I'm having intermittent Powerline connections between my Deco P9s, and have tried pretty much every solution on the forums with no avail.

 

Would be grateful if someone can shed some light?

 

 

My Network

I have 2 M9 Plus, and 3 P9s, all operating in AP mode.

 

Both M9s and 1 P9 is connected via Ethernet, directly to the Router - so generally speaking, they don't need a Wifi overlap to operate. And of course, they work just fine.

 

The "Living Room" P9 has a medium-strength WiFi connection, and is on the same socket loop as the Office P9 - that is, both of these sockets are connected to a single fuse on my Electrical Board, so they are on the same single wire loop.

 

The Shed P9 has a very weak WiFi connection to the Kitchen M9, but is on the same overall electrical circuit for the house, as the other P9s.

 

The problem is that the PLC connection status of the P9s seem to drop out at least 2-3 times a day, with no explanation. When the PLC connection goes - Shed is just offline, Living Room will work if it has a Wifi Signal at the time (sometimes not, so it goes offline too), while the Office P9 keeps working thanks to the Ethernet backhaul.

 

I have tried the following:

- Upgrading the firmware of the M9s and P9s via the app's autoupdate

- Manually updated the firmware of the P9s with the latest dev build I could find on the Community Forums (on the thread about similar issue)

- I have switched the placement of the Office and Living room P9s to various different sockets

- I have switched the Living Room, Office and Shed P9s themselves - to rule out a dodgy unit

- I have used all 3 P9 units (while connected to Ethernet) as the Main Deco [cause support docs say PLC is only active with P9 is the main deco, not true]

- I have switched my 2 M9s as the Main Deco [PLC on the P9s do come on with either of them as the main Deco]

- I thought maybe PLC drops out if there is no activity on it, so to the Shed P9 (where only the PLC connection should be regularly available), I connected a Ring Indoor Cam (which could not pick up Wifi signal from any other Deco Units except the Shed P9), and set the Camera to take 1min snapshots - i.e. a data transfer via PLC at least once a minute. And no, that didn't help either.

 

 

In summary - PLC works, whatever the connection setup / main deco / physical location of the devices, but only for a while. PLC drops several times a day, and then re-establishes itself after a while - with no rhyme or reason!

 

I have also attached the Debug Log from the Shed P9 for reference.

 

 

For reference, M9s are running the firmware: 1.5.1. Build 20210126 Rel:59387

 

The Other Problem - P9 Speed

 

I'm sold that M9s need to be my main Deco, as the P9, regardless of this PLC issue, has terrible speeds.

 

Sitting about 1.5 metres away from a Ethernet linked P9 with no obstructions but air, and about 8 metres from a Deco M9 (+ 2 ceramic tiled drywalls between us), I get:

 - About ~130Mbps on Ookla Speed Test when an M9 is set as the main Deco [on a Samsung S21, via Ookla's Android App, connected via 5Ghz wifi]

 - About ~50-70Mbps when the P9 right next to me is set as the main Deco

 

Between those tests, no changes were made to the network, router config, etc. 

 

Even the tests, which are of course running against Public servers so can be unreliable, were repeated 3 times each against 3 different servers - M9 first, and P9, and then M9 again just to be sure.

 

I know the M9s have a greater overall bandwidth, but ~130Mbps should have been childsplay for the P9s advertised 867Mbps 5Ghz connection.

 

So something is going wrong there