this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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Hi there good folk,

The new place i am moving into has the internet come into the house on the other side of where I am planning to have my office + my NAS(which needs ethernet). I much prefer having my stuff connected through ethernet, but not sure what do now, as I cant really run cables across the house. Am also renting the place so cant drill holes in walls etc.. As far as I know, there are two ways for me to get ethernet in my office:

  1. COAX to POE: The place does not have ethernet ports in the walls either, but it does have some wallmounted coax sockets. Is it worth looking into coax to poe adapters for either end of the sockets? Not sure how much of a fan I am of this due to the amount of cables this ends up being.

  2. The other way would be to have a WiFi-extender in my office, but i guess this will sacrafice some more speed than the other solution(?). This way I would have a small switch connected to the extender which will get me some more ports too.

I am planning on buying into the Unifi prodcuts, specifically the Unifi Express device as a router. While expensive, I love the polish and feature set and control it brings. What other Unifi devices should I get into, considering probably wont be able to use PoE?

Lemmy know your thoughts, opinions and the rest - am open for all sorts of solutions!

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Power-line tends to be quite slow and error prone. If you have existing coax, that is likely the better option. You can get up to 2.5gbit adapters for it: https://til.simonwillison.net/networking/ethernet-over-coaxial-cable

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think people's experience with PLE will always be subjective. In the old flat we were in, where I needed it. It would drop connection all the time, it was unusable.

But I've had them run totally fine in other places. Noisy power supplies that aren't even in your place can cause problems. Any kind of impulse noise (bad contacts on an old style thermostat for example) and all kinds of other things can and will interfere with it.

Wifi is always a compromise too. But, I guess if wiring direct is not an option, the OP needs to choose their compromise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

IMO, powerline is going to depend on a lot of factors including what kind of power you use, which varies from country to country. Where I am in North America, we use 240v split phase, and the powerline adapters are 120v (half phase), so if one unit ends up on one side of the phase, and one ends up on the other side of the phase, you're going to have a bad time, if it links at all.... So knowing which "side" of the split phase your powerline is on becomes critical, which is not something most people know about their power situation. As a result, it's basically a crap shoot whether it will work well or not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Most power line adaptors say to keep it on the same circuit. The one I have is running a small VoIP phone and I don't have issues with call quality.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yep, I'm sure they do.

Realistically, does any average consumer know what's on which circuit?

Spanning the split phase will screw you up, across breakers won't be fun but shouldn't pose any serious problems, as long as it's not in different sides of the split phase.

I'm pretty sure they say this because actually explaining what will work and what won't either requires significant prior knowledge of power systems, or a couple of paragraphs of explainers before you can get a rough picture of what the hell they're driving at.

Everyone I know who has used powerline, just plug it in and see if it works. Those who were lucky, say it's great and works without issue, etc. Those who were not lucky say the opposite.

I'm just over here watching the fireworks, eating popcorn.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I spent a year tracking down random afci circuit breaker trips, until I realized it was my powerline Ethernet. Never again.