Networking help

[DStrukt]

Hi

Requesting abit of help/advice with something for my general internet use and for the near future for when I get the Steam Link

OK Currently this is my setup.

Router downstairs, plugged into Powerline Adapter. PC upstairs, plugged into Powerline Adapter. Works good. No problems. Better than Wireless I was told, more reliable. Impossible to get long ethernet cable from downstairs to upstairs, we just dont want too. So for now this is best for us.

However.....

Reading a review of the Steam Link yesterday which annoyingly I cannot find now, It mentioned something to do with Networking and how to use the Steam Link.... saying that a certain Wireless 5Ghz technology would be the best, better than using a Powerline Adapter for sure.

Then I thought hang on... My new router is 5Ghz capable... Should I be using my PC connection to the router with Wireless too or stick with Powerline Adapter?

Please advise best for me, currently do not have wireless network card in my PC though.

This is my router

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/prod...mson-tg589vac/

Thank you

[Deleted]

Don't try to fix things before you know they need fixing...

Wait and see how/if it works then decide if there is issue and if so how to remedy it.

In theory 802.11ac wifi is supposed to reach 1Gbps speeds which would be faster than power line however speed of both is limited by many factors respectively.
Thick walls, noise, quality of router/receiver, congestion of networks and such for wifi. For powerline it depends on distance and quality of wiring in the house.

If what is advertised is true then good power adapter with short distances and good quality wiring should give you 500Mbps. Given that high speeds with wifi require really good hardware(from my experience) I'd wager you will get better or similar performance out of powerline with less effort and cost. Though I could be wrong as it all depends on given settings

[DStrukt]

Its just I tried streaming a game from steam (Witcher 3) from my PC where it runs nicely to my laptop downstairs and my laptop isnt even terrible it just cant run it itself.. but the visuals dropped and there was a little lag or so it seemed too, wasnt as good experience as it was if I was to play it on my pc upstairs directly.

That was with the laptop plugged into a powerline adapter downstairs too

[Javelin3o4]

Make sure the powerline bridge is not plugged into any surge protectors or multi-power taps, just directly to the wall, also most have a LED indicator to indicate link speed between the bridges such as green, yellow, red. If it has it is the link green?

There are other options too such as a MoCa adapter to use coax instead of powerline.

[DStrukt]

They are all green yeah, I tried copying some large files over from my PC upstairs to laptop downstairs and speeds were not as fast as I expected. Talking about 4-5 mb/s using Powerline. Thats slow isnt it? Not exactly 500mb. If internet speed is anything to go by Id expect 50mb/s... 10meg internet connection gives 1mb/s...... 24meg would be 2.4mb/s, its always a 10th so yeah.... 500mb/s should be 50mb/s, even at least 20mb/s for a 200meg powerline but no, and this is a brand new house too btw so wiring should be perfect

[Rhyseh]

They are all green yeah, I tried copying some large files over from my PC upstairs to laptop downstairs and speeds were not as fast as I expected. Talking about 4-5 mb/s using Powerline. Thats slow isnt it? Not exactly 500mb. If internet speed is anything to go by Id expect 50mb/s... 10meg internet connection gives 1mb/s...... 24meg would be 2.4mb/s, its always a 10th so yeah.... 500mb/s should be 50mb/s, even at least 20mb/s for a 200meg powerline but no, and this is a brand new house too btw so wiring should be perfect

Okay, just to clear this up a bit. There are 8 bits (b) to a byte (B). So 500 Megabits per second (Mbps) = 62.5 Megabytes Per Second (MBps).

WiFi will only be as good as the wireless access point, while it may say ac and xyz speed, you may find that your results vary. This is especially true when you are in a building with interfering RF signals or inhibiters (for example some mesh that they use when rendering some houses acts to block WiFi signal).

The only thing you can do is test. Here is what I would do:
Plug two devices into the router (direct, without the power-line adapters).
Test transferring a few large files and average the result.
Now move the same device to the Power-line and test again (keep the other device directly connected).
Move the same device to wireless and again perform a test (again keep the other device connected to the router).

Note I would also do ping tests for long period times on each. Note the fluctuations under load as-well. If there is any loss it will yield poorer experience than high average latency.

[Azezeil]

Hi

Requesting abit of help/advice with something for my general internet use and for the near future for when I get the Steam Link

OK Currently this is my setup.

