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Devolo Powerline AV500+ network problems (2)

In a recent post I wrote about the persistent network problems that I had with my Devolo Powerline and that I solved it.

Wrong ! Turns out that the firmware update was not the answer – I now have anywhere between 1 and 4 days before I have to pull the devolo plug. I have contacted Devolo support, but they only sent me a faq about what to do when you have a slow network connection and how to solve it.

But this is not my problem – everything works fine, at reasonable to very good speeds, when *suddenly* the network connection drops. Bam, no more network connection. Usually when I’m copying something to the NAS. Like I’ve suddenly reached a limit on file size or file transfers and everything is cut off.

The only way to solve it is to remove the devolo powerplug (that is downstairs and connected to the router) from the mains, wait 10 seconds or so and reinsert it. That does the trick just about every time (sometimes it is the Telenet router that hangs, but that only happens once in a while).

Update : in the comments on this post people have found an alternate solution : using the devolo management software, you can restart the device remotely, and then it works again (the connection over the powerline keeps working so you can reach the device that way).

I’ll try and keep a count here on how many times I have to restart the devolo plug.

20121118 : reset devolo powerplug
20121125 : reset at least 4 times (doing heavy moving of content to NAS)
20121128 : reset 2 times (telework today, only citrix connection)

Update December 29 2012 : this problem has kept on appearing intermittently – either after a week or several times a day. It seems to indicate that there is a problem with the amount of data throughput.

Update April 09 2013 : I’ve received a new firmware from Devolo to test out, and applied it to all the Devolo AV500 devices I have. The problem is *less* when the network is stable (ie low usage, mail check and such) but worse when actually *using* the network. I now need to reset the AV device about 5 times on a work-from-home day instead of 1 or 2 times.

Update April 14 2013 : received another mail from Devolo to test out the devolo boxes. The test consisted of plugging in 2 devolo boxes on an extension cord so that they are connected via the same socket. A good linkage apparantly is that both the “power” and “home” icon on both devices give a “green” light. I’ve taken a picture of this and added this to the mail I sent back to them. I honestly don’t think I’ve gotten to the second level support as yet, all the things I’ve done until now have been the basic “check this, do that, there is a bad connection, you must be doing something wrong” type of answers that a typical first level support tends to give. I am persisting in keeping in contact with them, and hopefully I will get some more technical requests…

Update April 28 2013 :  I’ve received a few more questions about how my devolo boxes are setup, what type of modem that I use (a eurodocsis 3.0) and so on. I’ve sent those on, and they have now asked me to switch the devolo’s about to see if the problem is located in one physical devolo item or if this problem is caused by a network situation. I have yet to do so, but will do that in the following days. The questions have become more technical, the solution (switch em around) not yet, but it’s a logical thing to test.

Update May 19 2013 : on request of devolo support, I’ve switched my dlan AV500 plus around with my dlan AV500 Triple plus. So the dlan device with the 3 ports is now connected to the router and the single-port dlan which was connected to the router  device is now on the other end. For two weeks I have not had a single crash !  For me that confirms that the problem lies with the single-port AV500 plus. Maybe it has to process all the other traffic and can’t cope while the 3-port device can ? I don’t know.
I’ve informed Devolo of the results and am awaiting their reply. I hope they take this serious and do an in-depth investigation and fix this with a new firmware release. After all, I’m not the only one that is having these problems, seeing all the comments below this post. And putting a 3-port dlan switch on your router where only one port can be used is a bit useless to me.

Update June 9, 2013 :   Devolo support thinks that it is just one faulty device and have asked me to reswitch back the devices to the original locations to confirm that this is the case. I’ve done that and do have the same problems again. This is on the latest published firmware. I’ve also pointed them to this blog and have asked them to read the comments in this post. It seems very unlikely that it is just one faulty device when all the people below leave comments with a “me-too” message – or perhaps there is a whole batch of them ? I still hope a firmware update will solve the problem.

