TL-PA9020P(UK) Ver 1.0 Starter Kit Performance Problems

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TL-PA9020P(UK) Ver 1.0 Starter Kit Performance Problems

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TL-PA9020P(UK) Ver 1.0 Starter Kit Performance Problems
TL-PA9020P(UK) Ver 1.0 Starter Kit Performance Problems
2018-07-10 06:43:09
Model :

Hardware Version :

Firmware Version :

ISP :

Hi everyone,

I've brought these power line adapters a year ago after getting 200mb broadband and finding that my old develo AV500 adapters only included a 100mb ethernet port so I was unable to use my full internet speed in my office.

The TPLink AV2000 adapters seemed to have really helped my situation a year ago, with the full internet speed accessible. However I've just upgraded my internet to 350mb and am finding myself back in the same situation again. I don't seem to be able to get my network connection working across the power line to be able to use my new 380mb internet connection at anything like the proper speeds.

Eliminating the internet from the equation I've used iperf3 on a computer in my office at one end of the power line adapters and another computer connected to the other adapter next to the router in the front room. With this setup I find that I get about 240Mbit/s between the two computers. Which is obviously why I'm unable to get the full internet speed from my broadband over such a connection.

The thing that really confuses me though is that the tpPLC app shows the connection speeds between my two adapters as being a lot more, I'd presume the sync speed it shows between the two adapters would be at least in the ballpark of the actual network connection that was capable between the two adapters. In this case tpPLC shows around 900Mbps (or sometimes higher, I've seen it over 1000mb occasionally) in both directions between the adapters. Obviously this is a large discrepancy between the two speeds.. Is this normal? I always presumed these utilities were pretty good at showing you the actual speed over the network as with older adapters the speeds shown in their utilities seemed to be pretty inline with the actual performance you'd see along the line.

I did update my firmware in hope this could help I was running with firmware

3.2.0_902131_160405_903

and after upgrading with the firmware on the website I'm now running with

3.2.4_902111_170628_901

Sadly it's not made any difference to the performance discrepancy between tpPLC and actual real world transfers down the connection.

I've also removed my old AV500 devolo adapters from the equation temporarily as sometimes I can improve the adapters by turning them all off and then back on again 1 by 1... this didn't seem to help either though.

Here's a screenshot of tpPLC after turning one of the devolo adapters back on





With a typical iperf3 run over the power line of


iperf3 -c 192.168.0.18
Connecting to host 192.168.0.18, port 5201
[ 4] local 192.168.0.16 port 64209 connected to 192.168.0.18 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.00-1.00 sec 24.2 MBytes 203 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 1.00-2.00 sec 28.6 MBytes 240 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 2.00-3.00 sec 27.8 MBytes 233 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 3.00-4.00 sec 30.0 MBytes 251 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 4.00-5.00 sec 29.1 MBytes 244 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 5.00-6.00 sec 29.3 MBytes 246 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 6.00-7.00 sec 28.6 MBytes 240 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 7.00-8.00 sec 30.0 MBytes 251 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 8.00-9.00 sec 28.6 MBytes 240 Mbits/sec
[ 4] 9.00-10.00 sec 28.6 MBytes 240 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 285 MBytes 239 Mbits/sec sender
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 285 MBytes 239 Mbits/sec receiver


Is this normal to just not be able to take the speeds reported within tpPLC as useful approximations of actual speeds capable between those adapters? If so what is the point of having the speeds on there anyways if they can be out by so much, 900mb -> 200mb

Thanks for your time.. I'm really stuck now wondering what the best options are...
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Re:TL-PA9020P(UK) Ver 1.0 Starter Kit Performance Problems
2018-07-10 19:36:12
These figures are fairly typical in shared-media network transports. Payload throughput is expected to be about a third of media bandwidth. PLC does not differ from WLAN in that regard.

That said, your measured throughput is a bit on the low end, and with my prior experience I'm not surprised. I found that TP-Link adapters tend to be fairly aggressive in (physical) line speed, apparently at the expense of higher error rates in actual payload transfers. Swapping out TP-Link AV1200 gear for devolo product of the same AV1200 technology, I've seen line speed drop from 430 to 270, but the new hardware brought me an actual increase in payload throughput and zero random connection losses.
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Re:TL-PA9020P(UK) Ver 1.0 Starter Kit Performance Problems
2018-07-11 01:53:41
Thanks for the reply.

So you’re saying I should expect about 300mbit actual bandwidth at these 900mbit line speeds? I’ve seen plenty of online reviews that talk about getting approximately 400mbit actual bandwidth out of both the 1200 and 2000 adapters. I guess I’d presumed the bandwidth being reported would be more reflective of the actual bandwidth capable, surely the 1200 adapter would never claim your link was running at 1200mbit for it to the then collapse down to ~400mbit actual bandwidth?

You say WiFi is no different but my phone/laptop over 5ghz at around 600-800mbit seemed capable of maxing out my connection at 380mbit or so, I guess it’s more capable of delivering what it claims.

I’ll do some more experimenting to see if I can get it any higher by repositioning adapters. I’ll test with them close to each other too to see what a true peak is in ideal conditions. Beyond that it’s looking like I’ll need to get gigabit cable through my house to be able to use my broadband’s full speed  unless other adapters are able to get better speeds...

Cheers!
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Re:TL-PA9020P(UK) Ver 1.0 Starter Kit Performance Problems
2018-07-11 18:19:31
Nothing beats proper LAN cables of course ... but yes, PLC can be done better or worse - with the #1 massive improvement lies in mounting a PLC straight into your house's main fusebox, wired to all three phases. devolo 1200 DINrail. That brought a tenfold increase in actual throughput in my house.
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Re:TL-PA9020P(UK) Ver 1.0 Starter Kit Performance Problems
2018-07-11 21:54:37
Ethernet cable would be nice but it’s not without significant fitting difficulty. I think I saw mention of this dinrail elsewhere but didn’t know quite what it was. I could easily get gigabit down to my consumer unit from my router. Do all the other powerline adapters work with it and just have a much better signal and transmission speed? Could I still use my AV2000 adapters with it?That increase in throughput would be enough to hopefully let me use the full internet bandwidth which is all that really matters.These units just clip on the rails in your consumer unit? I could get my electrician to do that I think. Not much online reviews of these things at first glance.Cheers for the info!
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