Faster Powerline!

[joddle]

I am very happy with three setups I have at my own, my mother's and my sister's houses using TP-link av500 systems. On each installation (in all three properties) the runs from the input unit to the final unit wifi or other units can be quite large and the long runs do not seem to affect the signal much and from almost every unit I get close to 30Mbps. As these are all AV500 units which I bought second hand on Ebay for very moderate prices, my next question is could I expect very much better speeds with higher spec units? I have been very happy with the performance of the AV500 units as until recently the speeds have been very close to that provided to the router by our ISP but recently at one property (my own home), our ISP has upgraded my fibre connection to 600MBps and so I was wondering if it was worth also upgrading to better powerline units to gain more speed around that property but it would only be worth doing if there was going to be a significant difference. Any thoughts?

[KenB]

Hi,

Your AV500 units are capable of up to 500Mb/s over a wired network [ house wiring ] and 300Mb/s over a wireless network.

As your ISP has upped your connection from 30 to 600 Mb/s your AV500 unit should give you faster download speeds.

You should see some improvement without upgrading.

[joddle]

Thanks Ken - but even when next to each other on the same double wall socket I don't ever get above 30 according to the Ookla tests. It seems to be the about the max they can do in reality and its the same in all the three systems I have!. Will have to do more research into this .

[KenB]

Hi,

You should be getting better than 30Mb/s from your 600Mb/s but there may be reasons why you are not.

This article - click here - explains.

 

Referring to your original question:

Should you upgrade.

The article suggests that AV500 system is faster than an AV200 system [ as you would expect ]

It also suggests that 500Mb/s is theoretical [ I should have pointed that out earlier ]

 

A Powerline AV2000 should, in theory, give you a significant improvement on your 30Mb/s

[joddle]

Some research on the web shows I may have been barking up the wrong tree! (see here Mbps to MB/s Converter (Megabit per second to Megabyte per second)). The issue appears to be that 1 Megabit/s = 0.125 Megabytes/sec. and that the TP link spec for my AV500 setup is 300 megabits per second. This would give a theoretical max transfer rate of 37 megabytes per second so maybe my powerlines are not preforming so badly after all! Using the same logic an AV2000 rated at 2000 Megabits per second should give me a max transfer rate of round 250 megabytes per second so allowing for losses I may get around 180 to 200 which would be much faster than I have now - but they are far more expensive. Edited December 2, 2019 by joddle

[KenB]

It really depends on what you want to use your system for.

If it is doing what you want, without problems, then there is no need to go to the expense of upgrading just for the sake of it.

 

I see what you mean - the AV2000 is over £100 here [ probably nearer to 120 Euro ] :(