The problem evidently still has not been solved. And there are now 5 6 11 19 people who have left a comment saying they have a similar problem…

Update August 4, 2013 : Devolo support has concluded that the device has a hardware fault and that it needs to be replaced. They told me to bring it back to the shop and ask for a new one. They determined that it was faulty because when it crashes it does not show it on the device (!) as all the lights stay green. I’m disgusted by this lack of customer support and have written a (long) blog post about this. I’m also solving my problem at my expense by buying another device from D-LINK to replace my faulty devolo with.  No more devolo or devolo support for me.

Update November 12, 2013 : in a comment below, Arturo has found that the devolo 500 units have a cooling problem – they shut down when too hot. Removing the cover as he did so they can get more air (or alternately, perhaps drilling holes in the cover) could also be a solution for you. But be careful – don’t get electrocuted !

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308 replies on “Devolo Powerline AV500+ network problems (2)”

I have the same issue. Onfortunately I did not read this post in time. Otherwise I would not have bought the Devolo’s. But many thanks for creating this blog.

I also have the same issues with these units. However today the rebooting and switching of units has not worked. Can anyone advise of a better alternative please?

same problem here unfortunately, was hard to track down but came to the same conclusion (overhating, Ethernet port shuts down).
Guess this is why they have this super green “power saving mode” – not to save the environment, but to save the device!

Have to say that I got a *free* replacement however, did not even have to send back the old one, super fast response, guess I was lucky (or because I wrote in German;=)

I have however bought 2 new 1200 devices and testing them now, but for half the price I got another duo-set from TP-Link and hope they integrate well.

Thanks for the thorough analysis and tracking of events!

for got I had the 5.3.1 wodaplug rar still stashed away. couldn’t find INT7400-MAC-5-3-5317-00-1545-20130221-FINAL-D anywhere else.

all three of my different AR7400 chipped devices on 5317 now. is that the latest does anyone know?

I have exactly the same problems. I have a DLAN 500 AV plus, 2 DLAN 500 wifi and a DLAN AV 500+ and the connection just fails, normally when I am streaming TV and have been doing so for about 30 minutes – I then unplug the AVPlus unit for a few seconds and all works fine until it happens again .

I’ve been struggling with the 1200+ Devolo homeplugs for a while now, getting the same random disconnections everyone else is reporting. It’s frustrating as in every other respect these are excellent and the speeds I’m getting are exceptionally good.

In my case these weren’t so much disconnections as just periods of time when no traffic was getting through. Inevitably this would mean then getting disconnected from whatever I was doing (Netflix, online gaming etc) but it wasn’t the homeplugs themselves that were disconnecting. Also I would find that after a period of time (a couple of minutes, sometimes longer) the connection would re-establish itself without me having to unplug the device.

I tried all sorts of things – disabling the wi-fi, swapping out my existing ethernet cables, unplugging almost everything else in the house – but the problems persisted, and seemed genuinely random: they would occur whether I was using the network heavily or not, and regardless of what else was plugged in and/or switched on in my house. Sometimes I’d get one dropout a day, sometimes several.

Eventually I set up a script to repeatedly ping a device connected to the homeplugs, and write the output to a file, to try and capture when and how often this was occurring, and try and correlate it back to my router logs. After a few days though I hadn’t recorded any drop-outs at all, which was almost unheard of. It seems like pinging the homeplug (or, in my case, a device connected to the homeplug) somehow keeps the connection alive. As of today I’ve been doing this for a week and have enjoyed uninterrupted connections for the first time since owning these devices.

It’s not ideal but it’s a useful workaround until I can get the house cabled up properly. It also makes no sense to me as dropouts would occur previously even when I was using the device (e.g. for streaming TV); but pinging seems to keep the devices connected somehow. I wonder if it is some kind of bug in the power save functionality? (It’s noticeable that I can disable this on the regular Devolo, but not the one with the wi-fi adaptor). Regardless – I hope this helps.

Hi Gareth, just to say I’m having the EXACT same problem as you’ve had with these same homeplugs. How might I get hold of a ‘pinger’ 🙂 to keep them awake?

