kellyfelkins.org: home network performance

home network performance

My home network is a real mix of devices and technologies. I’ve acquired these devices over time to solve various connectivity issues. Overall it’s a significant investment (to me¹).

I use plain old ethernet, HomePlug (powerline), HomePNA (phoneline), and Wi-Fi. This allows me to hook up just about anything in any room.

For the most part this works fine. In the past I’ve been primarily constrained by my external dsl connection, and the internal networks were far faster, so far as I knew. Lately I’ve had problems that I suspected were related to latency or flakyness of my internal network. For example, I have files on a samba server, and some windows applications would fail when using these networked files. My solution was to temporarily copy these files to my local disk. However, that was extraordinarily slow when the files were big (read ‘media’). Thus I decided to fix the network.

I had worked out what I was going to do when a friend at work suggested I test all of the links point to point. Sounded good. I found iperf and started testing. I installed iperf on my server and started it in server mode, then tested from various points on the internal network. In all of the tests below, the tests went from some location to the server—the server being the last link but common to all so omitted from the table.

My solution was to run a cat5 cable from my server room (the basement) to my bedroom. Now my primary PC can talk to the server at approximately 80 Mbits, roughly 24 times faster than before when that connection ran through the powerline network. Much better.

The Tests

1	kelly-enet	kr1-xe102	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	3.36
2	kelly-enet	kr2-plebr10	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	.29
3	kr-voltorb-wifi	lr1-ss2521	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	.53
4	lafr-loganpc-usb	lafr-usb200ha	sr-pe102	sr-fvs318	4.50
5	kelly-enet	kr1-plebr10	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	3.24
6	kelly-enet	kr2-xe102	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	3.05
7	lr-voltorb-wifi	lr1-ss2521	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	3.43
8	–	–	sr-voltorb-enet	sr-fvs318	89.90
9	–	–	–	sr-voltorb-enet	92.80
10	kelly-enet	kr1-plebr10	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	4.52	xe102 and ss2521 unplugged
11	kelly-enet	kr1-plebr10	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	.22	ss2521 plugged in
12	kelly-enet	kr1-plebr10	sr1-ss2502	sr-fvs318	2.74	ss2521 unplugged
13	kelly-enet	kr1-xe102	sr2-plebr10	sr-fvs318	2.63	ss2521 unplugged
14	kelly-enet	kr2-xe102	sr1-plebr10	sr-fvs318	2.21	ss2521 plugged
14	kelly-enet	kr2-xe102	sr3-plebr10	sr-fvs318	2.57	ss2521 unplugged
15	–	–	kelly-enet	sr-fvs318	80.10	cat5 to server room

The Gear

netgear powerline	xe102
netgear phoneline enet bridge	pe102
netgear firewall/router	fvs318
speedstream powerline	ss2502
speedstream powerline wap	ss2521
linksys powerline	plebr10
linksys phoneline usb	usb200ha

The Testing Points

kr	kelly’s room center
kr1	kelly’s room internal wall power outlet
kr2	kelly’s room outside wall power outlet
lr1	living room internal wall power outlet
lafr	logan’s room
sr	server room
sr1	server room, plug 1
sr2	server room, plug 2

¹ I used to spend a lot of time staring at electronics at stores like Fry’s searching for the latest gadget. At some point I noticed my searches had changed and were now about finding the best cables. I think many modern households have massive tangles of cables—behind the tv/entertainment center, at the home computer/dsl connection, etc. I was thrilled the first time I stumbled upon at 3’ ethernet cable and elated by the discovery of a 10” ethernet cable—perfect for that connection between the dsl modem and the router/firewall/hub… Now, if I could only find a 2’ computer power cord.

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