Potential Bandwidth for PL1200 (Powerline AV1200)

We have an older pair of Netgear powerline adapters, something like XAV5001 about 5 years old (500 Mbps). The base unit is connected to our Gigabit router via a standard 6-foot ethernet cable supplied with the adapters. The second adapter is two rooms away and connects to our home theater pc (HTPC) via a 10-foot ethernet cable. The house was built in 2001. It does not have the kind of circuit breakers that interfere with powerline networking. The Netgear adapters have proven quite reliable. Occasionally there's a service outage or glitch from our provider Comcast which usually requires us to power cycle the modem and router. Rarely do the Netgear adapters need attention. If they do it's usually the second one, and i just unplug it from the wall outlet for a few seconds then plug it back in. This happens roughly once a year ... so no big deal i suppose.

Performance? First, let's be clear about the words we use. The term Mbps means Mega-bits. The term MBps means Mega-Bytes per second and that's a lot more than a Mega-bit. In fact, it takes 8 Megabits to equal 1 MegaByte. So, for example, 80Mbps = 10MBps (usually written either MB/s or MB/sec.)

The next point to consider is the limitation of your home network. We have a mixture of three  "wired" Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs plus a several Wi-fi items (a Windows 8.1 laptop, a couple of tablets, phones,etc.). When the Wi-fi units are active the wired PCs are usually idle and vice versa so there's little or no bandwidth hogging to consider. Now, here's the interesting part. Windows Homegroup networking is easy to set up and use; however, it limits the speed of data transfer between computers. This doesn't affect our internet download or upload speeds (Comcast 75Mbps Down / 5.0Mbps Up), bit it definitely DOES affect every kind of media streaming or file copying between computers in the Windows Homegroup. We reverted to the old original Windows Home Networking (like in Windows XP) and were rewarded with faster throughput. Examples of both are shown below.

There's one more piece of hardware in our setup that needs mentioning and that's a Netgear GS108 unmanaged switch. This is a slim little box with 8 ethernet ports. One port on the swith box is connected to an empty port on the router. Then you can connect a bunch of items to the ports on the switch and get unfettered speed between all of them. The router only has 4 ports and we needed more. So, the only items directly connected to the router are the Netgear switch, our magicJack internet phone (called VOIP), and a Canon printer connected to a convenient USB port on the router.  Everything else is connected to the switch (or is on Wi-fi as mentioned before).

Internet speed (when the neighbors are at work or late at night):

PC connected directly to Netgear switch/router/modem - 75 to 85 Mbps Down / 5.0 to 6.2 Mbps Up

PC two rooms away connected via Netgear XAV5001   - 75 to 85 Mbps Down / 5.0 to 6.2 Mbps Up

File copy speed using Windows Homegroup:

Directly connected PC to Powerline-connected PC two rooms away - 6.0MB/sec. to 6.8MB/sec. (Mega-Bytes, remember)

File copy speed using Windows Home Networking:

Directly connected PC to Powerline-connected PC two rooms away - 10.2MB/sec. to 12.1MB/sec.

Streaming media:

HD 1080p recorded TV shows and uncompressed ripped CD collection and 1080p home video all stream smoothly from any one computer to any other whether wired, powerline, or Wi-fi (using 5.0GHz band). Also can stream one HD 1080p video while using the internet or copying a file between any two computers.

Finally, and here's the shocker, file copy speed between two PCs in the same room both directly wired to the Netgear GS108 switch (so no powerline or Wi-fi, just straight through the switch):

111MB/sec.

Yes, you read that right - 111 MB/sec. Almost makes me want to go buy a reel of ethernet cable and retro-wire the whole house!

Hope this information is of some use to other Netgear users or anyone contemplating Powerline networking.