For your “pinger”, it’s quite simple to set up a repeating ping as long as you know the address of the machine that you want to reach.
Let’s assume that 192.168.0.128 is the address of the machine that you want to reach.

As Gareth stated, find a device connected to the homeplugs. This does mean that you need a device NOT using the homeplugs to send the ping from TO the device that’s behind the homeplugs.

Use System Preferences / Network Settings to find the ip address the device is using. Or you could open a terminal window and, for example, for a (wired) mac, type ‘ifconfig en0’ On windows you can open a command window and type ‘ipconfig’ to see the ip address.

To set up a repeating ping, depending on if you use a windows or a mac :
mac: open a terminal window, and type ‘ping 192.168.0.128’ (replace with the ip address in your environment that you want to check)
windows : open a cmd window, and type ‘ping -t 192.168.0.128’ (replace with the ip address in your environment)

Leave the window open ALL THE TIME – it should show an ever-increasing list of ping results with one of the parameters the time taken to reach the device and report back.

And that’s your basic ‘pinger’ 🙂

fully agree with the ping tricks ! I did it myself, and no drop at all when my script is launched. if I forget to launch it, I loose the network connection in less than 5 min.

I had the same exact issue has you. I replace the 1200+ twice on the shop and they didnt want to do a refund because apparently when you plug in the product works fine, it only starts disconnecting after a couple of days. I previously had the 550 with no problems at all. Thank you devolo for making such a shity product. Buy the way there was not much of a diference between the speed of 550 and 1200+, about 20-30 mbits…

I am having exactly the same issues with my 1200+ wifi ac kit. I was thinking I was the only one till I found this. I never thought so expensive kit would fail like this. Very disappointed with this.

Hello,

I know your post quite a long time ago but I can find myself also having the same exact problem you described. However I don’t know that much about the last part of your story – the writing a script thing- Would you care to elaborate on that so that I can solve my problem as well? like how to set it up etc.

Thanks in advance,
Dan

I had the same problem with Devolo 1200+ devices dropping connections and reconnecting shortly afterwards. After a lot of messing about checking configurations, logging data etc., I fixed the problem as you did, by setting up a continuous ping across the link. I’m running the ping on a Raspberry Pi which is up all the time anyway; it has negligible power consumption. I now only have the disconnection problem if the ping script fails for some reason.

Finally, I have found a topic regarding these disconnections. AV500 connected to router on ground floor. When the connection drops I can visit the Devolo Cockpit software click on the dlan 500 Duo “Options” and toggle the “Reactivate” or “Deactivate” PowerSave mode which always reconnects the device.

I have had the unit replaced but it has made no difference. I have 3 of these units around the house plus the Ethernet only one. It drops so randomly I cannot pin down exactly what is going on.

Very very frustrating!!

Thank you for this!
I’m running a server off the integrated power-port of a “dLan 500+ duo” and unplugging it completely requires shutting the server down, which is a no-go for me.

With your comment about enabling/disabling powersave-mode the device connected again and saved me lots of trouble.

Since the latest comments are quite ercent I#M hoping that devolo will sort this out soon.

Doesn’t seem to affect just Devolo.
I have BT (UK internet provider) 500 powerline adapters doing similar things. Sometimes works for weeks, sometimes works for minutes. Each time both adapters show green / good power line connectivity and I can see ARP traffic from the remote computer but I can’t ping it.

Unplugging and plugging in the PLT adapter seems to solve it. Or, more recently, rebooting it via the Power Packet tool solves it too. (For a while).

Neither device are overheating. The temperature of a sensor slightly above the PLT adapter is only 18c in both locations.

Very infuriating. I can only imagine there is some broadband interference on the electricity wiring but there is no visibility of band plan or link quality on these devices (other than greed, orange, red etc.).

I wish I read your post earlier….. This thing appears to work perfectly and with great speeds until you try to move a file through the network…. It will fail at the same part over and over again, indeed like you mentioned “Like I’ve suddenly reached a limit on file size or file transfers and everything is cut off.”

Sadly from reading your post I guess support won’t help me at all. I just got this yesterday, so perhaps I can get a refund.

