I bought a pair of AV500's (XAV5001's) a few months ago and have been using them ever since. They replaced older power line adapters which were slower.
Environment The reason I have them over wireless is that the speed should be faster using them. Their primary use is for streaming high res video from my media server to my AV devices. The two devices are only 2 rooms apart and the house I live in is only 5 years old so should have good wiring.
Today, I upgraded the firmware to the newest, then looked at the utility to measure my speed. After refreshing a few times, I found the average to be 20mbps Tx and 50mbps Rx. I know that they will probably never achieve the advertised speed, but still would think I could get better than that.
Besides upgrading the firmware, I have not changed anything else like Security or QoS - but - when data is going through them, it is dedicated traffic so really no need I wouldn't think.
Questions Given all the details above, I have a couple of questions:
1. Are the 20/50 speeds I'm getting average for a house 5 years old?
2. What (if anything) can be do to improve the speed? (Configuration or otherwise)
Re: What's True Average Speed? Methods to Increase...
The newness of your home could be the reason for slower speed depending on the use of of AFCI filters. Read more here. Also, search around the web site for reviews on Powerline products and then look in the forum for further user reviews. Much excellent info on SmallNetBuilder.
Do not believe the Powerline utility for accurate throughput measurements. Manually check throughputs using iperf/jperf, LAN Speed Test or similar application.
I don't know what your throughput requirements are, stating "high res video" is not enough, but performance in descending order is Cat5/Cat6 cable, MoCA, Powerline, and then WiFi. This is a general rule of thumb. It's possible WiFi performs better than Powerline for a specific location.
Re: What's True Average Speed? Methods to Increase...
bzowk wrote:
Hello All -
I bought a pair of AV500's (XAV5001's) a few months ago and have been using them ever since. They replaced older power line adapters which were slower.
Environment The reason I have them over wireless is that the speed should be faster using them. Their primary use is for streaming high res video from my media server to my AV devices. The two devices are only 2 rooms apart and the house I live in is only 5 years old so should have good wiring.
Today, I upgraded the firmware to the newest, then looked at the utility to measure my speed. After refreshing a few times, I found the average to be 20mbps Tx and 50mbps Rx. I know that they will probably never achieve the advertised speed, but still would think I could get better than that.
Besides upgrading the firmware, I have not changed anything else like Security or QoS - but - when data is going through them, it is dedicated traffic so really no need I wouldn't think.
Questions Given all the details above, I have a couple of questions:
1. Are the 20/50 speeds I'm getting average for a house 5 years old?
2. What (if anything) can be do to improve the speed? (Configuration or otherwise)
Thanks!
I do not have the same adapters that you are using, but I am getting better throughput than you are. I have the XAV1004 and XAV2101 and I am seeing an average of 50 to 60 Mbps transferring a 20MB file between my wired network to a computer on the powerline network. My system is the AV 200 instead of the AV 500 and as I understand it I should expect to see speeds in the neighborhood of 40 to 80 Mbps. I used "Lan Speed Test" to perform the measurements. Since the AV 500 adapters have a 1GB connection they should do much better than mine since I only have a 100 Mbps connection. Oh, by the way, my home is 10 years old.
I could be wrong, but it sounds to me like your circuits are on different rails in your breaker box so the signal is having to go all of the way out to the light company's transformer and then back into your breaker box to get to the other circuit. Try plugging in both adapters into electrical plugs in the same room and measure the speeds there. You may have to re-arrange breakers in the breaker box or hire an electrician to do it so that both electrical circuits are on the same rail so that you can get optimum speeds.
