of as a wireless technology that uses power lines for signal propagation. Power lines are an ugly noisy mess and the signal injected by PLE adapters is necessarily weak to prevent all sorts of interference. While the theoretical bandwidth of those adapters is significant, you will rarely see that in real life. You'll see the best performance on outlets on the same breaker and less on outlets of different breakers on the same leg. You may or may not get a signal at all on outlets connected to the other leg in the breaker panel. Surge suppressors (at least the better ones) tend to reduce or completely block the PLE signal. The same applies to some breakers and GFCI.

I'm not sure whether whizkid3 was referring to the to the technology itself or the quality of the products available on the market but the latter does leave something to be desired (inefficient design produces heat which in turn reduces the life expectancy of the electronics; be sure to allow for sufficient airflow around the PLE adapters).

I started this thread with the intent to discuss various flavors of category rated cabling. However "future Proofing" is a pretty broad topic and Wi-Fi is a major player in both short and long term.

Both phoneline and powerline Ethernet are fair game, but I never understood the attraction. I concur with whizkid3 they have the complexity of Wi-Fi with none of the advantages.

As to posts about 2.4 GHz congestion that is certainly a problem but I have been amazed how well Wi-Fi radios perform in congested environments even when the preferred SSID is on the same channel and weaker then interference.

At the risk of taking my own thread off topic the 802.11ac spec promises significant wireless performance improvements and operating solely in the 5 GHz band less prone to interference.

For A/V short range interconnect 801.11ad operating at 60 GHz looks very promising along with Zigbee RF4CE remote control standard to replace IR for consumer electronics remote control. Being RF it is not limited to line of sight and should be a boon to home automation. Personally I though this would have occurred a decade ago but squabbling among CE manufactures, that saw a marketing advantage in proprietary implementations, delayed widespread adoption of consumer friendly remote control capability.

/tom

Not only does powerline ethernet suck, it sucks ass. So does HPNA.

Ok I'll take you and Whizkid's word for it.
I don't need to hope it would work as I have zero WiFi issues and ways to run cat6 to every room without too much trouble.