Just as the subject says. My wifi is very erratic and with my parents not wanting a gigantic Ethernet cable laying throughout the house I thought this would be a viable option to improve my connection.
Does anyone have any experience with these? If so did it improve your connection at all?
Is this that thing you plug into the wall to boost your wireless signal? If so, then Iāve used them before, and it mildly improves the connection at best, if at all, and does nothing to fix the inconsistency of wireless. My advice is to call a technician and figure out ways you can hard-wire your house with minimal exposure. Itās more expensive, but well worth it (we have ours run through the attic and walls and itās hidden behind or under furniture).
Something like that. Except for instead of boosting your signal youāre able to plug Ethernet cables into either end: one for your router and the other for the device. Itās supposed to run a connection through the wires in your house and improve your speed. Seems kind of fishy to me.
Itās EXACTLY what I described, but the wired version. I donāt recommend it for the same reasons I already described above.
Geeeee sorry 
Tell them to let you run it along the wall or only when you play maybe game closer to the modem drill a hole in the wall theres tons of ways to make ethernet cable not even noticable
You could buy an expensive router modem combo and have good wifi
Donāt beat yourself up over it. Thereās no way you couldāve known. Look at the bright side - you know now and have learned something. 
No itās not.
What you described is a wireless extender, which connects to your wifi and creates a second wifi zone. It is a wireless connection powered by a wireless connection.
A powerline adapter runs a wired connection through your house mains, with the network signal actually being transported through the wires in your house. It is an entirely wired connection (although it can produce a wireless signal as well).
As someone who has both theyāre very different.
Yes, I live in a 2 story house with the router downstairs and my rig upstairs. It works really well and itās very easy to set up. Much better and faster than wifi and I should know as I also have a wifi adapter in my computer to compare.
Buy 2 boxes, stick one near the router and connect it by wire. Stick the other one close to your console/pc and run a cable to it. Press the synch button on the box close to the router, go to the box near the console/pc and press the synch button. VOILĆ!
Every once in a while you might have to do this again to synch them up, maybe once every 2 weeks. Compared to putting cable through the house itās an inexpensive solution.
@BigBadAndy can help you when he has time. He uses one currently.
But I need to mention that Xbox live has some weird speed issues going on lately so this may not fully help your issues. But it should make them better.
Thatās good to know. I think anything will help at this point. And I really believe that it is my own connection issues more so than anything thats going on with XBLive. Iāve tried several Speed Tests on my connection and itās just not very steady. And itās more unstable some nights than it is on other nights.
Iāll be playing some matches on KI and some nights the matches are fine while other nights every match seems to be very laggy.
Trust me its not just your connection. Just google Xbox speed inconsistent and you will see its world wide issue.
We also have a thread going on right now about inconsistent speeds and test results.
Hey man, yes as @FallofSeraphs76 has mentioned Iām currently using one of these. My particular version is the netgear DST (Dead Spot Terminator!!! Lol) version. This is exactly a Hotwire device but it also acts as a wifi hotspot. However I only really use the wired Ethernet connection it provides.
The short answer is āyesā it should definitely afford you improved performance when compared to spotty wireless. The super long version is below, so get comfortableā¦
I first bought it just to get rid of the wire running from one side of my living room to the other. In that setup, where I had a 25MBps internet connection it functioned no differently in my hands than the direct Ethernet connection (which is great). I have since moved and now use it in a bigger house with a far more complex setup. The pertinent detail is that, even sitting just a floor directly below the wifi router it works significantly better than the wifi. Itās not that the wifi doesnāt work, itās just that you get fluctuations in the wifi signal. The Hotwire is not quite as rocksteady as direct wired Ethernet but itās pretty darn good.
There are several caveats that you should be aware of though. First performance of any Hotwire device is dependent on all kinds of factors relating to your houseās wiring that will be completely invisible to you. In my house, when I plug the thing into some plugs I get a garbage connection. The next socket over, though, gives a great connection. Why? Who knows. And it is susceptible to interference from other stuff you plug in and, theoretically, from running the toaster or other devices throughout the house. So your particular setup will matter.
Second, depending on your download speed you may lose significant bandwidth compared to a wired Ethernet. I have a 150Mbps download and in my current setup the Hotwire is pretty stable at 40Mbps (Iām pretty sure it used to be closer to 100 a more on this later). This is an upper limit of the wiring situation though, not a āpercentage performanceā issue. So, for example if I had 50Mbps download the Hotwire would still give me 40Mbps. If I had 25Mbps it would likely give me the full 25. I have about 15 Mbps upload and the Hotwire gives the same 12Mbps of practical performance as a direct wired Ethernet connection. I have tested this extensively.
Lately, the device is reporting a worse connection than when I first installed it. I donāt know why and this fluctuates throughout the day. I donāt know why this is. But in terms of practical performance Iām reasonably sure my gaming experience has not been impacted. Mostly it just affects downloads of files. Just as a reference, online gaming really only requires about 2-3 MBps of download and 1-2 Mbps of upload. Consistency and ping more than bandwidth tends to be what kills people. If the Hotwire increases ping compared to Wired Ethernet it hasnit been significant in my experience. I have a second Xbox that is direct wired and if I test them both I see differences of less than 5.
So TL;DR based on what you are describing I would definitely suggest you give it a try. It should improve your performance and possibly greatly improve it over wifi. Thereās a chance it might not though, but the only way to tell is to try it.
EDIT: forgot to mention that Hotwire doesnāt function through a power strip so any devices will need to plug directly into a wall socket.
Dude this made me thinkā¦I wonder if the Booster amp being plugged into the power strip might be part of my issue? Im going to unplug and go directly into the wall outlet and test it out.
Wireless or no, it effectively does the same thing. Iāve tried numerous devices to improve my own connection over the years (and Iāve had combo devices too).
@BigBadAndy Our microwave interfered with these devices, hence why we couldnāt use them. Also, I can vouch for the better/worse connection with different sockets.
You said āis that the thing used to boost wireless signal?ā. It is not. It has nothing to do with wireless whatsoever.
You then said āit doesnāt help with the inconsistency of wirelessā which again is relating it to wireless signal, which is not what the topic is about. Wireless signals are inconsistent because they do not have a constant medium through which to transmit data, which a powerline adapter provides you with.
They are not the same thing, you may see them as the same thing but in this instance there is a difference between what you see something as and what it is seen as in reality.
By āsame thingā I meant that they transfer the signal. Yes, how itās done is different, but they still fundamentally do the same thing. Itās like comparing a car to a train. They both do the same thing, but in different ways.
As for wireless vs. nonwireless, most of these devices nowadays do both, so itās really a moot point.
āsame thingā Car and a train. Guys. When you are talking about a train, it is the same thing as a car -_-
I do appreciate your experiences with your Powerline Adapter in detail. Is the house your currently living in fairly new? The house I live in was built in 1974 so some of the wiring in the house is most likely very ancient.
Good info in the thread so far. Appreciate everyoneās input.