I’d say these drops in connection are not about our brand of powerline adapters (I use Netgear) but about something else

Just to add to the list, I have exactly the same problem with my Devolo Dlan AV 500 WiFi and Dlan 500 AV wireless+; extremely frustrated and have already spent hours on this.

Ditto with devolo. Is there any brand of ethernet plugs that are totally reliable or should I just convert my desk top pc for wireless? What is the most simplest wireless option for a fibre optic wireless router downstairs reaching a PC upstairs?

Hi Alex, are you running your TP-Links on ADSL or Fibre as all my devolos worked great with ADSL but the problems started with upgrading to Fibre.
My son’s PS4 is getting 22mps wirelessly but gets 1.4mps using devolo AV 500. The laptop gets 34mps plugged directly into the sky router downstairs but keeps dropping when using devolos.
What is the difference between brands? Do prices reflect quality and reliability as the do vary.

I’m connecting to a router that’s connected to coax cable, so neither fiber or asdsl. Did you have to change the router as well when you upgraded to fiber ? If so, did you do a reset of the devolo’s ?

Hi Alex, yes we received a new router for fibre. We have also unplugged all devolos and ran pure wireless for a day to see what speeds and reliability we achieved. Then we reinstalled AV 500’s on the router itself, upstairs to the desk top pc and to the PS4. All connectivity dropped down to 1.4mps or dropped off intermittently but then shot back up once we removed them again.

The only thing that I can think of is that the router might work differently with the devolo’s. You might want to google for your routers name and devolo/ powerplug to see if others have mentioned this. There are settings you can play with (MTU size methinks) but not sure if that would solve the problem.

Same problem.
My QNAP nas is not usable because everytime i watch content it drops. right now i’m copying something from the NAS to my PC but it won’t even let me.

– Windows 10
– 2 Devolo 1200 adapters.
– PC wired via cable to router, router via DEVOLO to switch to nas.

Timon,

Use the ‘pinger’ like Gareth Clark mentioned. I had the same problem and it fixed the issue!

Just send an endless ping to the connected device behind the Devolo homeplugs.

*Sigh*, alas not the only one with this problem, I see. But glad to have found this blog.
Once, I bought two 200 Devolo adapters. They still work and do their job very well (and serve as backup for the other 500-devices).
I wanted an upgrade and, with my positive experience, stayed with Devolo. So I bought the dLAN 500 AV Wireless+. It did the job for a while. My two 200’s working fine on the first and second floor, each connected to an older wifi router as access point. With an upgrade of my internet speed, I tried to move up and bought a set of dLAN 500 duo. At first I enjoyed ‘the new speed’. But suddenly the problems started: dropouts, very slow connection speed, or files that couldn’t be moved to my NAS anymore. Nothing else (electrical wires, devices, etcetera) changed.
Not much later, the adapter connecting to my router failed. A test with the good old 200’s brought my Devolo network up and running, but of course at very low speed.
Frustrated, I bought a dLAN 1200+ WiFi ac set, thinking it was just too much to handle for the 500 adapter. But alas, one after another, the 500 Wifi-adapter and 500 duo’s dropped out.
The 1200+ still works fine, but I notice that the 1200+ adapter connecting to my router blinks red every minute or so (no connection). This is noticable when watching HDTV: the image freezes for a second or two (sound is ok) and then starts playing again.
So now I wonder: has the 500-series a faulty design? I read about the heat problem, could that be it? And how come the 1200+ gets a ‘frequent’ connection failure? Could a sender-device (the connection to the router) from another manufacturer (D-Link, TP-Link) solve this?

I hate devolo devices! I would be easier to drill trough the wall than using this bullshit! But activating and deactivating the power save mode helped and like magic everything worked again. Thanks for the help!

