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I am living in a house with roommates, and we all share a home network. Everyone connects to this network exclusively through WiFi except for me - I have a pair of powerline adapters (D-Link DHP-600AV) to connect my desktop since it doesn't have a wireless card.

Everything was fine until last week (been living here since September), when all of a sudden the internet speeds dropped like a rock down to 1 Mbps (the service we're paying for is 25 Mbps I believe). We were also getting frequent service drop-outs with messages that the default gateway was unavailable, or the DNS server could not be reached. We contacted our service provider (Bell) who did some troubleshooting with me, and eventually they decided to switch out the modem/router (it's a combo unit that our landlord rents from Bell with the service).

This seemed to fix the problem, until I plugged my powerline adapters back in. The landlord unplugged them when he was switching out the modem/router, and tested to see that the problem was fixed before plugging them back in. I later came home and plugged them back in, only to see the problem had returned. I have unplugged them now and the problem disappeared again, but I would ideally like to keep using these.

Is there anything that could be causing this problem other than perhaps my powerline adapters just being broken now? I'd ideally like to avoid buying a new set unless I know that I need to. Anyone have any ideas for way I can troubleshoot this?

Thanks!

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  • Powerline adapters can be extremely flaky. They will work fine for a while and then just suddenly do strange things, or not work at all. I would get a new set of powerline adapters and see if that fixes your problem. Is there any possibility that you can run an Ethernet line instead? Whether it's behind the walls or just through raceway connected to the outside of the walls?
    – DrZoo
    Dec 21, 2016 at 16:55

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Are you only testing the network connection from the other end of your powerline adapter?

You should test the internet connection from a machine with a cable ethernet connection directly to the modem/router combo device as well as from the other end of the adapter for comparison.

Also try an outlet or two closer to the circuit breaker of the house.

Last thing would be dont plug anything else into the outlet you use for the adapter. It should be alone using that plug.

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