Allnet: Network over the electric circuit

[asearle]

Dear All,

I am trying to help out a friend who has 'Allnet' adapters which allow the network to run over the house electric circuit (i.e. you plug them into wall sockets).

With her old computer (SuSE 10 and a VERY slow processor) everything worked fine. However, I have insalled SuSE 11.1 on a newer, much faster PC and now the network adapters are flashing red indicating collisions in the network. This is leading to very slow network speeds on the new computer (even slower than the old one).

I know that this kind of solution (i.e. network over the electric circuit) is not the best and that all kinds of factors can influence the efficiency of the network (e.g. distance between the adapters, complexity of the house-circuit, electrical appliances attached, etc.) and I have tried to minimise the impact by putting the adapters directly in wall-sockets (i.e. not in multi-plug adapters) but I have not been able to fix the problem.

I have tried both DCHP and non-DCHP but, although they both work, the speed seems about the same: slow!

Does anyone have a suggestion for me here? Are there settings (in the router? In SuSE networking?) that I can change to make things work better? Maybe I could force 'slower network' in order that there are fewer collisions?

Any tips would be a great help because the layout of the house makes it very difficult to either lay physical cable or to use Wireless LAN.

Many thanks,
Alan Searle

caveat: i am not a network guru!

but, i would begin by turning off IPv6 and reducing the MTU on the
openSUSE machine

disable IPv6
Open Yast -> Network Devices ->Network Settings and in Global Options
tab Uncheck Enable IPv6


on MTU see the thread at:
http://forums.opensuse.org/network-i...pptp-slow.html

it doesn't concern 'Allnet' adapters so it may or may not be helpful,
but if you are watchful you can always back out..(and it gives you
something safe to try until a real guru drops in..

--
palladium

[lwfinger]

On 10/26/2009 04:43 AM, palladium wrote:
> caveat: i am not a network guru!
>
> but, i would begin by turning off IPv6 and reducing the MTU on the
> openSUSE machine
>
> disable IPv6
> Open Yast -> Network Devices ->Network Settings and in Global Options
> tab Uncheck Enable IPv6
>
>
> on MTU see the thread at:
> http://forums.opensuse.org/network-i...pptp-slow.html
>
> it doesn't concern 'Allnet' adapters so it may or may not be helpful,
> but if you are watchful you can always back out..(and it gives you
> something safe to try until a real guru drops in..

I would pose the question to Allnet at

http://www.allnet-usa.com/html/tech_support.html

Their "experts" might be able to tell you what to do to reduce
collisions in the network. If they cannot, the advice to reduce the
MTU is sound as it would reduce the amount of data that must be
retransmitted when there is a collision.

Could you please describe the network configuration. It is possible
that you might be able to use a switch to reduce the traffic on the
Allnet link.