Finally I took the time to look on the internet in trying to solve my Devolo connectivity problem and immediately hit the right blog. I started with 3 dLAN 500 AV smart+ which worked well for the first year. Later I added 2 dLAN 200AV adaptors for lower speed connection upstairs. It took some while to get them work all 5 together but still the logic fails me what did trick at the time. Since a half year I do experience the same connection dropouts as described in this blog. Getting on to the NAS takes ages on the Windows platform and the Mac doesn’t succeed at all. When I am connecting directly to the router I don’t have these problems and everything is swift and smooth. The problems appeared around the same time I have installed a new modem/router (FritzBox 7360 from AVM). I noticed that indeed sometimes the adaptors are quite warm so I will investigate the suggested ventilation issue and will consider the “pinger” as well. Thanks for all the cooperation on this blog, this is very helpful!

Man this is so annoying. Glad I’m not alone. I have Devolo 650+ devices myself and they keep disconnecting and connecting again in a period of 30 Minutes. Also the Ping thing really does the trick, but it’s more of a workaround than a real fix. Wrote an E-Mail to Devolo today, hope they’ll respond.

I had the same problem, when trying to stream a movie from a computer that sat behind a homeplug, it kept disconnecting. What worked for my, was changing the power saving settings. I changed the computer sleep to never.

Same problem here. I use 5 devolo 500 devices. I thought it was my router but the new router did not fix the problem. Never thought it could be the Devolo devices, but it al makes sense now. I am going too drill holes in the outside so the air can go through easier. I hoop this will fix my problems too.
I wonder… would having more devices make it worse ? I just ordered 2 650 devices.
I will check this out tonight and let you all know what happened.

Update: I found out that my dLAN 500 (power save mode) was conflicting with the dLAN 200 (non power save mode and different speed). Now I run them separately and most of my problems seems to be solved. Still I have the feeling that the dLAN 500 falls asleep a bit too quickly so I expect that this is because of the power save mode. When using the pinger it seems to be fine and I expect by disabling the power save mode it should give the same result. Not sure if the heating problem has an impact on the power save mode. I will keep on monitoring the heating problem and will post an update in case of new findings.

My feeling is that the problem has nothing to do with heating. I experience random problems. Random means that nobody is using the connection, or I’m using it for 30 seconds or 2 hours.
Sometimes I see the devolo in the cockpit and click to open the device web page, then it works again. Sometimes I need to restart (plug it out and in again).

All green lights………3 on the local “hub” connected to WLAN box and 3 on the remote WIFI box downstairs. All my devices can see the WIFI box, but they won’t connect. It is not a Password issue……….anyone got an idea? I have tried plug out, cool down, pushed all the reset buttons……Many thanks!

Exactly the same problems for me with Devolo 500 devices… Spending hours on trying to find a solution

Not the same, but similar issue. AV200, 3 adapters, worked fine for a few years. Lately, I get just 2MB throughput, until I unplug the adapter at the router, then it will go back up to 5MB. There’s no power saving option in the Cockpit for these, but I can disable data connection and re-enable. That does the trick.
Really weird, since there’s no disconnects just a hideous drop in bandwidth. I already replaced the adapter at the router, makes no difference, so I’m wondering if the router spits out some signals that the Devolo’s don’t like, or if there’s some disturbance in the powerlines that make the Devolo’s decide to lower bandwidth to get better signal quality…

Forgot to mention, the AV200’s I’m using have 220V filters built-in, so everything close gets attached to power through the Devolo filter. Do these filters wear out over the years, like overcurrent protectors?

just noticed, you don’t need to interrupt/restart communication on the Devolo plug using the Cockpit, to get speed back up. Just use Cockpit to disable the LEDs. Next time it happens just enable them again. This goes much faster and works just as well.

Having the same issue at home and looking for several months now for a solution. Wifi but no internet. Also PS4 cannot connect to the central server. Digital TV however seems not to be impacted. I will follow the blog to hopefully find a solution!
Unplugging and plugging the Devolo solves the issue but I each time need to move furniture to do so. 🙁

Install Devolo Cockpit on your PC and turn off LEDs. Then, turn them on again. This somehow resets the device without rebooting it and will restore the connection.

