Whilst I do some pretty big file transfers around my home network (mainly photos and video) from the laptop to the file servers, I've always left these going in the background whilst I'm doing other stuff, so never paid too much attention to how fast or slow these are. In recent times, I've changed the setup of the network here, such that the network is now split into two. The servers are split away, and the only way of connecting them now is powerline ethernet converters. I'd purchased a pair of these from Solwise, the pair costing about 50 quid. Put them in, and forgot about them.

I was transferring some photos today and noted that they're only giving me about 250KB/s. My first port of call was the consideration that the access point (Cisco Aironet 1231 with a G card) or the laptop were being a bit odd. The access point is on the other side of the powerline segment, so it was a possibility. Taking it right down to the point of the laptop being directly connected to the powerline converter still giving roughly the same speeds.

I then took the laptop and connected it directly to the switch (a Cisco 2950) which has the servers hanging off it and saw speeds around the 5MB/s mark, more towards what I was expecting.

I'm now running a test of 700mb, rsyncing from the laptop. In both instances, the same fileset will be used. In the first instance, I'll do it using the powerline segment, in the second instance, I'll do it without the powerline segment and report the results back here.

...and the first set of results, with the laptop connected to the powerline segment are: sent 709976661 bytes received 3320 bytes 271554.78 bytes/sec

...and the second set of results, without the powerline segment: sent 709976661 bytes received 3320 bytes 4264144.03 bytes/sec

So, what, nearly 16 times slower with the powerline in. I think it's safe to say that if you're doing large file transfers, you don't want to be using powerline. I know there's issues of how long the link is/how new the cabling is/blah so you may get better results if you're not having to go as far.