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0 pointsGodel_unicode3y ago0 comments

Powerline networking is a great example of where review sites totally fall down; it's amazing in most cases, providing great bandwidth and very low jitter and packet loss. Then for no reason*, it will absolutely suck for some people. The only way to find these kinds of problems is to survey every situation and test each product in all of them, which is clearly impossible.

People will hear this and go, "aha! Crowd sourcing!" The issue with that is that with modern technology the problem is overwhelmingly user error (or to be generous, perhaps UX). So you will spend essentially all your time chasing down people who don't know how to charge their product, or have their powerline adapter hooked up upstream of a UPS, etc

Your wiring is to blame. Maybe some staple missed and nicked the wire, maybe you have something leaking EMI, maybe you just have dirty power.

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donmcronald3y ago

IIRC their tests were over a short, direct run of wire. I tested them using different lengths of runs, across circuits, and in different houses. The Wirecutter test setup was the most ideal environment possible. It was as if a manufacturer dictated the setup.

To their credit, I think they updated their test setup to be more realistic.

> Your wiring is to blame.

That’s quite the assessment for the info given. Lol.

mschuster913y ago

> The Wirecutter test setup was the most ideal environment possible. It was as if a manufacturer dictated the setup.

The thing with comparison tests is, you have to use a reliably reproduceable, documented testing environment. Everything else just ends up with nasty letters from lawyers complaining about the test being unfair or whatever.

Your uncle's shoddy 1960s-era farmhouse wiring may be the ultimate stress test for a powerline adapter in real life, but no way you can use that house as any basis for a comparison test looking like resembling science...

Godel_unicodeOP3y ago

I have several college friends who made serious money during COVID "fixing people's Zoom dropouts" by installing MoCA adapters. They installed them for hundreds of people during the last two years, and some of those installs had issues. They ended up getting testing gear to look into the issues and be able to give people a definitive answer for why. Every single time, it came down to something wrong with the wiring. Maybe you're special, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

zdragnar3y ago

Dirty power and poor wiring are terrible for many things. It's not a surprise it might cause issues with this too.

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