Devolo not-so-bad

My suspicions about the devolo kit being on the slow side have turned out to be partly true, but they were really the least of my problems. I took an hour or two to revive an ancient laptop (from when MMX instructions were something to brag about) to test different points around the network, configurations, etc. As old as the laptop is, it's quite capable of doing a few things, and it's reliable.

What I couldn't figure out was why my new PC was only able to move things over the LAN at 0.3Mb/s! It's almost modem type of speeds. Because of the way my flat is laid out it was awkward to isolate the new machine and find out the exact cause. I (literally) dusted off an ancient laptop, and pressd it into service.

After continuously rewiring most of my flat and retesting, it became clear that my new PC, all on it's lonesome, was the cause of the glacial network throughput. After some web searches, auto-scaling on vista was pointed at - no luck (didn't think so, there weren't routers in this path).
More web searches suggested NAM wasn't good. It took awhile longer to discover that NAM is Nvidia's "Network Access Manager", and it's rubbish. I uninstalled it.

Without the devolo kit or NAM in the loop, network throughput jumped up towards the expected speeds (100Mb/s). I've put the devolo kit back into it's original places, and it's not too quick - ~11Mb/s; but my best option right now (and thirty times faster than NAM was forcing me into).

During testing I found that the devolo kit, when installed in sensible places (no power strips, etc.) will get close to it's theoretical speeds. Happy days - if you have power sockets free in the right places. I'll make do.

Devolo not-so-highspeed

Update on this item

The devolo "highspeed" homeplug gizmos are pretty good. There was a little buzz of excitement when the idea of power cables being - well, just power cables - suddenly lurched to the left by some distance and the idea of "just fat, slow cat5" snuck in next door.

The 85Mb/s claimed by Devolo isn't exactly electrifying (heh?), but that's ok, I only recently moved out my last 10Mb PC (100MBit still feels so fast). Anyway, it seems to move standard resolution movies (about 700MB or so) to the XBMC ok, and that's the one my girlfriend will be upset about. What the Devolo kit doesn't seem to is actually give me decent network throughput.

I did some testing using netcat - 6Mb/s! Ok, so the power/network isn't ideal (old wiring, too many power strips, etc.), but the "informer" app says I'm getting about 50Mb/s, so long as there's no actual traffic. If I actually ask the network to carry some traffic (as with netcat), the informer app says the devolo kit drops to 20Mb/s, while I'm only getting 6Mb useful throughput.

If I can improve the wiring setup (attach the devolo kit to it's own sockets rather than on power strips), I'll retest. So far though, in my little flat, with too few power sockets, in odd locations, the results aren't too encouraging. Do I currently feel like shelling out for the newer 200Mb/s model? Not really.

Maybe 802.11n is the next step - even with the thick walls here...