Looking for low cost way to network 4 Recievers

[bryan_j_t]

I just moved into a new house and have 2 HD HR22's and 2 H23's. I am trying to figure out what the cheapest way to network these would be to take advantage of VOD, Directv2PC and the possibility of the upcoming MRV.

In my previous (smaller) house, I had everything hardwired and it worked great. In my newer (larger) house, hard-wiring everything would be a little difficult.

From what I have looked into so far, It looks like it would cost me a few hundred dollars for either power-line or wireless adapters. Is there something that I can do that I am missing?

 

[JMikeH]

It may be more trouble, but hard wired would give you much better performance. If you're capable of running the wires yourself, it would be just as cheap.

 

[cfb]

Four of these:

[ame][/ame][ame="http://www.amazon.com/NBG-318S-Powerline-HomePlug-802-11g-Wireless/dp/B000VY72PQ/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&m=A7GBCNIY9L1WN&s=generic&qid=1246401308&sr=1-11"]Amazon.com: ZyXEL NBG-318S 200 Mbps Powerline HomePlug AV 802.11g Wireless Router: Electronics@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31JEkK25wtL.@@AMEPARAM@@31JEkK25wtL[/ame]

Plenty of them for sale at amazon and other places for ~$32-35 each. They're wireless routers with a 200Mb/s powerline capability and four port switch built in.

Plug a connection from your existing router into one of them and connect your four receivers to any of the switch ports. Disable DHCP on all of them, since your primary existing router will provide that service. Turn off the wireless on each unless you'd like four extra wireless hotspots with roaming in your house. If you leave the wireless on, put each on a different wireless channel and if possible, turn down the transmit signal level a little bit to cut down on overlapping wireless signals in the house. The bad news is you need to do a little configuration and tweaking. The good news is you can do all sorts of configuration and tweaking if you need to.

I know of some people using the zyxel 200Mb/s powerline products with directv receivers, so we know they work for MRV, etc. These routers incorporate the same technology.

They're much cheaper than just a simple single port powerline adapter because most people intuitively buy just one router, and there are lots and lots of cheap routers out there. So Zyxel pretty much throws the powerline in for free with this inexpensive router, figuring to then make a bundle on all the single port powerline adapters people will buy to go with it.

A little bigger than a powerline adapter, but its not a big wall-wart and you can tuck it away anywhere you want.

$140ish plus maybe some shipping for four of them. I've noticed some sellers starting to jack the price up into the $90+ range, so maybe they're catching on...

Look at the network diagram on the product page at amazon, only replace all the zyxel boxes shown with the wireless router.

 

[bryan_j_t]

That looks perfect for what I am looking to do, and it will also help get some wireless throughout my house.

Good to know that you know someone that is using these so performance won't be an issue. My house is new construction, so I am hoping that I will get some decent speeds over powerline.

 

[cfb]

From what I've seen, home age doesnt have a lot to do with powerline throughput. The major factor seems to be whether the outlets you're using are on the same phase or not. A 50 year old house with weird wiring just might work great and a brand new house might not, just depending on how the electrician who installed the breaker box did the layout.

I havent tried the 200Mb/s powerline myself although others have with success. My setup has only 2 HR20's and they're in the same spot, one floor apart from each other. I tried 85 and 170Mb/s (panasonic) powerline and it was too glitchy, the latter topping out around 8-9Mb/s, which is about half of whats needed. I tried 11g wireless, going just through the ceiling maybe 12-14' between the adapter and the router, and that wasnt much faster.

Faced with spending $80-100 for a wireless N bridge or a pair of 200Mb/s powerline adapters, I ended up pulling a wire up through the wall, that worked a lot better.

 

[bryan_j_t]

Ive done some extensive reading on powerline over the last couple days and more specifically some reviews on the specific hardware that you recommended. I think I have a good list of things to start with to get these going and am going to grab 4 and give it a try.

Even if I can get somewhere close to half of the advertised 200 mbps, I will be happy.

From what I've read it looks like some small things such as matching the firmware, trying different outlets, and as you suggested: only having wireless on where I need it ( which will be two of the four units most likely) make a big difference.

I'm going to get the units ordered and I'll report back how it goes.

 

[bryan_j_t]

I recieved the adapters today and in little under an hour I have three of them set up ( 1 basement, 1 second floor, 1 room over garage). I have been able to stream sd without issue, and HD as long as my TV in the room over the garage isn't on. A quick look shows that im getting somewhere between 30 and 40 mbps.

My goal with these is to get a little over double that.. So today's project is to move them around and see what I can do to speed up the network.

When they were all in the same room I was getting about 104mbps, so there's some interference happening somewhere.

Anyone have any tips about clearing up interference? None of the adapters are currently plugged in anywhere close to a large appliance.

 

[cfb]

Part of it depends on which phase the units are plugged into. Your circuit box is probably broken into two phases with some rooms on one side and some on the other. If the outlets are on the same phase and breaker, you'll get the highest speed. If on the same phase, different breaker, you'll get something lower. Different phase, the lowest speed.

Interference can come from fluorescent lights, dimmer switches (even if they're not on), some older transformers for charging or powering devices, and some noisy motors. My powerline network used to go completely to hell when my wife fired up the vacuum cleaner.

