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I just moved into a new house that conveniently did not have a phone jack in my office. I'm considering buying an adapter to turn a power outlet into a phone jack, so as to have the UVerse box in my office to run networking on my desktop. My question is - given I'm looking for gigabit speed - will the UVerse be slowed in any way by using the adapter versus paying for a new jack installation?
dgo
Posted 2014-02-02T23:07:39.713
Reputation: 685
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To start, There's a difference between an RJ11 (aka a phone connector), and the cable used there, and a RJ45 (aka ethernet, though more precisely its one flavour of physical connector used for ethernet) and the cable used there. I'm going
There is no substitute for real butter actual ethernet cables. You're unlikely to reach those speeds consistently on any other technology, unless you have an ideal 802.11AC setup (which theoratically can reach gigabit speeds, though real world performance may vary), or ethernet. You're likely going to want to go with cat 6 or better in this day and age, though I've found cat 5e works well enough.
You can't turn a powerline into a phone jack - you can turn it into an ethernet adaptor. While there is a gigabit homeplug AV standard, most initial reports tend to indicate they arn't faster than the 500 mbps varient.
To make things more complicated, lots of 500mbps devices 'only' have fast ethernet - I get close to 90mbps between properly located (more on that later!) homeplug AV 500 devices.
Homeplug is also notoriously finicky - I ran into trouble until I moved one of my homeplug nodes, because it was picking up interference from our washing machine, and dryer. They're also affected by SMPS (ironically cause most computer peripherals use these), though a passthrough adaptor helps there.
In short? If you need a phone socket, pay for a new install. If you need gigabit ethernet, pay for a new install. If you need a reasonably fast way to connect two parts of your network, without the need for new wires, where wifi won't work to your satisfaction and spend a little time doing it, go with homeplug AV.
Journeyman Geek
Posted 2014-02-02T23:07:39.713
Reputation: 119 122
So just so I'm clear. I'm aware of the power adapter to ethernet connections and assumed that they would be less than the best given that they advertised as such. There are sold power outlet to phone jack adapters - but all I've found are wireless - and perhaps they won't support a dsl line. Since the dsl line (uverse equiv) goes from the phone jack - I assumed that they could go from any phone jack. Are the portable phone jacks different when it comes to higher speed devices than just phone? Is the wireless the problem? Is that they only way they connect? Just making sure I asked right. – dgo – 2014-02-03T00:42:15.843
Well, ADSL uses frequencies that a normal phone line wouldn't use. I'm not familiar with power outlet to phone jack adaptors, and I'm pretty sure ADSL dosen't hit gigabit speeds. Mind linking to one of these things for context? – Journeyman Geek – 2014-02-03T09:39:15.487
http://www.amazon.com/Phonex-PX-211D-Wireless-Jack-System/dp/B000MRN0LM/ref=pd_sim_e_5. Keep in mind that the only thing this needs to do is provide a way to reach the modem. After the modem I have a switch which handles the gigabit speed. This is just phone jack to modem connection. I can't tell if the speed will suffer. – dgo – 2014-02-03T19:19:41.520
Ahh, sounds like it SHOULD work, but the reviews seem... iffy. Once You would definately get gigabit speeds between systems on the switch, though I'm unsure of the upstream speed you'll get using one of these. – Journeyman Geek – 2014-02-03T23:18:29.920
I'm inclined to agree with you. Thanks for helping me figure out how to think about this. – dgo – 2014-02-04T16:19:27.270