TP-LINK PA211KIT Mini Powerline Starter Kit

Category: Networking

Created on Tuesday, 07 December 2010 01:11

Written by Steve

Installation:
Installation of the PA211KIT powerline kit took literally no more than two minutes. I connected each adapter into a wall outlet near my devices, connected the devices to the adapters, then pressed each pair button. After that, my network came to life and started working right away.

I then installed the Powerline Utility, which by the way is not mandatory to install unless you require the added functionality it brings to the system. In order to install the Powerline Utility, one must first install WinPCap which is included on the CD as well.

Testing:
Before I started into my performance testing, I wanted to do a quick test to see how the powerline adapters would hold up when used on powerbars. The documentation all says to plug the adapters directly into your wall socket for best performance, but of course we all want to know the what if situation. I started with plugging the one adapter into a vanilla powerbar with only basic surge protection. The adapter worked well and didn't exhibit any speed loss at all. Next was trying the adapter on a Belkin UPS with advanced surge protection and voltage regulation. In this scenario, the adapter would work for about 40 minutes at a time, then it would disconnect and require a little fighting to get back online again. As you can see, if you need to use an adapter on a powerbar for some reason or another, then keep it to a very simple powerbar and you might have great luck (I'm actually writing this review with my one adapter back on my powerbar again).

Next, I wanted to gather some real numbers to judge how the performance of the AV200 adapters were versus a standard wired network. I'll be running my test on a 200 second interval using the network test from PassMark Performance test 7.0 on a fixed block size of 16384 bytes. I've placed some comparison graphs below from my testing:

PA211KIT Powerline Kit:

10/100 Wired LAN:

As you can see above, the performance of the AV200 powerline adapters was so close to the wired 10/100 LAN that it actually outperformed the wired LAN by 17KBits/Sec during my testing scenario. Given the slight fluctuation of numbers every time I'd run the test, this isn't something that will always happen, but on the tests I was recording, it did happen. I'd also like to point out that performance of the powerline adapters was identical when they were on the same circuit in my office as when they were on opposite ends of each floor in the bungalow we live in. Since the powerline adapters have a pretty long range of 300 meters, it would actually take a pretty large house before I'd expect to see any noticeable performance degradation happen.