To be honest, 30-40Mb/s is pretty good and its unlikely that you'd get 80+ out of it. The 200Mb/s measure thats quoted is under ideal circumstances using optimal sized UDP packets. Most network traffic isnt UDP, but TCP. Figure to get less than half the "85/170/200" Mb/s throughput with actual mixes of network packets.

Even with wired 100Mb/s, I dont think you'd see anywhere near the full 100Mb/s after overhead is considered.

The good news is that 15 is about all you need for an HD MRV stream.

When you sayu that HD works as long as the tv in the garage isnt on, is it just turning the tv on and off makes a problem? That'd be weird.

All the powerline routers are plugged directly into a wall outlet, no power strips, surge protectors, old extension cords? Can you try different outlets that are in the area?

 

[bryan_j_t]

My TV is plugged into a UPS that is plugged into one outlet and the router is plugged into the next outlet on the same wall. My AVR that is plugged into the same UPS was also off at the time that I was experiencing the faster traffic. I will try moving it to a different part of the room.

I'm not home right now, but if I find that the rooms that I am using the routers on are on different phases of my box, would it be worthwhile to swap them around in the long run? In general is the left side of the box one phase and the right half the other?

All of the powerline routers are plugged directly into the wall.

 

[cfb]

I'd like to say that its typical for one side of the box to be on one phase and the other on the other, but electricians are funny guys. You never know what they're going to do.

Its always a good idea to try different outlets because some of the outlets in a room may not all go to the same breaker. Unless its a new house a former owner might have added an outlet or two and that may have been pushed upstairs or downstairs or taken through the wall from an adjacent room by the electrician.

I've heard UPS's can cause some problems with powerline, but no real documentation to that effect.

Powerlines a funny thing. I had some older stuff that gave me better throughput when plugged into two different outlets than into the same one...

 

[Bob Nielsen]

FWIW, both of my powerline adapters share outlets with UPSs. I haven't noticed any problems.

 

[cfb]

That anecdotal tidbit had something to do with some brands of UPS. The two I have (a cyberpower and an apc) shared outlets with my powerline and never caused a problem, but I've seen a few posts where the guy having trouble moved either the powerline or ups to a different outlet and had a big speed pickup. For all I know he moved the powerline from an outlet on one breaker to an outlet on a different one.

I had a house where the living room outlets were on three different breakers, and when I wanted to add another outlet the electrician hooked the outlet up to a leg through the wall from another room.

BTW brytrinque if you're getting breakups, thats not necessarily your network. The last two CE's and this current one in particular have horrible breakup problems compared to older CE's. I watched two shows last night that had splats every 2-3 minutes with some occasional multiple splats, and thats on 100Mb/s full duplex hardwired.

Some releases have been better on splatting and some have worked very well even on lower speed powerline and wireless. I suppose they'll get it right eventually.

Not sure how you're testing real throughput, heres what I did. Put in the powerlines and hooked a laptop up to the 'master' unit, and put another laptop on the end of one leg. Then copied a file from one to the other and measured line speed with a vista sidebar app that shows network utilization.
Add Windows Vista Gadgets

I found with my old netgear 10Mb/s powerline that my actual throughput was ~3.5Mb/s, and with the Panasonic 170Mb/s AV powerline product it was about 8-9Mb/s.

 

[bryan_j_t]

The speeds that I'm going by are the speeds being reported in the ZyXEL web management interface. I'm going to do some real speed tests tonight to validate these results. I watched about 10 minutes of HD on both of my H23's yesterday with only one minor hiccup on one of the tests. So it looks like I'm working in the right direction. From what you said, If I'm getting 30 - 40 mb/s between the powerline units, I should have enough bandwidth to stream a couple HD shows at a time, which would be great.

I have moved the router in the room above the garage to all the different outlets with little change from one to the other. I also removed the UPS and didn't see any difference with that.

I haven't updated my CE in the last 3 or 4 weeks because of the move and a couple other things the weeks before that. I will make sure to update this weekend if available.

 

[cfb]

If you watched HD for a while with only one hiccup, then you're good. The CE you've got was much better with glitching than this weeks, but I've always gotten some glitching even with the hardwire. Its not the network, the receiver acting as the server seems to stop transmitting for a moment now and then.

Do bear in mind that the 30-40Mb/s that the units are reporting may not quite be the same as real throughput and that the throughput may vary based on a variety of conditions. My panasonic units would report that they were operating in the 10-30Mb/s range but I dont think they ever even got to 10 in real usage.

~30Mb/s real throughput should net you two concurrent MRV/Directv2pc streams. If you end up running more than 2 and run out of bandwidth, you might be able to get a few wireless G bridges and split the traffic between the powerline and wireless networks. At least you've got a lot of options.

I lucked out in that my receivers are in the living room and a bedroom directly upstairs. When the panasonic powerline stuff didnt work out for me with HD, I was able to drop a wire down the wall about 15 feet in total to hook them up.

Be interesting to see how it all pans out for you. I've used zyxel gear before and know the 200Mb/s powerline AV seems to be working well for many people. The price on those cheap powerline routers may go up, but in the meanwhile they're a heck of a bargain.