I use a pair of powerline ethernet adapters to connect my upstairs PCs (including my BBS PC) to my router, which is downstairs. Although the powerline ethernet adapters I'm using are fairly reliable, I've noticed that sometimes it seems that a remote system is momentarily unable to connect to my BBS. I suspect it might be these powerline adapters, since I hadn't noticed the issue before I moved into this house and had my PCs connected directly into my router. I suppose it probably isn't a big issue, since it only happens occasionally. I guess what bugs me most is that my BBS keeps getting knocked down to the bottom of the Synchronet BBS list (www.synchro.net/sbbslist.html) due to an occasional no-connect from the list's nightly scanner. :P And it looks like the list scanner has reported a no-connect for the last 2 nights in a row..

Aside from moving my BBS PC downstairs to connect directly to the router, or wiring my house for ethernet, I'm wondering if there's a way to get a more reliable connection to my BBS PC. I'm wondering if wi-fi would be more reliable..

Nightfox

Subject: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
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Nightfox wrote in a message to All:

way to get a more reliable connection to my BBS PC. I'm wondering if
wi-fi would be more reliable..

I'd think it would be. I've run my BBS on a laptop over my wi-fi for
as long as 6 months before and didn't notice any issues. Plus wifi is
more "standard" then the powerline stuff. Just MO.

Shawn

... At least the doctors find me interesting...
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Subject: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
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Re: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
By: Nightfox to All on Thu Jun 16 2016 09:08 am

I use a pair of powerline ethernet adapters to connect my upstairs PCs (including my BBS PC) to my router, which is downstairs. Although the powerline ethernet adapters I'm using are fairly reliable, I've noticed that sometimes it seems that a remote system is momentarily unable to connect to my BBS.

Powerline adapters are a black art. I have several Trendnet TP-406es in my house. One connects my router to the power lines, then one serves my
desktop, one to the BBS in a storage space, and one to a set-top box. Another runs an access point.

The desktop one is on a busier circuit and needs to be plugged/unplugged about once a week. The BBS one is rock solid, that one needs to be kicked once every other month. I think it depends on what is on the circuit, and if there's enough interference to interrrupt communication.

Just yesterday, a vacuum cleaner brought my desktop connector down. Christmas lights bring my desktop to a crawl.

Aside from moving my BBS PC downstairs to connect directly to the router, or wiring my house for ethernet, I'm wondering if there's a way to get a more reliable connection to my BBS PC. I'm wondering if wi-fi would be more reliable..

Try a different outlet if you can, and make sure you don't have the powerline adapter plugged into a power strip. You might want to look for devices on the same circuit that might be causing a problem -- electric dryers, cheap wall warts?

Desktop wireless cards work pretty well - for a while I used a DLink card with a directional antenna and had a 90% connection through an exterior wall. It dropped occasionally.

My BBS is an old Celeron box. I'm tempted to move everything to a Pi and plug it directly into the router, or run some Cat6 next time I have some work done to the house. I could get to the sub-floor and turn my storage space and home-run cabling into it. Gigabit ethernet to the router and NAS would be nice...

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Re: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
By: Poindexter Fortran to Nightfox on Thu Jun 16 2016 11:12:29

Desktop wireless cards work pretty well - for a while I used a DLink card with a directional antenna and had a 90% connection through an exterior wall. It dropped occasionally.

Yeah, I have a wifi card in my BBS PC (in addition to its wired ethernet port). The main reason I wanted to use ethernet was its speed, since I also use my BBS machine as a movie server for my local network, and the speed helps in copying media files to the machine.

I am running my BBS in a virtual machine (with VirtualBox), so I was able to connect the wifi adapter and set up VirtualBox to use the wifi connection for my BBS VM's network adapter. I'll see if that's more reliable. I'm connected to it now, and while typing this message, my BBS connection seems a bit less consistent.. Every so often there is a pause during screen refreshes. I guess I can try this for a bit and see how well it works.

