Testing over longer distances
To test longer distance performance, we relocated the devices to opposite sides of the HEXUS offices: the same locations used for our long-distance internet gaming and video playback tests. This involves an extra hop over our office network, rather than a direct Ethernet cable connection, to the device located farthest away from our test platforms. Whilst the performance bottleneck is still the powerline connection, there may also be a slight latency penalty by going through our network's switch.
Looking at the results of the ZyXEL it's clear the performance drop off
is quite horrific, when moving the connections to a less-ideal
location.
The Corinex GameNet is absent from the graph, as the transfer of our
3.39GB HDV file would time out before the transfer would even start.
Performance was simply too low.
Trying a 1.5GB file also failed. A
196MB Iron Man QuickTime trailer would transfer, but the results were
inconsistent with average transfer rates ranging between 0.83MB/s
and 0.97MB/s.
Neither the ZyXEL or Corinex are suited to large-file transfers,
especially when devices are located some distance apart. The ZyXEL
one-ups the Corinex by allowing for the transfer, but it's hard to
criticise
Corinex when we're testing the device outside its intended purpose
(for consoles).