Hi, turning off and on the LEDs didn’t work for me. Turning off and on WLAN did it however.
My devolo is behind a cabinet and might have cooling problems that cause the problem. I wonder if all the people having this problem also have their Devolo located in a less ventilated area? Feedback is welcome!

@Erik

Mine is in an airconditioned room and freestandine and I have the problem of regular drops in the connection. Only happens between my AV500 and AV1200, so it seems it is related to version differences. The 1200 also uses earth while the 500 does not. That may cause the 500 to go to sleep, which is why the ping works to keep the connection alive?

I’ve recently switched to TP-Link AV2000. Now I’m connected at roughly 30-35 MB/s instead of 7-9 MB/s with the AV500+ Duo without a single disconnect in the last week for a reasonable price. (~125 EUR for two adapters with 2 Gbit-Ports each)

Additionally, I believe the TP-Links are not running as hot as the devolos.

I came to believe that the high temperature significantly reduced the lifespan of my devolos, causing the disconnects.

I want to join the fray!

I have 2* Dlan500, 1 Doane 500 AV Plus, 1 *Dlan500 AV Wireless and I find that it is impossible to watch/listen to anything for more than about 30 minutes without disconnection occurring. Sometimes it comes back after a minute or so, at other times I have to disconnect and reconnect (after about a minute) the unit next to my hub.

They are all in well ventilated places and as they immediately rework after disconnection I can’t think that it is a heat problem.

Develo are not helpful, simply sending me a FAQ! I’m now trying to listen to the radio using Sonos and it comes and goes the whole time but I don’t need to reconnect – last night watching a 90 minute film took 120 minutes!

I am on the point of extending my network but will not be buying any more Develo products unless they address this issue – does anyone have any recommendations please enter?

I had 6 add on adapters as well as the main unit, to cover the whole house which constantly lost connection. 6 months ago I bought a Linksys WRT 1900 ACS router which plugs directly into the ISP modem and have not had any problems since. I would never buy a Devolo product ever again.

Hi,
I have the two 1200+ and one 500. I always noticed that I had, whether it was surfing or gaming or any WWW-action, constant connection drops. Because I am very lazy it really didn’t care me much, but today I wanted to check that s***.
So I pinged my router from my PC (connected to 1200) and had like 25% packet loss (wtf?!).
Then checked another PC (connected to 500) and had the same loss (oooook).
Then pinged the router with my laptop directly connected to that router and had 0% loss.

Now I was sure that the problem was with the Devolo’s. After a bit of researching, I found out that the filtering of these devices work best when the multiple plug, where all your devices are plugged in, is plugged in with the Devolo.

OK, then pinged again….

— 192.168.178.1 ping statistics —-
465 packets transmitted, 460 received, 1% packet loss, time 464646ms

I will check my network now for a couple of days and will tell you guys if it is a good solution or not. Hope this helps for some of you.

PS: english is not my native language

tl;dr – only relevant if you’re encountering this issue whilst using Sonos.

I recently encountered the same issue and the root cause ended up being my Sonos system as opposed to the DLan. Basically you have to be very careful hard-wiring Sonos other ethernet because it implements a Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) which can generate infinite traffic loops on the network depending on the capabilities of the various routers and switches in your local network. I had encountered this before without using Powerline so knew what to look for, but basically if your ethernet activity switches on your router are flashing like crazy constantly you likely have a problem.

The reason it causes problems is that it will likely overload your router which will eventually stop responding to requests. This had the appearance in my of my wifi dropping out under variable time periods with the only solution at the time being a reboot of the whole network).

The easiest solution is to only hardware a single Sonos device to your network as the problem only can exist when you have multiple devices connected. There are more complicated solutions available on the Sonos website, just search for Spanning Tree Protocol in their community forums.

and if that was the external ip address? (et si c’était l’adresse ip externe ?) bad news at the moment on the network? After several hours and days of research in my network… thinking about the IP current 178… perhaps is the problem? I know that some ip addresses give big problems in networks! See if changing address problems disappear…

I have the same problem a few months with my Devolo Dlanwifi 500 AV. connection on wifi ok. Wifi ok LEDs. No Internet sporadically. Need to restart (remove, replace the Devolo in its socket) or from its internal ip address which is always reachable, stop and restart the wifi. I did change my Dlanwifi 500 AV, but the new is exactly the same problem!

