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==Faster interwebz== Recently I upgraded my internet connection, from a 4 mbit down/1 mbit up ADSL connection to a 50 mbit up/down fiber connection (including phone service), which is really great. However, I was then faced with a common problem, how to get a network connection from the router, which was installed near the fuse box, to my computer.<br> <br> When I was still using ADSL, I had a DSL splitter connected to the phoneline (which enters the house at the same place as the optical fiber cable), from which a phone cable runs to the phone, and another phone cable to the room where the computer is, with the ADSL modem connected there, and a network cable connecting the computer to the ADSL modem.<br> <br> But with the fiber connection, the router was in the place where the DSL splitter used to be. For the phone this didn't matter, I simply plugged the phone cable into the router and it worked.<br> However connecting my desktop pc to the internet was going to be a little more difficult, running a network cable through the house was going to be a big pain in the ass. I tried running 100 mbit ethernet over the 15 meter long phone cable, but unsurprisingly it didn't work at all.<br> I tried wifi instead, but it turned out to be slower than the 50 mbit internet connection (to be fair I only tried 2x2 802.11n over 2.4 GHz).<br> <br> If only there was a way I could use the existing phone cable........<br> <br> ==Hardware== And then I thought about homeplugs, if those things can manage to get a reasonable amount of data over the mains wiring, surely they must work absolutely wonderful over a phone cable.<br> So I decided to try it out, and bought a set of TP-Link TL-PA511 homeplug adapters. <br> <br> [[Image:Homeplugs.JPG|300px]] <br> <br> The homeplug adapters can be powered with 100 to 240 volts AC, I wasn't about to connect the mains wiring to the phone cable, but luckily I had a 30 VA 230 to 115 volts transformer to power the homeplugs, and a housing of computer power supply to put the transformer in. The power supply's connector has a netfilter built in, which helps to block high frequency interference from the mains, although I doubt that those frequencies are passed by the transformer. The transformer is protected by a 160 mA fuse in series with the primary winding (white fuseholder with red wires), and the phoneline and homeplugs are protected by a 125 mA fuse in series with the secondary winding of the transformer (black panel mount fuseholder on the right). <br> <br> [[Image:Transformer in box.JPG|300px]] <br> <br> I connected a power socket to the transformer, and a piece of phone cable with a ferrite bead to reduce high frequency interference, the ferrite bead acts as a common mode choke, which passes differential currents but blocks the common mode. Inside the power socket I connected too 100µH inductors in series with the wires connected to the transformer, to filter high frequencies, however it also worked fine without the inductors, and I suspect that these have too much parasitic capacitance to do any good filtering. <br> <br> [[Image:Homeplug socket2.JPG|300px]] [[Image:Homeplug socket.JPG|300px]] <br> <br> I used a pair of T-connectors to connect the homeplug adapter to the existing phone cable in the house. <br> <br> [[Image:Homeplug connectors.JPG|300px]] <br> <br> This is the complete setup at the computer side: <br> <br> [[Image:Homeplug total.JPG|300px]] [[Image:Homeplug total2.JPG|300px]] <br> <br> Near the router, the other homeplug is connected to the phoneline in the same way, using a piece of phone wire with a ferrite bead and T-connectors. <br> <br> [[Image:Homeplug connectors2.JPG|300px]] [[Image:Homeplug router.JPG|300px]] <br> <br> ==Results== I connected one homeplug to my desktop machine, and the other to my notebook (both are capable of gigabit ethernet) and checked the connection speed with the TL-PA511 Powerline Utility. It said 504 mbit, which I assume is the maximum. <br> <br> [[Image:TL-PA511_Powerline_Utility.png]] <br> <br> The average ping is a little over 2 milliseconds, pretty low but not as low as ethernet. <br> <br> [[Image:Homeplug-ping.png|border]] <br> <br> I ran two bidirectional tests with iperf, an individual and a simultaneous one. <br> <br> [[Image:Homeplugiperf-individual.png|border]] [[Image:Homeplugiperf-bidirectional-notebook.png|border]] <br> <br> Wow! Over 220 mbit individually and the simultaneous test reached almost 240 mbit combined, I did not expect it to work this good.

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