Huge Bandwidth Loss Over Distance?

Hello there folks,
I was just wondering if y'all could shed some light on something Im baffled over. Apologies if the answer is extremely obvious to you guys but Im confused by it all. I would also love to know if there is a potential fix/improvement for it.

Ill set the scene for you guys:

I recently got myself Fiber Optic (In the Uk this isnt as amazing as US fiber so keep it in your pants). The router is based in my room and with wireless as well as cabled I receive around 55mb/s (still pretty good though right?). However, down my garden, about 10m away from my house is my 'gaming shed'. Its the holy grail of gaming set ups with speakers and tv's and pc's etc etc. However, down the shed I get around 5-10mb/s.:sleeping1: To connect to the internet down this shed I use a power-internet passthrough. This is essentially a way to transport internet through the power lines. This is plugged into the router via ethernet and then into the wall socket. Then, down the shed I have another box which receives the internet for me to use. This can transfer 'up to 100mb/s' so i wouldnt have thought this is the issue. From this internet passthrough I have connected a Gigabyte tp-link internet splitter. (Plug one ethernet cable in, get internet for 5 ethernet cables). And this is where I get the highly reduced speeds. No matter what computer or device I use, its all about the same speed. Im only ever using 1 device at a time so its not that im using up all the bandwidth.

Any responses would be much appreciated and I really hope that the above made sense. its a slightly confusing set up to explain without you all being here.

Thank you in advance :D

Sid

Ok so it looks like this?:

Fiber Optic--> house--> router--> power pass through--> shed--> receiver--> splitter

If it's through powerline you're probably getting noise. Plus, you're probably unintentionally downstepping your speed becuase something doesn't support more than 10mb.

the ethernet over power lines is probably only doing a 10base connection of some sort. Last time I looked at it, it was basically using old 10base-T technology, that could run on old RG6 wires.

I'd pick up a USB wireless stick, and go wireless to the gaming shed, assuming your home router has wireless for your phones and such.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...name=USB%203.0

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AOD_Kestah

the ethernet over power lines is probably only doing a 10base connection of some sort. Last time I looked at it, it was basically using old 10base-T technology, that could run on old RG6 wires.

I'd pick up a USB wireless stick, and go wireless to the gaming shed, assuming your home router has wireless for your phones and such.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...name=USB%203.0

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^^^ Ditto

But would it be so hard to just run a cat 6 cable from the house to the shed?

For wireless, they use modulation to turn RF waveforms into data, and they refer to it for wifi as QAM (for modern wifi standards)


This video does a good job at explaining it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbrRGBRk5fM

What it doesn't really get into is that the higher the QAM level, the shorter the range at that level. the more complex the modulation, the greater the chance that noise levels will be higher then the minute changes within a waveform. This is why you will often get 256QAM within about 10-20 feet line of sight, but the moment you put a wall in between the client and the AP, then the rate will drop, and as you to further, the router will switch to less complex forms of modulation.

Powerline adapters do the same thing. At best due to overhead, a powerline adapter will at best offer half of the listed throughput (just like with wifi)

If the powerline adapter reports a connection rate of 200mbit/s then under ideal conditions, you will get about 100mbit/s.

The most reliable long distance connection available to consumers, is ethernet. With ethernet, a 4 wire cable will provide up to 100mbit/s (bare minimum for ethernet (and some stores will sell dirt cheap cables with only 4 wires. Proper cables will use 8 wires, and each data channel will basically be part of a differential pair which negates most of the noise, and additional shielding on the cable can take care of most of what is left over. (thus allowing you to get real world gigabit speeds at over 300 feet with modern cables (if even 10 gigabit at those distances if the cable is well shielded)

If your powerlines are too noisy (to tell, you will need an oscilloscope connected to an isolated transformer, and then some 100x probes so that you can probe the outlet) (though even if it is noisy, there is not much you can do about it anyway)

One of the best ways (and cheapest) is if your router has external antennas (or better yet, an extra router with external antennas that you can dedicate to being an access point), you can connect a few yagi antennas to it and aim it at the location where you need coverage, and you can significantly boost the throughput. (if the area is a large, then you will have to settle for a biquad antenna (all of which you can build cheaply) (the biquad will have less gain but will cover a larger area). and if the area is really far and you are willing to spend a good 30 minutes or an hour positioning antennas and setting up a wireless bridge between 2 routers, then you can dumpster dive for some old satellite TV dishes, and then for each of the 2 dishes, replace the head with a biquad antenna, and then position then as accurately as possible. (this type of wireless bridge can create a reliable wifi connection for many miles, but at closer ranges, it can allow for a very strong connection with nearly full speed, at ranges where you were previously getting little to no signal.

PS, if you do not want to build antennas, a simple wifi bridge between 2 good routers (external antennas of 5dBi or better), can achieve significantly higher speeds than a client-router setup, since the routers use more sensitive radios, and have many times more transmit power, they can negotiate a much higher connection rate.

Power line ethernet devices are slow and overhead intensive, lose it entirely. 10 meters is really not that far, why not run an ethernet cable to the shed? Ethernet would be the best connection to use. Dont use USB, although it has high bandwidth, it suffers from terrible latency which is not good for gaming. The best setup would be fiber > ethernet > wifi router > ethernet > gaming pc. Run everything else off more ethernet cable from the router or use WIFI. Also make sure all your equipment is rated to the current standards of giganet ethernet and wifi AC to avoid bottle necks and equipment having to negotiate downgraded speeds. You can run the gaming pc off wifi but the speed and latency will depend on interference from neighbors and what the walls are made of in your shed and house. Goodluck.

Yeah thats exactly how it is :D

Wow, thank you to all who posted. That makes a lot of sense. I should have figured that the power passthrough was too good to be true. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that the house (and so the garden between the house and shed) is our family house. Running an ethernet cable from my room would be a very easy task as there is a fence, along which runs a power cable anyway, so masking it would be super easy. This option has been explored by myself in the past but 'no means no' in this house. I am moving out in around 4 months (two of which will be spent travelling abroad) so ill just suck up the 5mb download and be happy with it!

In response to the wireless suggestion, the depreciation is too great. Between the router sits, as the crow flies, 2 solid brick walls. Even receiving wireless to my laptop gets me 500kb/s that drops out every few seconds. Not ideal for gaming ;).

Once again, thank you all for your super responses. Special shout out to Mokona512. Your response was not only useful but educational too!

Peace out, Sid