MoCA adapters work similarly to powerline adapters, but use the coaxial (cable TV) wires installed in many homes to carry networking signals. You’ll always have a power plug next to a spot where you want a better network connection, but if you have a cable TV outlet at the same location, a MoCA adapter like the Trendnet TMO-311C2K will transfer data much more quickly, according to our testing. Three contenders had only a single year of coverage. Warranty: It’s not the most important feature, but we gave extra points to powerline kits with two- or three-year warranties.

Powerline adapters should always be plugged directly into the wall-not into a power strip-and kits without power passthrough will block one or both of your wall outlets. Power passthrough: It’s not a dealbreaker, but we prefer powerline kits with 110 V passthrough outlets on the front.They come in handy if you need “just one more connection” and don’t want to bother with an additional network switch for a media streaming box and a desktop PC in the same room. Extra Ethernet port(s): Having an extra Ethernet connection (or two) is a boon for smart homes.

Wi-Fi capabilities: You’ll get the highest performance results from a powerline connection by plugging in an Ethernet cable, but many people really want to get good Wi-Fi coverage to another room.Once you reach that price, you may be better off looking at a mesh networking kit or evaluate if you need to install wired Ethernet in your home. Price: A pair of Ethernet-only powerline adapters shouldn’t be more than $120 a kit with a Wi-Fi radio on the far end shouldn’t be more than $150.It’s frustrating when you have to wait longer than a couple of seconds for a response from a website or an app’s servers

Latency, or delay: This is the kind of speed that makes most of what you actually do on the internet-such as web browsing and game playing-seem fast or slow.

We used AV2 throughput ratings as a guideline when picking which kits to test-those numbers aren’t always indicative of real-world performance, but newer and better kits do generally have higher throughput rates. If your home internet connection is slower than that and the cause of your problems, a powerline networking kit may not make a difference. At a bare minimum, we’re looking for at least 25 Mbps, the speed you’d need for 4K video streaming to one device.

Throughput, or speed: We measured how fast each powerline kit downloads files and streaming data.

Dlink powerline adapter utility