Introduction:
Any media Junky, audiophile, or true technology enthusiast will tell you. When it comes to networking, wired is better. They are making vast improvements in wireless technology however, with more improvements, come more devices. Pair that knowledge with the interference from neighbors competing WiFi frequencies, and the only solution is to Wire your whole house. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option for people who are renting, don’t have a network guru in their back pocket, or don’t want to fork out the money to have it done professionally.
NEVER FEAR…Western digital Is here…
Today we have the Western Digital Livewire Powerline AV network kit. Lets see what Western Digital Has to say about it:
“Expand your home network instantly without running wires. Create high-speed Internet connections anywhere in your home without running wires between rooms. Just use your home’s electrical wiring to create a network.”
The technology for Powerline AV is not new, we have seen products from D-Link and Netgear Utilizing the same theory for years. What has Western Digital done to make this technology their own, and improve it? Lets see if the Livewire can handle the juice.
Oh, and unless you have a high speed disk setup, (SSDs or a fast raid setup) I also suggest using a test method that won’t bottleneck on disk write speed.
Last time I checked 24Mbps =/= 20% of 1000Mbps.
Judging from your straight Gig “control” speed test, I suggest investing in new Ethernet cables.
Thank you for your input, allow me to clarify the 1000Mbps that a router allows is a theoretical maximum transfer speed. The speed boasted by the manufacturers does not account for potential signal degradation given the distance between two devices, the read write capabilities of the two devices, or the other network traffic that the router is passing. The utility I have been using to test Network speeds is called “lan speed test”, and utilizes the windows networking functionality to transfer files. My associate used a client and server software made by passmark to perform his benchmarks, he received more accurate results. I will be performing these benchmarks and posting an update soon. I hope you will come back and see the more accurate results.
FYI “lan speed test” is also using client/server for testing. (SMB?) I think the delineation you are looking for is that passmark bypasses the need for a hard drive to be in the testing path. Lan Speed Test requires that the hard drive be in the testing path.
Passmark would be a much better test than a file transfer. I look forward to seeing the results. Thanks