It’s not:

-a heat problem

-interference with other devices

-sleep mode which is inrush (not possible because there is a camera ip connected on wifi from long and that this causes problems for a few months)

I can’t find either solution. Firmware of my last received devolo is recent.

I’ll try to see side external IP… you never know with computing.

Try on your side to change the external ip address. see with your provider. Thank you for your feedback

Had the same problems with a pair of 650+ intermittently failing to connect

I don’t know which of these actions fixed the problem but I have had 3 white lights for over 2 weeks:

1. Disable power saving
2. Update firmware to latest version
3. Reset encryption on both devices
4. Ensure that neither device is plugged into an extension cable

I have two dLAN® 1200+ Starter Kit’s installed and have had relative long history of similar (if not identical) trouble as described in this post and comments. Meantime I’ve done many things to diagnose and/or work around the issue(s);

– Making sure the Devolo’s and computers are updated
– Using Wireshark I identified an IP address conflict between a (managed) switch on my network and my router, the latter also serves as modem and DHCP-server
– Permanently disabling the DHCP-client on Devolo devices, and manage their network settings manually
– Instead of having WiFi frequency band set to 2.4 + 5 GHz, opting to select either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. Unfortunately, we still use one laptop that doesn’t support 5 GHz (ac). Since this basically means I could have bought much cheaper sets, I might just buy an ac USB stick to upgrade the laptop in order to select 5 GHz band on the Devolo’s. Possibly this reduces processing requirements making the Devolo’s run cooler, because indeed heating seems to be an issue with these (the 1200) sets as well (not just with the 500 or 650)

I connected a sonos element via wire to one of my devolo 500. It seems – I repeat it seems – that the problem of disconnection is less frequent.

Did you see my note…

Fixed it at my place after HUGE FRUSTRATIONS!!

Disabled power savings mode!!!

Is devolo German? Jeesus. Did I buy more german junk. I am so tired of the german junk. Moving form Sweden to Germany I realized that they produce a lot and lot of junk. Perhaps their reputation is deserved elsewhere, I don’t know. I was not too happy with my Audi. Won’t buy that again. I retired a Fritz powerline to try something non-german and then bought another German p.o.s. That just sucks.

Indeed my Dlan 500 duo+ now works much better after taking it apart and drilling 9 3mm holes in the backplate. I drilled 6 in the lower part in white areas of the label and 3 in the top part so rising hot air can escape. I am also looking at getting a tiny heatsync to put on the chip, but for now my connection is much more stable and instant in it’s response.
It’s too bad that Devolo has such nice software and sleek design but forgot about cooling. I also have some tp-link adapters now and they work great out of the box (together with the Devolo adapters in one network), but have less software features.

I have the same problem with Devolo 650+. They have awesome connection, everything is super fine, very good data transfer, but once in a while the connection just drops. There is no pattern, I doubt that there is overheat (today I had this problem after browsing internet for 2 minutes) and I have power saving DISABLED.

When I use the DEVOLO cockpit software to enable or disable the LEDs, it immediately starts to work again.

Will try using PING, but even if that works, I will be buying another adapter very soon.

Please keep in mind that many things can cause general network activity. Especially if you have powersaving disabled it will be always on and receive any broadcast protocols on your network. I think the overheating has to do more with the number of ‘packets’ per second than it has to do with volume. Try and drill some holes, especially in the back. Or look into a small heatsink to stick on there.

You can add another “Same issue” to your List. I dumped the Single Port Adapter for a dual port, this also works fine for over 3 Months now.

I’ve replaced my x3 Dlan 500’s with Google wifi mesh. Works fine throughout our (UK, brick and steel) house. I have followed this thread for ages and there doesn’t seem to be a solution to the Devolo problem. They’re being upcycled to a friend who doesn’t want wireless, just good wired connection over powerline.

