Why TL-PA411 (TL-PA4010) is homeplug 500Mbps with 100Mbps Ethernet port?

Some customers are asking or having quite strong opinions on the homeplug manufactures idea of TL-PA411(TL-PA4010) is homeplug 500Mbps however only having 100Mbps Ethernet ports, the points below may help you to understand better.

First, the stated rate on the product is the actual physical layer bit rate speed for homeplugs, this is the raw data rate possible. During the data transmission, the top layer protocol will adds a lot of extra bits to the transmission reducing the actual throughput. So in real terms, the Maximum throughput of Homeplug AV500 circa 240Mbps. And the powerline might be affected by various electrical equipments. With comparatively serious interference, the speed can’t reach up to the max value, in other words, the actual speed might be lower than 240Mbps.

Also if there are multiple powerline adapters(three or more) working in one circuit, none of the adapters can get the total 240Mbps bandwidth since the total bandwidth is shared by all the networks. In that case, adapter with Gigabit Ethernet port might not be an economical choice as you can’t fully utilize it.

By all accounts, TL-PA411(TL-PA4010) has higher cost performance. In most cases, TL-PA411(TL-PA4010) with Fast Ethernet port can completely satisfy the requirement.

Of course, if you have higher demand for speed, we also provide TL-PA511, TL-PA6010 with Gigabit Ethernet Port to meet it.