Powerline vs No Powerline

[DiRT.NaSTy ************]

I been doing alot of troubleshooting since receiving my Steam Link to try and perfect my setup here at my house. I have a large living room one side of it has my desktop which is my host computer and on the other side I have my TV where I have my link setup. In this TV area is where I have my router setup and I am running a powerline to my PC. After plugging in my link I noticed my game was not running the way it should have been, losing alot of packets and I am receiving slow network. Today I decided to setup my desktop next to my link and hook both directly into the router and after doing this, it seems I am getting a much better connection for streaming. Does this mean I am SOL without me getting a direct connection to my router? How can I troubleshoot these powerline adapters better? Would love to hear all suggestions!

Here is the powerline adapters I have:
NETGEAR Powerline (XAVB1201)[www.amazon.com]

Here is my router:
ASUS RT-N66U[www.amazon.com]

Here is my host PC specs:
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4670K CPU @ 3.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz (OC'd to ~4.3GHz)
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Card name: NVIDIA Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970

Here is my streaming log when running thru powerline:
Powerline Pastebin[pastebin.com]

Here is my streaming log when running without powerline:
Without Powerline Pastebin[pastebin.com]

I used Witcher 3 for both tests above.

Based on what you see here, are powerline's out of the question for me? If so what is the best case scenario over Wifi?

[Tucu]

Those 200mbps will probably struggle to achieve 30mbps in real life situations. And they are half-duplex.
Do you have a second PC that you can use to test the adapters real life bandwidth?. You can use iperf for this.

[DiRT.NaSTy ************]

Originally posted by Tucu:

Those 200mbps will probably struggle to achieve 30mbps in real life situations. And they are half-duplex.
Do you have a second PC that you can use to test the adapters real life bandwidth?. You can use iperf for this.

yes I can hook up something to the other end and run iperf, what should I be looking for when running this test?

[Tucu]

Just the bandwidth for now (see this for a tutorial: https://blogs.oracle.com/mandalika/entry/measuring_network_bandwidth_using_iperf)

You can also check what ping times you are getting between the PCs when using the powerline adapters.
Don't move the adapters from their current sockets. The main idea is to test how they perform where they are plugged now.

[bristol_flyguy1980]

Powerlines are a bad idea as they can affect your incoming internet speed (ie fibre or adsl in uk) as the interferance given off via the powerline gets picked up on the ringwire and it interferes on the same frequency used by isp providers to push the internet signal to the premises. Also powerlines adapters can effect wifi and ham raidos. They are an evil unfortunately but are an option as a last resort. If you can go fully wired then do so. Even a wireless n to wireless n wifi bridge would be better.

[DiRT.NaSTy ************]

HAM radios? I don't use a HAM radio and I haven't seen these adapters effect any other signal in my home for the past year I been using it. I understand it is a last resort, that's why I am here discussing it. There has been numerous success stories when using them with in-home streaming and I am here to find out why they are a success so I can use them in my home. Did you even bother to read my post?

[Tucu]

Originally posted by THE G✪DFATHER:

HAM radios? I don't use a HAM radio and I haven't seen these adapters effect any other signal in my home for the past year I been using it. I understand it is a last resort, that's why I am here discussing it. There has been numerous success stories when using them with in-home streaming and I am here to find out why they are a success so I can use them in my home. Did you even bother to read my post?

Interference is a non-issue for most powerline users. Their main problem is that their stated peformance is nowhere near their real life performance (neither maximum or average).
I would normally expect 30mbps from a 200mbps powerline and 250mbps from a 1200mbps adapter.

[DiRT.NaSTy ************]

Originally posted by Tucu:

Originally posted by THE G✪DFATHER:

HAM radios? I don't use a HAM radio and I haven't seen these adapters effect any other signal in my home for the past year I been using it. I understand it is a last resort, that's why I am here discussing it. There has been numerous success stories when using them with in-home streaming and I am here to find out why they are a success so I can use them in my home. Did you even bother to read my post?

Interference is a non-issue for most powerline users. Their main problem is that their stated peformance is nowhere near their real life performance (neither maximum or average).
I would normally expect 30mbps from a 200mbps powerline and 250mbps from a 1200mbps adapter.

So for me to achieve the best possible output as far as graphic quality is concerned I'd need a better set of adapters either way? Also what is the issue with the adapter being half duplex?

[Tucu]

Originally posted by THE G✪DFATHER:

Originally posted by Tucu:

Interference is a non-issue for most powerline users. Their main problem is that their stated peformance is nowhere near their real life performance (neither maximum or average).
I would normally expect 30mbps from a 200mbps powerline and 250mbps from a 1200mbps adapter.

So for me to achieve the best possible output as far as graphic quality is concerned I'd need a better set of adapters either way? Also what is the issue with the adapter being half duplex?

That would be my guess.
Regarding half-duplex, only one client can be transmitting at a time and for streaming you have two main data flows: the video from host to client and the control inputs from client to host. In a half duplex scenario, video has to wait when control inputs are being sent. If you have a lot of available bandwidth this would not be a problem. But if you are in a borderline case like yours (this is my guess) then it becomes a problem and you start losing frames and having to reduce quality.

[DiRT.NaSTy ************]

Originally posted by Tucu:

Originally posted by THE G✪DFATHER:

So for me to achieve the best possible output as far as graphic quality is concerned I'd need a better set of adapters either way? Also what is the issue with the adapter being half duplex?

That would be my guess.
Regarding half-duplex, only one client can be transmitting at a time and for streaming you have two main data flows: the video from host to client and the control inputs from client to host. In a half duplex scenario, video has to wait when control inputs are being sent. If you have a lot of available bandwidth this would not be a problem. But if you are in a borderline case like yours (this is my guess) then it becomes a problem and you start losing frames and having to reduce quality.

Now that you explained half duplex I noticed that I get lag spikes when I mash the buttons. Looks like I'll be taking a trip to micro center tomorrow...Thanks for the help!

[Tucu]

Originally posted by THE G✪DFATHER:

Originally posted by Tucu:

That would be my guess.
Regarding half-duplex, only one client can be transmitting at a time and for streaming you have two main data flows: the video from host to client and the control inputs from client to host. In a half duplex scenario, video has to wait when control inputs are being sent. If you have a lot of available bandwidth this would not be a problem. But if you are in a borderline case like yours (this is my guess) then it becomes a problem and you start losing frames and having to reduce quality.

Now that you explained half duplex I noticed that I get lag spikes when I mash the buttons. Looks like I'll be taking a trip to micro center tomorrow...Thanks for the help!

Take a look on this page for a well regarded ranking of powerline adapters: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/powerline/view

[bristol_flyguy1980]

Originally posted by THE G✪DFATHER:

HAM radios? I don't use a HAM radio and I haven't seen these adapters effect any other signal in my home for the past year I been using it. I understand it is a last resort, that's why I am here discussing it. There has been numerous success stories when using them with in-home streaming and I am here to find out why they are a success so I can use them in my home. Did you even bother to read my post?

Yes sorry saw your profile after and saw your US so could very well be different over in the states. Being 240v mains we have different voltages and higher frequencies.

[werner]

In Europe we have an alternative. Ethernet over Coax or Coax Lan. This is basically a 500Mbit (in reality you get stable 200-250MBit) Powerline connectrion routed over the tv coax cable (using the frequency of 0-86MHz which is reserved for the back channel). This gives way better and more stable results than standard powerline. However I got mixed results with that technology. Steam Inhome streaming worked like a charm with it, NVidias streaming only worked properly with the moonlight client, thanks to buggy client code on the side of NVidia.

You might figure out if such an option exists in the US and how much bandwidth you can get.