Nightfox

Subject: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
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Re: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
By: Nightfox to All on Thu Jun 16 2016 09:08 am

I use a pair of powerline ethernet adapters to connect my upstairs PCs (including my BBS PC) to my router, which is downstairs. Although the

you can get some netgear wifi repeaters for pretty cheap. plugs into a wall socket and relays the wifi. i was going to get some.

more reliable connection to my BBS PC. I'm wondering if wi-fi would be
more reliable..

probably
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Subject: Re: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
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@TZ: 1258

Nightfox wrote to All <=-

I use a pair of powerline ethernet adapters to connect my upstairs PCs (including my BBS PC) to my router, which is downstairs. Although the powerline ethernet adapters I'm using are fairly reliable, I've noticed that sometimes it seems that a remote system is momentarily unable to connect to my BBS. I suspect it might be these powerline adapters,
since I hadn't noticed the issue before I moved into this house and had
my PCs connected directly into my router. I suppose it probably isn't
a big issue, since it only happens occasionally. I guess what bugs me most is that my BBS keeps getting knocked down to the bottom of the Synchronet BBS list (www.synchro.net/sbbslist.html) due to an
occasional no-connect from the list's nightly scanner. :P And it looks like the list scanner has reported a no-connect for the last 2 nights
in a row..

I have seen reliability issues when a noisy power supply was introduced to the house. A friend's laptop would consistently knock the powerline adapters off the net. Otherwise they were rock stable.

Aside from moving my BBS PC downstairs to connect directly to the
router, or wiring my house for ethernet, I'm wondering if there's a way
to get a more reliable connection to my BBS PC. I'm wondering if wi-fi would be more reliable..

Depends on the layout of the house. I went the whole hog here and threaded an Ethernet cable through the house to link the two mnain areas of PCs, after discovering that the powerline adapters could manage only 2-3 Mbps (must be multiple circuits), instead of the 85Mbps they did at the previous house. Wifi may or may not work better, I've seen it work well and I've seen houses where it was a PITA to get working reliably. Me? I reach for the blue cable when I can. ;)


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Re: Re: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
By: Vk3jed to Nightfox on Fri Jun 17 2016 06:52:00

Aside from moving my BBS PC downstairs to connect directly to the
router, or wiring my house for ethernet, I'm wondering if there's a
way to get a more reliable connection to my BBS PC. I'm wondering
if wi-fi would be more reliable..

Depends on the layout of the house. I went the whole hog here and threaded an Ethernet cable through the house to link the two mnain areas of PCs, after discovering that the powerline adapters could manage only 2-3 Mbps (must be multiple circuits), instead of the 85Mbps they did at the previous house. Wifi may or may not work better, I've seen it work well and I've seen houses where it was a PITA to get working reliably. Me? I reach for the blue cable when I can. ;)

Yeah, I prefer a direct connection when possible, but for now I'll see if wifi will work okay for my BBS. I bought the fastest powerline ethernet adapters I could find at the time, and I still get just 120mbit or so with them (out of the theoretical 1.5 gigabit max they're designed for, which I never expected to reach anyway). The powerline adapters seem to be fairly reliable, but just every so often it seems like an outside machine can't connect to my BBS.

Nightfox

Subject: Re: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
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Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-

Yeah, I prefer a direct connection when possible, but for now I'll see
if wifi will work okay for my BBS. I bought the fastest powerline ethernet adapters I could find at the time, and I still get just
120mbit or so with them (out of the theoretical 1.5 gigabit max they're designed for, which I never expected to reach anyway). The powerline adapters seem to be fairly reliable, but just every so often it seems
like an outside machine can't connect to my BBS.

Wellone way to find out. Hope the wifi holds up. As I said, my experience using wifi to bridge an indoor gap has been mixed, found wired Ethernet to be the best, followed by the powerline adapters (which were initially purchased for the prefious house, after wifi was found to be unreliable.


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Subject: Re: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
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Re: Re: Powerline ethernet adapter reliability
By: Nightfox to Vk3jed on Thu Jun 16 2016 09:01 pm

Yeah, I prefer a direct connection when possible, but for now I'll see if wifi will work okay for my BBS. I bought the fastest powerline ethernet adapters I could find at the time, and I still get just 120mbit or so with them (out of the theoretical 1.5 gigabit max they're designed for, which I

you said you bought this house, right? just wire it for ethernet. it's not that hard and you can do it via baseboards as well.
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