Powerline adapter with multiple ports - Is local traffic local ?

Rollo

Young grasshopper
Aug 4, 2014
45
23
If I used a 600 Mb powerline adapter which had 4 x gigabit ethernet ports and connected a Pc and NAS to 2 of those ports, would the traffic between the Pc and NAS be gigabit, or would it do dumb routing and throttle me down to the powerline speeds ?
 
Theoretically, yes that should be gigabit. In real world testing, they could have cheaped out on components/etc (most buy for the powerline feature, not gigabit) and your speeds may vary. It may even test as gigabit, but then slowly degrade over time as heat/etc kills the device.

IMHO, I would get a separate gigabit switch especially if you demand gigabit.
 
It would probably work at gigabit speeds, but I've only ever tried powerline adapters with single ports so I can't say for certain. Gigabit switches are cheap.

Also, don't expect to get anywhere near 600 Mbps speed through the powerline. I have some 500 Mbps adapters installed and the software says they linked at about 40 Mbps, though to be fair they are on opposite ends of the house, behind different breaker switches.