[andershaig]

This is my first time hearing about PowerLine. Has anyone used it extensively and have any tips and tricks to share?

Wikipedia[1] lists some pros and cons but it's not clear how impactful those cons are in real world scenarios. How does the speed compare to Wifi? Do multiple devices cause issues?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication

[vvanders]

Hams hate them since they induce RFI, I'm honestly surprised they are allowed given they basically turn the unshielded wire in your walls into antennas.

[graphe]

Will ham licensing die? The average age is like 60-70 usually, the government kept lowering the requirements to get a license and it's even less popular. I heard they're usually mostly benchmarking distance and truckers listening. Besides apocalypse or maybe wanting to tunnel data through it (illegal) it doesn't seem to serve a real function or benefit.

Family radio and the public channels I heard are full of useless chatter and insults, I can't imagine radio being any better than the internet besides the idea of broadcasting data on it which the government doesn't like.

Because it runs on tattletales that tell the government, if they removed the licensing we'd just get the ability to not illegally (maybe dirty) encrypted long distance messages anonymously. A far superior system than today's.

[bityard]

I do quite enjoy when non-hams hop on the Internet to try and criticize ham radio.

> The average age is like 60-70 usually

I can't find any statistics on the average age among all amateur radio license holders. Wikipedia says the average age is 68, but that is marked with a [citation needed] because it doesn't point to a source. Whoever wrote that likely got it from the ARRL which declared that the average age of their membership is 68. Not all hams, and perhaps not even the majority of hams, are members of ARRL. In the same way that not all licensed gun owners are members of the NRA.

In rural areas, you may find the local ham radio club is a clique of 5 or 6 older guys who have known each other for several decades and aren't too welcoming to newcomers. But more urban areas are a completely different story. Where I live, the local university has a ham club operated by college students. There is a community club that certainly _trends_ toward older engineer retirees, but actually has members of all ages, ethnicities, and technical background. And they are all a pretty friendly bunch.

There are online clubs and communities for various demographics as well. (And an uncountable number of discords for some reason.)

> the government kept lowering the requirements to get a license and it's even less popular.

The only ones saying that are YouTubers and clickbait SEO-encumbered blogspam. There are more amateur radio license holders now than there have ever been. http://ah0a.org/FCC/Graphs.html

> I heard they're usually mostly benchmarking distance and truckers listening.

You must have heard wrong? I don't know what "benchmarking distance" means, and while there _are_ truckers that are hams and sometimes talk while they drive, IME there are not many. Certainly not enough to be a notable chunk of local ham radio activity.

> Besides apocalypse or maybe wanting to tunnel data through it (illegal) it doesn't seem to serve a real function or benefit.

You could ask the FCC, the ones who license and regulate the service? https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-divis... "The amateur radio ... services are for qualified persons of any age who are interested in radio technique solely with a personal aim and without pecuniary interest. These services present an opportunity for self-training, intercommunication, and technical investigations."

In short, amateur radio is set of spectrum set aside for hobbyists to practice and experiment with radio. Amateur radio can be and has been used to coordinate communication in areas stricken by disaster when other services were down, but it is NOT an "emergency radio" service, no matter what the preppers say.

Encryption on the ham bands is forbidden for a very good reason: ham radio activities are public, open, and are not a substitute for commercial or ISM bands. You don't need encryption in order to experiment with radio. It's a different layer, completely orthogonal. The only narrow acceptable use related to cryptography is authorization of control messages to repeaters, RC aircraft, and such. In that case, you are not obscuring the meaning of the message, you are simply proving that you are the rightful controller of the device.

> Family radio and the public channels I heard are full of useless chatter and insults,

FRS and CB radio are not ham radio, full stop.

I have never seen a single community anywhere in real life or on the Internet that didn't have the occasional asshat or two. Although a few hams can be idiots, as in any community, the majority are quite respectful and friendly.

> I can't imagine radio being any better than the internet besides the idea of broadcasting data on it which the government doesn't like.

