I guess we strayed a bit off basic topic- as to age of buildings. My apt is in a 5-7 year old buildig part of a retirement complkex. previous home for over 40 years was built in 1965 or so. in the 80s and 90’s and to about 2017 I used various networking systems from phone modem- powerline- and eventually fios. Ran my own ethernet thru and around rec room and used wi fi, TV from roof antenna to eventully cable. wound up from time to time with all sorts of odd things and issues. But mostly stable most of time. but when we moved to current apt- everything from fubar landline to inept IT ( owners son ) started on day one- and so called free tv and wi fi was/is still a mess. Cannot even use regular AM radio due to interference and FM is very limited due to terrarin. TV so so re quality and interruptions until corrected by comcast at my cost. . As a result I’ve put together my own workarounds which are stable. A BSME mech engineer by profession and experience- and worked in aerospace for over 30 years.
Thank you for your excellent discussion which may be of help to others.
Thanks for that information. I forgot to consider apartment buildings.
While powerline networking shouldn’t care that much, the fact that your power lines are shared with many other apartments might be.
I’m not sure if this is going to be a concern or not. The usable distance for powerline networking isn’t too great (maybe 100-150’). So if your apartment has its own service panel and meter (which is, I assume, typical), then the wireline-distance from your panel to the place where all the units’ lines come together (like a meter-room in the basement) to another apartment, is probably great enough that you won’t see much bandwidth losses due to interference (and I have no idea about whether the data can survive passing through an electric meter). But I suppose it is possible that there could be some interference, especially if your apartment is physically near the meter room.
To protect against eavesdropping, all powerline adapters support encryption and usually provide a simple pairing mechanism to enable it. You should definitely do this, since its easy and reasonably secure.
Unfortunately, if there is interference from another unit, I think your only solution would be to install a power filter on your line, between the meter and your service panel. This is definitely not a DIY project, so you’d need to hire an electrician and it may also violate building rules. But I don’t know of another solution if that ends up being a problem.
On the other hand, depending on the size of your apartment, Ethernet might be just fine. Even if you can’t (or aren’t allowed to) run the lines through the wall, there are ways to hide a cable (e.g. tacked along a baseboard, behind moldings, or with surface raceway) that may be acceptable.
RE our apt. We have a power panel but NO meter - its an all included rental for about 80 rooms in 4 stories. In our ’ comm panel ’ in the closet are the so called landline phone lines, a entry coax for tv/internet which was tied to a 6 way splitter which then connected 3 rooms, and an entry ethernet which was tied to a circuit board to split into at least 3 ethernet jacks as part of a wall jack in three rooms which was a combo of phone jackm and ethernet jack. after my move in complaints, a pro firm came in to wring out the problems- wound up with operable coax and one local to apt phone circuit between two rooms. They have wi fi repeaters in the hallways at about 20 foot intervals- and arranged such that some appartments arew partially blocked, some get good service, and some get near zip. Plus mixing up ‘public’ no password wi fi and private ( company wi fi password all on the same network. Such a mess. Anyhow thanks again