Possibly a small UPS between the power point and the router in order to provide cleaner power? After all, the powerline adaptors can’t be the only source of noise in the power - and you end up with higher availability of your router.
Yes, but potentially a more expensive option…as would need one for each adaptor. Remote adaptors seemed to also cause spikes at their end as well.
The spikes were caused by the power line adaptors as the router worked fine up until the exact time the adaptors were turned on…plugged in. On plugging in/turning on, the router was tripped. Didn’t happen any other times.
Thank you all and I’ll draw a line under my part of this post now if that’s OK.
We’ll continue to use our adapters which enable us to turn the WiFi off, thereby eliminating a significant source of EMR in our home.
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It is unlikely to be as significant as many other potential sources in the home.
ARPANSA, which is Australia’s independent authority on radiation including EMF, has information about wifi. …
Another thread on this forum also discusses emr/emf in the home.
Since we are bashing this one to death …
- powerline adaptors are likely to be using some kind of broadcast over the house wiring, like the original (very old) ethernet, so that means that whatever bandwidth you have is shared among all devices. (Again, this is more of an issue if you have a busy internal network rather than merely communicating with the internet - and this issue only really arises if you have more than just a pair of adaptors.)
As a corollary, that should mean that a powerline adaptor is half-duplex (like WiFi).
By contrast even el cheapo N-port gigabit ethernet switches claim to have switching capacity of 2N Gbit/sec i.e. every port both sending and receiving at the same time at full speed. No, I haven’t tested the manufacturer’s claim. 
- powerline adapters may have trouble being woken up from standby (low power sleep) unless they get traffic - so connecting a “remote” printer into the local network via a pair of powerline adaptors might not work unless the printer generates periodic traffic (the same problem could arise with any 24x7 server-type device) - packet spam should keep the other end awake all the time however
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You have done well, others might not be so lucky. There are plenty of devices that tend to put spikes on the line it seems you and your near neighbours don’t have them. I wouldn’t try them myself as I have a high risk of big spikes due to lightning strike and failure from other sources down the line. I have surge protectors and UPS all over the place which would be a problem. Also I wouldn’t like a heavy strike++ to get through to the house and destroy all the adapters at once.
++ I have had a transformer fire and other equipment literally explode!
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A UPS would probably prevent a powerline adaptor from working. The UPS would be for the sensitive router only.
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Wouldn’t that be simplex 
?
Ah no. See for example Duplex (telecommunications) - Wikipedia
The first four paragraphs define: duplex, full duplex, half duplex and simplex.
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All good. Whatever works for you.
However with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, and even some laptops that these days come without an ethernet port, and who knows what else in network-enabled household gadgetry, it is becoming difficult to avoid having WiFi.
Yep, I still have one laptop that can cope with the old way of doing things. It dates from 2012!
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At least with a laptop you can use a USB device that gives you an ethernet port.
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Powerline Ethernet adapters simply trade one form of EMR for another - they tend to completely trash the HF spectrum for shortwave listeners and amateur radio operators. How they were ever approved for use in any civilised country is one for the corporate conspiracy theorists …
Doing this on any machine with Intel Management Engine also means that your machine is unaffected by the IME critical security flaw, as IME only has access to the motherboard’s built-in ethernet port.
Most people should not panic, as Intel claims that this flaw is only accessible within your network boundaries - but if you use someone else’s network (including via on-board WiFi, or worse, public WiFi) you should probably seek a patch from the motherboard/PC manufacturer.
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But ironically you trade one security flaw for another, as using any USB device potentially exposes you to the “BadUSB Exploit”. At least you can manage that by only ever connecting USB devices that you have continuous custody of e.g. never someone’s random USB flash drive.
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I wondered about that too.
Would that be realistic outside the home?
I have heard bad things, along those lines, about broadband over powerline but that is not what is contemplated here.
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Have a look at this link (just one of many), the video and the related posts … this has been an issue for a long time, the WIA et al have lobbied against it. Sadly, money talks … If you are a radio hobbyist with HF on your agenda and one of your neighbours installs Ethernet over power-line, game over, particularly if you operate QRP …
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/showing-the-hf-interference-problem-from-ethernet-over-powerline-devices/
Of course, operating QRO might resolve the situation if you can poke enough power into the offending system next door to make Ethernet over power-line fail … a few kW should do it … People who dislike RF beware
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Thanks for the link. Not being a ham I hadn’t heard that HomePlug devices were a problem.
The acronym density in your post (and link) was a bit high for me but anyway your point is made … when choosing how to network your house (ethernet, WiFi, HomePlug - or combination thereof) this is an additional consideration.
What sort of interference range would you expect?
Is this also a security issue i.e. someone could intercept your HomePlug network from X metres outside your property boundary? (making it not much different from WiFi from that perspective)
(It is understood that both WiFi and HomePlug may encrypt what is broadcast but there are plenty of examples of people thinking that encrypted stuff was safe but then researchers finding weaknesses in the encryption. Encryption is good but so is not lobbing all your traffic outside your property for someone to have a crack at the encryption.)
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That would probably depend on the mode of operation and signal strength. QRP means decrease power or low power depending on the context - QRO is increase power or high power - typically fans of QRP like trying to use as little power as possible to talk as far as possible - worldwide on a watt or three, often morse code but not always. With weak signals and potentially very large antennas with sensitive receivers the interference could conceivably be detected for much longer distances than ‘the guy next door’. If one were chatting to a guy in the next suburb and both using a few hundred watts it is less likely to be an issue … still likely to be an annoyance though.
It’s worth remembering that HF (High Frequency - 3 to 30 MHz) in the wrong doses is a killer for xDSL - there are various ‘standards’ for Ethernet over power-line but there’s a reasonable bet they could smash anything from MF through HF into VHF depending on the devices involved … I’ve personally witnessed ADSL services trashed for 100 metres in every direction from a dodgy TV emitting RF noise …
‘HomePlug’ was originally something like 2 to 28/30 Mhz with later variants 80 Mhz or more …
It wouldn’t surprise me if these signals were present in the street - possibly any property on the same phase in a given street could conceivably listen in if the security was weak or broken …
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An interesting point worth noting.
I now need to check what happens when I turn off my power line adaptors in our Brisbane property which is still on ADSL2+. I’ve been
dumping on the NBN being turned on as contributing to a sudden drop in connect speed, without any clear evidence of a drop on line quality.
Perhaps it is a poor guess?
About the same time we replaced a dedicated wireless bridge used to connect our Fetch and smart TV with a pair of relatively low cost Ethernet powerline adaptors. It relied on an ancient pair of D-link 2100AP’s in their independent wireless bridge mode. Invisible to iiNet and the protection that required the Fetch to connect physically and directly to the modem router. It will be interesting to see if taking them out of the network makes a difference? Worth a try?
