Zyxel pla5206 compatibility

[Crazygoldfish]

hi everyone looking for some help & advice.

Recently got a pair of pla5206 & happy with the results.

The issue is making them compatible.

I can slave my older pla5205 adapters or even my buffalo 500mbps adapters to the new pla5206.

But when I add a 3rd adapter or 4th it causes the slave pla5206 to drop.

Hope this makes sense.

To recap

Pla5206 to pla5206 = good

Pla5206 to pla5205 = good

Pla5206 to pla5206 + pla5205. = pla5205 works, pla5206 drops.

They are all connected to main sockets, no multi power splitters.

I have configured then using the zyxel software and it's showing everything to be ok when they are set up

Any ideas?

 

[coxhaus]

I have 2 sets of Netgear Powerline 500 Nano adapters. They are XAVB5101 and ran them in a 3 way configuration for over a year when my music server was running. They never gave me any trouble. Maybe I was lucky on what I bought as this is the only units I have ever used. You do pickup some wait time crossing them. Right now in a 2 way config I pickup 2 ms wait time. I guess 1 ms per unit but I never tested the wait time when they were in a 3 way config.

 

[thiggins]

What does the Homeplug light on the front of the "dropped" adapter show? Connection or not? How about red/yellow/green connection quality?

If you put all the adapters in the same room (or adjacent), do you still have the problem?

The 5205 uses QCA chipset and 5206 Broadcom. Could be an incompatibility in the way the two devices share homeplug frequencies, i.e. firmware bug. I'll see what ZyXEL says.

 

[Crazygoldfish]

The dropped adapter shows a red light.

I also updated the firmwares on all devices.

It also does the exact same thing when I use a set of buffalo power lines.

Previous I could pair the buffalos to teh Zyxel PL5205's with no issues.

With the PLA5206 I can again pair the buffalo, but as soon as I pair more than one adapter it does the same thing.

Its no biggy I can get by without them being on the same circuit, thankfully the buffalos let me use them through a multi adapter.

The PLA5206s I have powering a router upstairs in my house, so pretty happy that I get upto 100Mbps from them.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the additional details. I have asked ZyXEL for comment and will post when I hear back.