@MeTPForum Their support isn't very good at replying. I opened a forum post and a support ticket and haven't had a reply. Very annoying.  Their support claims "one business day".. What a joke. 

@Kevin_Z 

What’s the current status of this issue? Any updates? I understand there was a holiday but believe it’s over now. It seems like some users are returning the P7 product because the PowerLine is not functional.

@Nisse57 and others

I have had quite a few questions over time on the challenge of finding out if the PowerLine backhaul even works. We have 6 P7's now  (all in AP mode)- and this is all due to extremely thick walls. It is fairly clear to me that I only get wireless connectivity through the walls, in a area where all power supply links are gree, and other (non-P7) powerlines report > 600 Mbit/s if I plug them in.

So all my observations indicates that the Powerline backhauls either does not work, or work quite badly compared to TP-links Powerline adapters.

All this is difficult to prove due to the complete lack of support for the Powerline feature in the app.

I have even set up a monitoring system for latency throughout the house, and for all the P7's and will report back on what I can find.

I am seriously unhappy with the P7 monitoring - ie. I get more data from the TP-link Powerline adapters than I get from the P7's.

Regards

Tor

ps - from the latency monitoring :

@Tor-Arne I completly agree with you. I even have mine set up on the same circuit. I wish I would've just went with the M5 as powerline makes no difference at all. It was the main selling point for me, but to be honest I don't even know if I would ever buy another TP Link mesh system. 

I'm currently in the same room as my main Deco and my speedtest over 2.4ghz is a solid 6mbps down. https://www.speedtest.net/result/8661235805.png

I feel terrible for the devices in my house that have to use the 2.4ghz network, as its pretty much unusable with speeds like that. 

@Kevin_Z 

I have problem with P7 too.

Main unit drectly connected to internet via LAN cable.

2nd unit getting internet from main unit via wifi and the 3rd unit getting internet from 2nd unit via wifi. All units firmware is 1.3.1 b20190704 rel. 46693

However I have problem with 3rd unit only. Led is green, and wifi signal is good between units (no walls). But when my mobile connects to 3rd unit, I can not get internet most of the time. I simply turn 3rd unit off and everything is great. I thing I'm having this issue with latest firmware. With previous firmware I haven't got any problem.

Please investigate the problem and fix it.

All the best.

Koray

@Kevin_Z 

The current network diagram is next to impossible to describe as you give me no tools to do this. I have 6 TP7's, all show green lights on the power supply, and 2 of them are connected to the main router.

If we forget about the wireless backhaul, how do you suggest I find out how the 5 other P7's are connected if they use Powerline as backhaul? If you have any tools to help me do this I will galdly draw the connections of the devices.

The speed I get from the ISP is irrelevant - the speed I need is between my server (connected to the main AP/TP7 through a 1 Gbit/s CAT6 cable - with 2 Gigabit Ethernet HUB's in between. The server runs a video server, and due to the problem with wireless though our fairly solid walls, I had to add 2 more (from 4 to 6) P7's to get decent speeds in our 1700 sq ft flat. Powerline did not even work well enough through any of the walla, even if the were on the same power circuit  - I needed to sort out line of sight between the P7's to make this work.

This has sorted out almost all my speed problems, and latency is decent as I illustated in my previous post, as I monitor this between the server and all the DEco P7's. This is the only way I have been able to guess the nwteork topology, and why I suspect the Powerline is not giving me good throughput, even if other TP-link Powerline adapters worked well  from exactly the same power sockets. (AC1200's if anyine is interested) - on thos I can monitor the powerline speed through the tools you supply, or from my Fritzbox.

And yes - 2 of the Deco's in the monitoring grap are conencted to the monitoring server with Cat6 - at gigabit speed.

I would also add that powerline speeds fluctuate a lot, which is why I do monitor latency between a lot of network points.

First graph is latency from monitoring server to all my Deco's

Second graph is latency between server and firewall LAN. I.e latency below 1 ms. 

ie. the latency to the 2 P7's connected via Ethernet is less than 1ms - regardless of traffic.

The main Deco and the firewall LAN are connected to the same Hub. The Decos marked livingroom and studio are approx 6 foot away from each other - but with a 1 foot thisk wall in between.

The livingroom Deco and the Main AP deco are 30 feet apart - but has line of sight to each other.

If we had monitoring of powerline connectivity I might be able to improve this - but at the moment all Powerline optimisation is guesswork.