I tried three Google Mesh devices, one for each landing in a fairly large old house, and sent them back as they had no ‘reach’ at all. Kept telling me they needed more units.

My devolo DLan 500 units (seven in all) work when they work, but the green lights frequently go out and I have to go round the house holding the top button down until the unit resets itself and the green lights stay on. One or two units stay working for a day or two but others need resetting every few hours. Frustrating.

Last week I downloaded from my reflex camera 100 pictures to Apple Photos. As you probably know, Apple Photos send pictures to iCloud and then back to other devices (my iPad and iPhone).
Devolo crashed three times. Not a soft crash (i.e. I visit the webpage of the device and it restart). It was a big crash (device invisible through the devolo app, need to pull off and back on to restart).
It seems that sometime a big amount of traffic causes the problem. Sometime not: watching two video streaming doesn’t affect the devolos (mostly).

Yep – another “me too”.

My experience is somewhat odd – I bought the devolos a year or so ago, and they were fine. About 6 months ago, I started to get the occasional drop-out; now, I get regular network outages, and need to reset the plug connected to the router.

It’s a huge pain – I’m going to replace the Devolo kit, and will not buy anything from them again.

I also have a problem with the Devolo Dlan500 wifi homeplugs.

It was working very well for about 9 months with any device. Then I noticed a poor response from some iphones and ipads. I have done loads of tests, sent then to Devolo, changed configurations, replaced with other Devolo units and no change.
What I see is that all other devices (Androids phones and tablets, Windows laptops and tablets) all connect fine but 1 or 2 Apple devices do not. They “connect” but then speed is very slow or stops. It is consistently bad and the only thing I could deduce is that there has been some firmware update on either the Devolo or Apple product which causes the problem.
I think the only solution unfortunately is to replace the Devolo as they said they have not seen any reports of this and have no fix.

Hi,
I just bought the Devolo dLAN 500 WiFi Network Kit yesterday.
http://www.devolo.co.uk/article/dlan-500-wifi-network-kit-powerline-devolo/

Everything seems to work fine EXCEPT the speed drops from 120 Mbps when I connect directly to my router (WiFi or cable) to about 30 Mbps when I use Devolo.

Why would that happen?
Is this normal?
If my connection speed is going to be reduced by this much, then I might as well go back to D-Link!

Thanks for your advice!

I had the same. I’ve had devolo previously, and eventually it overheated and stopped giving IP’s out altogether. So I replaced them. I purchased the devolo 500. Six months later the thing overheated and stopped giving valid IP’s out. I’ve replaced the main unit and again it works. This is a problem with overheating that within warranty the manufacturer will replace, but quite frankly doesn’t care about out of warranty. It’s not like these things are cheap. This brand is meant to be the best brand on the market yet the quality appears to have dropped. They either need to be bigger packages so there’s more air inside, or heatsink structure components that breakdown under heat.

Last observation: devolo has problems when iphone uploads/downloads several photos or when it tries to update several apps. Too much traffic?
Anyway, I installed ethernet wires in my home, so bye bye devolo.

Hi, I have a devolo 550 wifi. Yesterday it went off automatically & there is no light on my devolo device. I tried switching on/off my wifi & my devolo devic. But the light on my devolo 550 is not coming. No light is coming pn it. Can anyone help me with this?

10-10-2017
1. Problem still persists
2. Customer Support comes with the same stupid solutions.

A shame i didn’t find this blog before. So frustrating.
Let’s see if i can managed to follow the ping solution:(

Hi !
I bought a devolo 1200+ ac starter kit, and after everything has been setup, I get extremely low speed on WiFi connections such as 3Mbps, 5Mbps, 10Mbps…. when I have 150Mbps-200Mbps via WiFi directly on my main router. Any hint ?

Late to the party but I have disconnects too.
This script seems to solve the problem.

#!/bin/bash

while true

do

sleep 1

ping -q -c 1 -W 1 192.168.1.1 > /dev/null 2>&1 || echo $(date) No connection >> logfile

done

And then in terminal line write : ./testConnection.sh &

I am using mac os.

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