8. Performance - Powerline

For the AV200 powerline's performance testing, I used the same five test locations around my home that I used for the HomePlug Turbo Roundup testing. Go here if you want the details on the locations and distances.

I used Ixia's IxChariot and set up two copies of the standard throughput.scr script to run simultaneously, one from the IxChariot console to a remote endpoint (for transmit), and the second with endpoints swapped (for receive). I used TCP/IP, changed the file size to 300,000 Bytes from the 100,000 Byte default, and set the scripts to loop for one minute.

NOTE: I did not follow Corinex's recommendation to change the TCP window size to 512 kBytes to accommodate the "higher latency" of a powerline network, since I don't like messing with my TCP/IP settings. But if you have no such qualms, you can run the scripts Corinex supplies to execute the tweak for Win 98, XP or Linux kernel 2.4 or higher.

Figure 13: AV200 powerline throughput comparison with HomePlug Turbo
(click image to enlarge)

Figure 13 shows the results for the AV200 along with the results from the HomePlug Turbo roundup testing. I guess I can see why networking product manufacturers are willing to give up HomePlug interoperability to use DS2's technology! The AV200 beat the best case HomePlug Turbo results (Netgear XE104) in all test locations and had a best case (Location 1) throughput of almost three times that of HomePlug Turbo (70.9 vs. 24.8 Mbps)

Figure 14 shows an IxChariot plot of the simultaneous receive and transmit runs in Location 1 so that you can see the throughput variation.

Figure 14: Location 1 AV200 throughput
(click image to enlarge)

Figure 15 shows the plot for my infamous Location 4, which seems to defy all attempts at networking to it other than with good old Ethernet! I know why this location is tough for wireless, but have yet to figure out why it's also bad news for powerline networking.

Figure 15: Location 4 AV200 throughput
(click image to enlarge)