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Comment by gabereiser | Hacker News Reader

There is also Ethernet over powerline via powerline adapters. I run these in my apartment. From the router you plug a “host” adapter into an outlet, plug in the ethernet cable. Now you have a source. Throughout the rest of the apartment or house you plug-in a receiving adapter (there’s a little sync button to sync it to the host) and plug in an ethernet cable as an output. Plug that into a small switch if you need more connections. Repeat throughout your home. It’s just as cool as MOCA.

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Powerline sucks. It's slow (in most houses you're lucky to get 100mbps throughput even with high end "2000mbps" adapters), and it tends to suffer from bad jitter and latency spikes to the point where it's more like bad wifi, while MOCA is generally pretty close to ethernet in terms of having basically no additional jitter or ping spikes (only real downside is the cost of the MOCA adapters, and that it's a shared link between all the adapters so you're limited to eg. 2.5Gbps combined on all MOCA links, which isn't a problem for most people).

Also, for the cost of either powerline or MOCA adapters you can buy a big roll of CAT6 CMR and a fish bit and run ethernet through the walls (just do a good job on the patches if you're renting).

I've gotten a pretty reliable 400-500mbps over a "2gbps" powerline adapter. Granted this was in small 1-2br apartments, but you're probably dealing with only one coax jack in the whole place and it's not feasible/worth it to run your own cabling.

Imo, in a small 1-2br apartment it's easy enough to run ethernet and hide it along the walls, either by tucking it under the moulding if you have carpet, or using cable hiders.

I'm also just laser focused on good consistent latency though after years of suffering awful cable internet and trying to minimize all latency that I could control (https://i.imgur.com/i84mIsD.png was what it was like during the day in 2020 in the first wfh period. Luckily I've only been getting consistent spikes up to ~200ms throughout 2021 /s).

edit: That ping was on hardwired ethernet with no load as well, and Rogers (realistically the only ISP where I live in Canada because my available Bell DSL connection is too slow) was throttling uploads to 4mbps.

My go-to solution for routing ethernet while renting are 3M Command Hooks. They are remarkably strong, while being easy to remove – albeit a tad bit on the expensive side.

I am using MOCA 2.5 go get my 2Gbps over my coax, MOCA 3 does 10Gbps.

I have to begrudgingly agree with you. A couple years ago I plopped a couple powerline adapters on either end of my house. They're on different circuits, but the same phase of the panel.

It worked great. I got a consistent 80Mbps through them. I was happy and probably commented here or elsewhere about how they can work, or, "don't dismiss it, it might just be the trick."

Well, now they're pretty flaky. They still work just enough for me to keep using them, but other WiFi issues I'm having are convincing me that I gotta stop being lazy and run some cable to all my rooms. (I even have a crawlspace! It will be relatively easy if I can just get cracking on it.)

I don't know what changed between then and now. Phone chargers on the circuit? That random smart plug I bought last year? My A/C cycling in the summer? Doesn't matter. Powerlines are a hostile environment for high-speed data.

If you have accessible spaces and don't have high ceilings, this is true. If you have neither basement nor attic (or they are not accessible easily), or you have ceilings high enough to require crossbraces, and especially if you only need to make one or two runs, MoCA is very cost-effective.

Nooo, please don't use that.

They basically turn all the electrical wires in your house into a giant antenna and radiate broadband noise.

I honestly don't know how the damn things are even legal by the FCC given how noisy they are.

They basically turn all the electrical wires in your house into a giant antenna and radiate broadband noise.

And they do it very poorly, I've never been able to get powerline networking to work well. I had trouble reaching the Wifi node in my office from the bedroom on the far side of the house, I thought powerline networking was the answer, but the link was not that fast (around 10mbit), with very variable latency, anywhere from 5msec to 100msec, and around 2% packet drops. Both outlets were on the same leg of my home power panel, I verified it at the breaker box.

I finally ended up putting up a couple Unifi Nanostation M2's (the bigger ones with the 10dBi antennas) aimed at each other through the walls to act as a point to point network, and it was faster and more reliable. Still not super fast, I get like 30mbit, but latency is a nice constant 7msec, with little packet loss.

But in a previous house, the walls were real plaster with metal lath behind acting as a faraday cage, and I had no choice but to use powerline networking (it was a rental house, so I couldn't easily run ethernet)

I wonder how they prevent your network from extending to your neighbors. Is there some kind of encryption setup?

Ethernet over powerline adapters cause enormous RF interference for HAM radio operators. Please do not use them.

Really? Because I have an ICOM transceiver and have no interference at all.

Might depend on your shack/feedline/antenna location, too. As in every other part of ham radio, YMMV.

It very much depends what band/frequency you are listening on. An Icom TRX could be HF, VHF, or UHF. And of course it will depend where your antenna is.

I would choose MOCA over Powerline. Powerline trips AFCI breakers, is really sensitive to other devices and wiring quality, add even in best conditions seems to perform worse (in my experience).

I use those and have a generally positive view on them, but from personal experience, the adapters tend to de-synchronize, and re-synchronizing them is a pain (first of all because you need to actually access them, but since they are ugly they are generally kept hidden in hard to reach places).

They are also the other issues people reported.

IMO, they are fine in a rental where you don't have a lot of options and don't expect too much, but if you have a choice, use a better alternative.

Powerline networking is a terrible idea. Trying to feed RF over unshielded and electrically noisy wires is doomed to failure, as the signals can leak both in and out. P/L will cause interference to other services and also suffer from interference.

The big problem is that it might work just fine one day, then fail catastrophically if anything in the environment changes.

yup although not sure you get the speeds you get with MOCA 3 ?

10Gbps !

Oh for sure there’s no way I’m getting those speeds. I don’t have that need though. A simple 1Gbps is enough for me. While advertised as 1Gbps adapters, I get at max 800Mbps which is fine. I don’t suffer from stuttering or packet loss as reported by others. I also don’t have a bunch of RF interference as reported by others. So I’m happy with them and will continue to use them.

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