Zyxel PLA5456KIT - any feedback

[scottyja]

Any info on the new Zyxel PLA5456 kit? I went ahead and ordered a set since I was in the market and will be able to make use of the 2 ports per device. But I can't seem to find any info on them anywhere, besides a generic press release announcing them. I get that the AV2000 is generally a marketing gimmick, but does anyone know which chipset is used? I'm coming from some 500 Mbps adapters, so I'm hoping this will be a nice improvement.

 

[urgru]

I bit. Powerline performance obviously varies wildly from home to home (even outlet to outlet), but I saw a noticeable improvement at the worst of our powerline locations vs. Netgear PL1200's. This could be because I moved a powerstrip from the other outlet to the 5456's passthrough outlet. Or it could be the extra signal space on the 1800 rated adapters. Or just dumb luck. With powerline, you can never really know.

Anyway, the PL1200's delivered roughly 80 Mbps to our "bad" spot. PLA5456's are running at about 110 Mbps. That's enough to max out our 100/10 cable plan, so I'm happy.

 

[scottyja]

Anyway, the PL1200's delivered roughly 80 Mbps to our "bad" spot. PLA5456's are running at about 110 Mbps. That's enough to max out our 100/10 cable plan, so I'm happy.

Interesting. I'm likely returning the Zyxel adapters. I'm coming from the Netgear XAVB5101 and had lots of problems streaming from a Windows 7 media center to an Xbox 360. I thought the MIMO adapters would resolve this, and it is better, but the root issues still exist. Buffering pauses, disconnects, etc... Like you said, there are so many variables it's hard to pin it down, but I'm starting to think our house/wiring just isn't right for powerline and high bandwidth media. I'll likely just look at trying to improve my wifi coverage and move that direction for the streaming and use the XAVB5101s for everything else.

Currently, the Zyxel site doesn't list any software for the PLA5456KIT, so I attempted to configure them using the PLA5256 utility with no luck. The program kept crashing after opening, and when it did manage to stay open trying to communicate with any of the remote adapters failed. Overall I'm pretty frustrated with these.

 

[thiggins]

Powerline is susceptible to noise. Worst cuprits are small switching power supplies, like cellphone chargers, USB power supplies, etc. These can cause problems, even if they are plugged into outlets in the same or adjacent rooms. A little experimentation can often pay off.

I'd run some simple large file drag-and-drop throughput tests to see what you are actually getting for throughput. This will help you with troubleshooting.

You should also see what your media bandwidth requirements are. I did a series of streaming articles awhile ago (jeez, I need to update them). But the principles shown in them (TCP/IP is more robust than UDP for streaming, connection bandwidth > content bandwidth) still apply.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/smarthome/smarthome-articles/27523-videostreamingneedtoknowpart1

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/smarthome/smarthome-articles/27918-videostreamingneedtoknowpart2

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/smar...hd-streaming-smackdown-draft-11n-vs-powerline

There are lots of things that can affect Wi-Fi, too. And Wi-Fi latency and consistency will tend to be worse than powerline. A little more effort on powerline could pay off.