Q: Power Line Adapter vs Cat 5e Cable Metrics
I have installed a pair of power line adapters (TP-Link AV500 Nanos) between my Airport Express 6th gen and a Airport Extreme 2nd Gen on the opposite side and floor of my home. So far results are good but I would like to quantify the difference between using the adapters and a dedicated cat 5e ethernet cable. I just happened to have a 100 foot terminated 5e cable in my inventory. I thought that I could connect the two Apple Airport units (temporarily) buy running the cable through the house/up the steps, etc. to get a comparative throughput reading. Yes I am retired and have a lot of time on my hands.
What would be the best method of driving the link at high speeds. My Comcast link is delivering 75 MB?
Thanks for your assistance.
MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10)
Posted on Sep 25, 2015 1:41 PM
Always use ethernet as wireless is not fast enough or reliable enough to do it.
There is no such thing as a Gen6 Express..
Did you swap the gens.. ?? There is a gen6 Extreme and a gen2 Express.. they are latest models of each.
You need two computers.. so if you don't have another computer available try and get one.. ask a friend with laptop for drinks.. BYO laptop.
Plug the laptops in, each end of the link and run iperf from command line.
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/answers/how-to-test-speed-home-network-iperf
The easy way to do this.. especially if both laptops have SSD drives is just copy a file from one laptop to the other and use activity monitor to check the speed.
Tesserax recently did this kind of testing for speed of USB drives..
The method will show you what to do.
AirPort Disk - Throughput Testing
Also the tools he lists will be rather easier to use than iperf.
NOTE the actual throughput will be hugely improved using ethernet from computer to computer.. because your Express has 100mbit ports.. although I doubt power line adapters on any decent run will ever reach 100mbit .. and real world N wireless throughput will seldom reach >100mbps without using AC wireless, you do need to understand you are causing basic slow downs to LAN networking using it.
Posted on Sep 25, 2015 2:09 PM