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Forum Discussion
New Construction - Best practices for wiring?
We're building a new house and we have the flexibility to run the electricity in any way we want. What are the optimal parameters for how to wire the house to maximize the performance for powerli...
Why bother with Powerline? Install Cat6A Ethernet and you'll be good to go with up to 10 Gigabit up to 100 meters. Home run wiring to a central location. Then run 2 or 3 lines to your demarc.
Great question and thanks for responding!
Short answer: Cost to run a cable to each room is about the same as a powerline wall adapter and with powerline we can (theoretically) choose exactly where we want the cables at any time (any outlet on any wall in any room).
Also, there are fewer jacks all over the place (which, from an aesthetic point of view, is a plus)
Aesthetics is a personal choice. Is a Powerline adapter more pleasing than a Ethernet jack? IMHO, no.
In theory what you say is true, but the performance of Powerline is extremely finicky, not unlike Wi-Fi. Speed will drop off as distances increase and with the number of A/C wiring splits. Even AFCI circuit breakers can impact Powerline, so not every outlet will work equally well.
Powerline simply can't touch the speed and consistency of Ethernet. I see that the latest Powerline adapters are approaching real world speeds of 400 Mbps (don't believe marketing numbers, which are just as bogus as Wi-Fi), but this is under ideal conditions. With Ethernet you'll get reliable Gigabit speeds up to 100 meters with current technology and room to go up to 10 Gigabit in the future.
For what it is, Powerline is great, but A/C lines were never designed to carry data. Don't pass up this opportunity to install Ethernet.