How come wireless throughput is faster than wired?

[misterno]

How is it possible that the highest output in powerline routers in "Downlink Throughput" is 188.3 Mbps but wireless 5ghz downlink is 257.2 Mbps?

In other words how can wireless connection be faster speed than wired connection. Is there something wrong in the data?

 

[Nullity]

How is it possible that the highest output in powerline routers in "Downlink Throughput" is 188.3 Mbps but wireless 5ghz downlink is 257.2 Mbps?

In other words how can wireless connection be faster speed than wired connection. Is there something wrong in the data?

I'm guessing it is because the "powerline" part. Ethernet was not designed to communicate over powerlines. I am amazed the ethernet-over-powerlines technology works as well as it does.

 

[stevech]

How is it possible that the highest output in powerline routers in "Downlink Throughput" is 188.3 Mbps but wireless 5ghz downlink is 257.2 Mbps?

In other words how can wireless connection be faster speed than wired connection. Is there something wrong in the data?

How did you measure 188 and 257 Mbps?

5GHz WiFi can have much wider channels than most forms of powerline modems. That leads to faster speeds in a brief test. Though 5GHz is so far not crowded, like 2.4GHz WiFi, a day will come where you compete with the neighbors for air time.

Powerline and MoCa don't have to compete as they use a wired medium.

 

[misterno]

How did you measure 188 and 257 Mbps?

5GHz WiFi can have much wider channels than most forms of powerline modems. That leads to faster speeds in a brief test. Though 5GHz is so far not crowded, like 2.4GHz WiFi, a day will come where you compete with the neighbors for air time.

Powerline and MoCa don't have to compete as they use a wired medium.

Here is the wireless routers comparison chart (fastest is 257)

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/bar/113-5-ghz-dn-c

And here is the powerline routers comparison chart (fastest is 188)

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/powerline/view

The question is how come wireless is faster than powerline router? I have a 2 story home 3000 sqft so in my case, maybe powerline works better due to many walls and interferences?

 

[azazel1024]

Because of how it is measured in general. It takes a measurement average of several locations/distances. Electrical wiring sucks as a medium for communication, where as radio over open air ain't bad so long as there isn't a bunch of interference, powerline on the other hand even under ideal circumstances has LOTS of interference, cross talk problems and attenuation issues.

Real world testing, the absolute BEST powerline I've seen on a relatively clean setup, same circuit, no power adapters plugged in anywhere, etc., etc. has been around 280Mbps of actual throughput (AV1200 adapter).

The best of the best wireless on the other hand (using an 11ac router bridged to another one (a pair of R7000) using a link rate of 1300Mbps) was around 780Mbps.

The reason why powerline can sometimes be better than wireless is physics. In open air, 2.4GHz and 5GHz just don't attenuate very much and generally don't have a whole bunch of interference issues unless you have an environment that is just CRUSHED with interfering sources.

However, you introduce walls and things become "complicated" fast. 2.4GHz penetrates better than 5GHz, but even then both attenuate fast with walls. In my house across 50ft of free space, a floor and 3 walls I get effectively no 5GHz signal and 2.4GHz is relatively sedate, about 30Mbps using 2.4GHz 40MHz and 2:2 spatial streams (N300). I tried a couple of AV500 powerline adapters I borrowed from a friend, simply to try them out. I managed 32Mbps at the same distance in the house. Moving the adapter to my garage I got 27Mbps, where as I couldn't even connect on wireless at all (this was testing back to the router in the far corner of my basement, I also have an AP in my family room next to my garage and an AP in my garage with antennas outside, so I have fast blanketed wifi coverage over my house house and most of my property, but this was for fun testing).

With the powerline adapters in my basement on the same circuit (I know because I wired the circuit up for my basement office) I managed 146Mbps on the AV500 powerline adapters...but on wireless I managed 228Mbps to my router that was in the same room as the powerline adapters were setup (my basement office) on 2.4GHz and 496Mbps on 5GHz 11ac.

Moving to just across the basement, the 2.4GHz performance dropped to 178Mbps and 388Mbps on 5GHz, but the powerline adapters were down to 86Mbps.

Power wiring sucks and about the only time it is better than wireless is sometimes at long distances indoors and/or where the building construction is such that wireless really has a hard time penetrating (block houses, masonry construction in general, plaster and lathe or plaster and wire wall construction).

 

[azazel1024]

That said, another thing to consider is total bandwidth available. Wireless, powerline and MoCA are all shared technologies. You have to parse up the available bandwidth between each client device. Ethernet you don't do this (so between that and almost always faster for a single device, ethernet is basically always better if you can run the wire. Also each of the afforementioned is half-duplex, which means upload and download share that same chunk of bandwidth, ethernet is full duplex, so upload and download have their own seperate, non-shared, path).

So what you may encounter is that it makes sense to put one or more clients on powerline, especially if they are used heavily, but not necessarily super high bandwidth required. Like maybe say a couple of streaming media players/Smart TVs. Then leave the wireless for the other stuff. Or maybe you have a server that is in a remote location and gets used a lot, but doesn't need a whole ton of bandwidth, then powerline might be a good idea rather than cluttering up your wireless which other devices might need/want.

Sometimes networking a house the best way takes attacking it from multiple different technology angles.

 

[thiggins]

A lot of effort has gone into and continues to go into Wi-Fi to boost maximum link rates. But those high rates are available only in 5 GHz, which has shorter range than 2.4 GHz.

Throughput falls off very quickly with range. Look at this chart for example:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tool...234-netgear-r7000-nighthawk/1235-asus-rtac68u

Powerline technology has developed more slowly than WiFi, held back by standards battles and lack of investment by semi companies. "Gigabit" powerline devices are JUST starting to appear that can provide > 150 Mbps best case throughput. But powerline throughput also falls off with distance.

Powerline has traditionally been more popular in Europe than in the U.S. due to the residence construction issues you mention. I would give powerline a try. The "sweet spot" right now is AV2 S-500 ("600 Mbps). I like the TP-LINK TL-PA6010KIT

 

[stevech]

Here is the wireless routers comparison chart (fastest is 257)

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/bar/113-5-ghz-dn-c

And here is the powerline routers comparison chart (fastest is 188)

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/powerline/view

The question is how come wireless is faster than powerline router? I have a 2 story home 3000 sqft so in my case, maybe powerline works better due to many walls and interferences?

Please read

5GHz WiFi can have much wider channels than most forms of powerline modems. That leads to faster speeds in a brief test. Though 5GHz is so far not crowded, like 2.4GHz WiFi, a day will come where you compete with the neighbors for air time.

As a rule, Powerline and MoCa don't have to compete for air-time as they use a wired medium.

 

[misterno]

Please read

5GHz WiFi can have much wider channels than most forms of powerline modems. That leads to faster speeds in a brief test. Though 5GHz is so far not crowded, like 2.4GHz WiFi, a day will come where you compete with the neighbors for air time.

As a rule, Powerline and MoCa don't have to compete for air-time as they use a wired medium.

So what am i supposed to do?

I guess I will get powerline and 5ghz wifi together to make sure every point in the house gets signal.