Atlantic Broadband

[Goldenhawk]

Anyone know how well the power line adaptors work? What keeps the neighbor from doing not so savory things with their power line and your internet?

I'm no expert, so of course I'll chime in here. But I do know how to Google.....

The range of a typical power line ethernet adapter is hundreds of feet, and there's nothing in your power box that is built to keep it from "leaking" back out to the mains. If you live in a residential neighborhood, your signal is almost certainly available to your immediate neighbors.

So don't buy an unencrypted ethernet-over-powerlines adapter, and don't turn off whatever encryption it does have.

Other than that, you're probably safe.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

I'm no expert, so of course I'll chime in here. But I do know how to Google.....

The range of a typical power line ethernet adapter is hundreds of feet, and there's nothing in your power box that is built to keep it from "leaking" back out to the mains. If you live in a residential neighborhood, your signal is almost certainly available to your immediate neighbors.

So don't buy an unencrypted ethernet-over-powerlines adapter, and don't turn off whatever encryption it does have.

Other than that, you're probably safe.

I was wondering if there was some sort of pairing process like with garage door openers.

 

[itsbob]

You're better off. MOCA/DECA require a powered adapter at each end, only go to 100mbit at most (I think that's what I remember, not going to check), and technically speaking you should either disconnect from your outside cable drop or run a filter in-line, otherwise you are blasting your data back out and possibly causing issues for your neighbors.

I hit speeds north of 200 mbps, and have 200 mbps service. WIFI not so much.

 

[Goldenhawk]

I was wondering if there was some sort of pairing process like with garage door openers.

Depends on the device. The ones I looked at on Amazon had a simple "push this button, then do it on the other one too" kind of simplicity.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

I put the ethernet wire in my house mostly for security. I have the cheap 100M service.

I was thinking about the over electrical lines to get service out to a detached garage for my uncle.

 

[Goldenhawk]

I put the ethernet wire in my house mostly for security. I have the cheap 100M service.

Definitely safer. Good plan.

I was thinking about the over electrical lines to get service out to a detached garage for my uncle.

Speed and reliability depends on the distance. Less than 50 or 100 feet will probably be fine. The units aren't too expensive to just gamble on a test.

 

[Clem72]

I put the ethernet wire in my house mostly for security. I have the cheap 100M service.

I was thinking about the over electrical lines to get service out to a detached garage for my uncle.

Powerline tech is much better than it used to be. If you have power, you can get a pretty reliable connection. They will claim like 1.2Gb theoretical max, but that's not bidirectional and it's shared between all powerline devices, and old wiring/being on separate phases can limit it further. That said, I use it for one particular bad spot in my basement that is not on the same phase as any of the easily accessible power sockets near my router (3rd floor) and I am using an older AV500 powerline kit, and I get a rock solid connection but it's only about 130mbit (at least that's what I could get from speedtest.net, when my wireless and direct wired connections could get 150mbit at the time of test). Might be faster if you test local network transfer speeds, but I wasn't using it for that type of application so I didn't care enough to test.

I am reminded that I used a similar gadget to get TV signal into my kitchen in the late 80s or early 90s. Worked okay-ish.