Router downstairs, plugged into Powerline Adapter. PC upstairs, plugged into Powerline Adapter. Works good. No problems. Better than Wireless I was told, more reliable. Impossible to get long ethernet cable from downstairs to upstairs, we just dont want too. So for now this is best for us.

However.....

Reading a review of the Steam Link yesterday which annoyingly I cannot find now, It mentioned something to do with Networking and how to use the Steam Link.... saying that a certain Wireless 5Ghz technology would be the best, better than using a Powerline Adapter for sure.

Then I thought hang on... My new router is 5Ghz capable... Should I be using my PC connection to the router with Wireless too or stick with Powerline Adapter?

Please advise best for me, currently do not have wireless network card in my PC though.

This is my router



Thank you

So first off, under ideal conditions you're only going to get about half the advertised speed on Wi-Fi. This is because Wi-Fi is a half duplex connection type, it can send OR receive data. It can't do both at the same time. Second, 5GHz has bad penetration qualities compared to 2.4GHz, so it's possible to get better bandwidth using a 2.4GHz transmitter if the signal has to go through thick walls. The bad thing is there's no way to tell unless you test it. Third, the more devices that are using a singular access point the worse it gets, exponentially. This is due to the way wireless protocols work around it being half duplex. Fourth, signal strength determines total bandwidth on a wireless connection. You might get 500Mb/s standing 5 feet away from the access point, but only get 120Mb/s 35 feet away and through 2 walls. And it might drop even lower if you have more devices actively using the connection.

With that being said, I seriously doubt the Steam Link uses more than 10Mb/s to stream. The reason why they recommend a wired connection is for consistency. Assuming it works like every other streaming service, it uses the UDP protocol and not TCP. So Steam will constantly send out packets and not wait for a confirmation that the Steam Link received said packet. This works great in reducing input lag, but the drawback is that if a packet is lost, you'll see it as an artifact on your TV screen, or if quite a few are lost, it might skip frames.

I use my Steam Link on an 802.11ac connection and it works wonderfully, but both my computer and TV are only ~20 feet away and one wall to my upstairs access point.


tl;dr Wi-Fi has a shit ton of variables and you can never predict exactly how it'll work out until you test it.

Also, file transfers are not a valid way to test your LAN network as you're also testing your SATA controller, cable, and hard drive too.

[Rhyseh]

So first off, under ideal conditions you're only going to get about half the advertised speed on Wi-Fi. This is because Wi-Fi is a half duplex connection type, it can send OR receive data. It can't do both at the same time. Second, 5GHz has bad penetration qualities compared to 2.4GHz, so it's possible to get better bandwidth using a 2.4GHz transmitter if the signal has to go through thick walls. The bad thing is there's no way to tell unless you test it. Third, the more devices that are using a singular access point the worse it gets, exponentially. This is due to the way wireless protocols work around it being half duplex.

This is only partly true. MIMO is pretty much standard since wireless n. Rest is spot on.

[Deleted]

This is only partly true. MIMO is pretty much standard since wireless n. Rest is spot on.

Though it doesn't change his intended point. Wired connections have dedicated upstreams and downstream - meaning that in that '1gbps' connection you can actually transfer 2gbps of data over the cable at the same time (Just not in the same direction).

Wireless connections however only permit one transmitter at a time, and while multiplexing of various sorts helps mask this - it does not change the fundamental fact that a chunk of transmission bandwidth in use by device A, cannot be used at all by device B. Thus on a '1gbps' wi-fi network, if device A is sending at 40mbps, B at 60mbps, and C at 100mbps - then device D cannot transmit more than 800mbps. The sum of the transmissions on the network cannot exceed 1gbps, and that sum includes all networks on the same frequency/channel.

Also on the subject of MIMO; you cannot transmit 3 streams to a device only capable of receiving two. While there are plenty of routers that are 3x3, most computers are equipped with only 2x2 arrays. Thus only 2-stream transmission is supported, not 3. (Though there are still some error correction capabilities / SNR improvements to be gained) Smartphones largely only have 1x1 support. The Macbook Pro series is one of only a handful of exceptions; and OEMs pretty much always have them strictly as a BTO option.

Without MU-MIMO (and there are probably client no devices that support it today, and virtually no routers), any streams not supported are wasted. A common 1x1 smartphone downloading 5mbps of data requires as much wifi capacity as a 3x3 laptop downloading at 15mbps. Its for that reason Cellphone Carriers like devices with 'high MBPS'. Because they're the ones that are commonly more efficient and strain the network less.