Pros and Cons of Powerline Adapters

Pros and Cons of Powerline Adapters

A Powerline adapter is a device that uses your home’s electricity to transmit communication signals. The types of Powerline extenders are:

  • Powerline Wi-Fi extenders

Instead of just having a plug for an Ethernet connection at the device end, Powerline Wi-Fi range extenders also transmit Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi Powerline adapters come in single or dual-band mode, the bands are the two frequency ranges used by Wi-Fi. If they are a single band, they only have 2.4GHz and dual-band has 2.4GHz and 5 GHz. For more info on WiFi Signal Extension, contact us!

  • Pass-through Powerline extenders

These let the electrical outlet be shared by the Powerline and another item that could be plugged in. This is particularly beneficial in situations when every powerpoint is in use.

Pros of powerline adapters

Let’s take a look at some of the pros of powerline adapters.

  • Provide a wired connection without Ethernet

Powerline uses your home’s electricity, so it is not necessary to install any additional cables. As the installation of Ethernet cables can be time-consuming, or potentially expensive, using Powerline could save you time and money.

  • Free up your Wi-Fi

When you connect a device via a powerline as an alternative for Wi-Fi, it will take some load off your wireless network and provide more capacity for other devices. If you use powerline instead of Wi-Fi for something like 4k streaming, you will definitely see an improvement in your wireless network’s performance.

  • Extend your Wi-Fi

Powerline Wi-Fi range extenders are a really great method to extend your Wi-Fi network, particularly to areas that are some distance from your router. A Wi-Fi repeater might be able to do the job, but if the distance is fairly large, Powerline is a better choice.

  • Flexible

Powerline adapters are not fixed. They can be moved around and used on a variety of devices without any problem. Once plugged in, they will take only a few seconds to reconnect.  ​

  • Super easy to set up

Powerline adapters are not just for the tech-savvy. Even if you are technologically impaired, you would be able to set them up. Plug in, pair, done! If you want to change a few settings, you can always contact us for powerline adapters set up.

  • Bolt on to any network

Powerline adapters can strengthen an existing network. They might even be a temporary fix for an Ethernet solution you are planning in the future.

Cons of powerline adapters

Let us have a look at some of the cons of powerline adapters.

  • Has electrical interference

This is pretty common. For some devices (tumble dryers, microwaves, etc.), the effect is temporary. But for others (fridges and freezers), the impact can be more permanent. The issue should be fairly easy to see. If the connection is experiencing interference, the Powerline units have an indication light which will usually be either orange or red. However, for intermittent problems, you might have to do some detective work to sort out the culprit. The impact of interference is the degradation of connection speeds and this is the most common issue you may see with Powerline. In most cases, a Powerline unit suffering from interference is still quicker than a weak Wi-Fi signal.

  • Loose speed

It does not matter how light the load is on your circuit. The primary role is to provide electricity, and you will always experience some loss of speed. How much of a problem this is will totally depend on how much speed you are losing. For instance, losing 5Mbps from 7Mbps is a huge problem. In this situation, you might want to either look at increasing your speed (if that’s an option) or extending your Internet with another method.

  • Work better alone

Powerline kits can have multiple end units. The number will depend on the model. And this allows multiple connections from the router. More units mean less reliable connections.

Takeaway

Powerline adapters are definitely a decent method to advance your home network if you want a quick easy fix. They are relatively cheap and require very little technical knowledge to install. If you still have any questions, please feel free to contact us on 1300 016 017 and we will certainly help you!

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