As mentioned before, you're missing the purpose and spirit of amateur radio. It's not "free and libre wireless communication for the masses." The spectrum was originally set aside by the FCC at a time when amateurs were making more progress on the state of the art of radio technology on their kitchen tables than radio manufacturers with whole labs. Not as relevant today perhaps, but it's a miracle that we still have that spectrum available to us when these frequencies are so highly coveted by HFTs, ISPs, and mobile phone operators.

Broadcasting on amateur radio is not allowed, because there are already FCC-licensed services for broadcasting over radio. Some people think that broadcasting over amateur radio should be allowed because they don't like the FCC's policies on the broadcast bands but that's some pretty backwards thinking, if you ask me. Nobody stumps for broadcast rights on FRS, GRMS, CB, or marine bands for some reason. It's only the amateur radio service where this is ever even suggested as a possibility, generally by people who don't understand what the service is for.

[graphe]

If you compare the license holders and the population, the kind of "growth" that amateur licenses got is my point: proportion to the population of the US 2018-2023 had an increase of roughly 500 members, so around 100 per year. https://www.arrl.org/fcc-license-counts

Thank you for clarifying the point of its usage. Compared to something like SDRs, and meshtastic it's way more mature and has a lot less interesting specs to me besides it's frequency. I skimmed your blog and didn't see anything related to either radio. Is there a lot of overlap between sdr and ham? I only knew one who was a trucker that mostly just listened to local people.

[Dalewyn]

Powerline ethernet is a decent alternative to ethernet cables or wireless, but there definitely are significant caveats:

* It generates tons of electrical noise, which can wreak havoc on electronics particularly radios.

* The actual connection speed varies greatly by the condition of the copper wiring and generally isn't that great.

* Depending on how the copper wiring is laid out, you might not get a connection between two points.

* Security can be an issue if you don't configure your powerline adapters properly.

[solardev]

They've been very useful in situations where wifi didn't go far enough. I find them to be more reliable and faster than wifi mesh networks, up to a few hundred megabits.

They do come in different speed ratings though, and those still depend on the condition of your house wiring.

Buy them from somewhere with a good return policy and give em a shot.

Moca is another option if you have coax wiring for cable TV in your house. That's nice cuz it doesn't share bandwidth with power lines.

[cj]

I've used powerline once or twice, but I'm a heavy user of MoCa. It's basically the same thing except ethernet over Coax cable. My use case is creating wired backhauls for mesh wifi system (or adding wired AP's where stringing ethernet isn't practical)

[kbouck]

My experience with PowerLine (TPLink) was really awful. Completely unstable and inconsistent performance.

We then switched to MoCA (ActionTec) and it has been about as good as a direct ethernet cable. Consistent performance and stays up for years at a time. No issues ever.

The performance of each likely comes down to how much noice is on the respective wires. Our electrical network is likely crowded and influenced somewhat by neighbors. However our coax was completely unused and I disconnected it from the outside world (for privacy and noise reduction)

If you have coax outlets in locations useful for networking, I would definitely consider using MoCA instead of PowerLine.

[sokoloff]

I have it deployed in my attic (one sender in basement, one receiver in attic) because so far I’ve been too lazy to pull Cat6 up there.

I get about 35Mbps and it’s a little flaky, but I haven’t tried to troubleshoot it. It serves my minimal use case (streaming to a very rarely used guest bedroom TV).

I’d use anything else in most cases (including pulling fiber to my detached garage rather than using power line to galvanically isolate the networks).

I’ve not tested it, but my understanding is that powerline networking will not pass (or pass well) a surge suppressor (which might be a problem if you have an updated electrical panel with whole house suppression).

[bdavbdav]

I think I’m one of the few that have had great luck with it. We’ve got an outbuilding which is on a separate circuit than the ring main in the house which has the other end. It still gets a solid 120mbps and no meaningful packet loss, dropouts etc.