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Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

How much risk is there, with Powerline, that my neighbours will be able to see traffic on my home network?

I’ve had powerline adapters work quite happily sometimes (and unhappily other times) on separate circuits in my home so it clearly can tolerate some level of copper juncture (circuit breakers, consumer units, and the like) beyond a simple ring main.

A recent unit I bought had an optional pairing process between adapters. I don’t know how it works but it is billed as a way of ensuring privacy between endpoints. It wasn’t clear from the documentation if this was to protect me from other people in my house, or from neighbouring properties.

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Trouble shooting a relatives apartment I found the internet through his power line adapter was slow because it was connecting to an apartment four floors below... Who actually had a smarter internet connection but sadly at that distance the speed was reduced. I turned on the encryption pairings and that kept it in his own flat. He did have his own electricity meter but clearly all the flats were connected. I imagine in detatched houses less of a problem. In a large building there were literally 100+ WiFi networks visible so power line was a necessary solution rather than blasting through WiFi.

An apartment building probably saves on cost by using one transformer for the whole building, meanwhile detached houses usually each have their own transformer to step down from the local distribution lines. I'd imagine the signals have a hard time getting through a transformer.

I don't know about US setups, but in my country there is usually 1 transformer for the whole neighborhood, with each house having a split off from the underground lines which are already at household voltage. So the distance to the neighbour is not that far.

I myself had the same problem to a house 3 doors down, despite the tech promising a fuse box should be a barrier.

Typically in the USA, there's 3-4 houses per transformer, but depending on the layout of houses, it can be from 1-6. Still a lot less than a big apt. complex. I know X-10 can pass up and down through a shared transformer. Luckily, the customers, two sisters, wanted that.

Why would a fuse box / circuit breaker panel on its own stop radio frequencies from traveling down the wires in all directions? Filters would be required for that.

Maybe the electricity meter can theoretically interfere? Idk it's just what most resources say.

Everyone I’ve owned (Netgear, Devolo, TPLink) has had the encryption for the set pre set up, beyond that it’s a hold the button down on each half job. The encryption / pairing is part of the base standard(s) (home plug and the other one I forget).

There is no reason not to enable it if it isn’t by default.

I think I saw neighbor devices in our Powerline setup a decade ago, since I had unrecognized computers indexed in my Network folder (and I use a desktop). Turning on the adapter's really basic 40-bit encryption was enough.

That pairing process is the use of a key, yes. I think modern Powerline adapters generate a key anyway.

as mentioned, most modern powerline adapters employ encryption, so the risk of accidental cross-connection is rather low.

the signal will probably leave your premise in some way and an interested party will be able to break the encryption.

security = low

impact = low

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