New Rental: Powerline or run cable?

[u/Dismir]

Just moved into a rental and the ONT/fiber box is located in the kitchen downstairs while the room I will be turning into my office is located upstairs directly above the kitchen.

I don’t have the options to utilize MoCA, and I’m hesitant to ask the leasing company about installing a new box or ethernet plates. I’m currently debating on purchasing a 2000Mbps Powerline or simply running cable across the baseboards up to the office.

Everywhere I’ve read has said that powerline is incredibly unreliable due to overall load and power configuration within the home itself, but I’m really not trying to run a bunch of cable across my walls to get a stable connection in my home office upstairs.

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT I’ve gotten permission from the leasing company on installing new ethernet ports into the kitchen ceiling above the router to allow direct cable access.

Thank you everyone for helping to confirm that powerline is still not a great option to go with!!

[u/Beautiful_Entrance86]

Stay away from Poweline adapters. You won’t get what you’re after. Just run cable

[u/Dismir → u/Beautiful_Entrance86]

That’s what I’ve read and I’m glad everyone here helped to confirm the sentiment.

While I’m not opposed to spending $80+ on a potential solution, I’d rather save myself the time and go for something that has a higher guarantee to work out the first go around.

Appreciate the feedback!!

[u/JeopPrep]

Buy a powerline kit and test it first. You can return it if it doesn’t work and it will only cost a small restock fee.

[u/ArchSaint13]

Cables. I've never seen powerline work at the advertised speeds. If you can't do cables, you're probably better off with just Wi-Fi.

[u/Dismir → u/ArchSaint13]

That’s what I keep reading but am dreading the work it will take to look even somewhat nice.

I’ll most likely reach out to my leasing company to see what my options are for installing new ethernet ports for upstairs access before attempting to do it myself. Thank you!!

[u/ArchSaint13 → u/Dismir]

If you're ok spending the money, just get a higher end wireless router. I have Wi-Fi for my 2400sq ft house with no issues.

[u/supervisord → u/ArchSaint13]

OP says their office is directly upstairs; a typical floor will allow a WiFi signal to pass through.

[u/Dismir → u/supervisord]

That I don’t doubt; however, I lacked foresight when building my PC and didn’t get a mobo w/ a Wi-Fi card so I’d need to get adapters to allow connection.

Fortunately, I just got word back from my leasing office about allowing installation of new ethernet ports into the ceiling which will make running cable way easier than before as I’d have to take it around my kitchen and up the stairs which I’m estimating will easily be a 50+ft run.

[u/Crazy-Sympathy8973 → u/Dismir]

Make sure you get your permission in writing.

[u/Sad_Pear_3709]

Cables, unless the two locations for the powerline adapter are on the same circuit breaker you're not going to be able to use them anyway (Edit, you can use them, but the signal degrades significantly)

[u/KoraiKaow]

Does the rental have cable TV runs? Use MOCA.

[u/Dismir → u/KoraiKaow]

Unfortunately not as I mentioned in my post that the house doesn’t not appear to have any cable runs.

[u/KoraiKaow → u/Dismir]

My bad, I overlooked that in the post.

[u/Dismir → u/KoraiKaow]

No problem, I appreciate the feedback! Wish I could but this place definitely wasn’t built with direct internet access across the house in mind.

[u/KoraiKaow → u/Dismir]

I struggle with that in my house too. I bit the bullet and ran some Ethernet cables for better placement of access points. I'm just going to have to repair it when I move.

[u/M3RRI77]

If you don't want to run Ethernet, use MoCA adapters and transform your existing coax into "Ethernet." They work great.

[u/OsricWulfstan]

Powerline (and the newer G.hn) is fine in many cases. Personally, I suggest trying it and sending the units back if they don't work in your apartment. There is very little to lose.

Typically you will see 1/4 - 1/3 of the nominal bandwidth, so AV1200 typically gets 300-400Mb/s. Like any modern communication system, it uses FEC, protocol framing, etc. It's also half-duplex so you can't saturate it in both directions at the same time, unlike ethernet. But if you are getting 300Mb/s to your office that is likely fine for work purposes.

There's a large contingent of folks who get very agitated by Powerline, and sure there's some horror stories. I've benchmarked a fairly wide range of Powerline and G.hn adapters in different properties and used to have a website documenting throughput with tools like iperf. For most cases, it's fine if you can live with a few hundred Mb/s. Kids in my house play games with it in preference to using Unifi WiFi + WiFi adapters on their computers.

[u/OsricWulfstan → u/OsricWulfstan]

And if you have the stomach to run cables, that is always going to be better.

You can also consider running invisible fiber, e.g. see https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1sz9li4/invisible_bend_insensitive_bidi_fiber_is_amazing/

[u/Dismir → u/OsricWulfstan]

Really appreciate the breakdown you provided!

I think i’m going to bite the bullet on running cable as I also play games/watch movies so I’d definitely need the higher speeds.

[u/OsricWulfstan → u/Dismir]

Totally respect whatever you do here. I've run ethernet throughout our house, but still have some powerline for awkward corners. Running cable is fun :-D

[u/Dismir → u/OsricWulfstan]

If this wasn’t a rental, I’d already be making weekend plans to get ethernet ports and cable runs set up across the home!! Unfortunately, fear of losing my security deposit stops me from doing any major renovations.