Powernet Service of Groupe E

It is now time to explain the reality of everyday life with a Group E powernet home connection.

History

I was nevertheless satisfied with the flow of my econophone ADSL connection. But it took the sirens of Group E to make me hear the accents of their promises for my reason to be shattered by this technology still marked by its youthful defects. The incompetence of the employees finally ate me up.

At the end of February 2007, I confidently signed a contract for a powernet home broadband connection with Groupe E.

The offer seemed rather attractive:

CHF 46 per month. Still about CHF 36 per year savings compared to most competitors at the time.
5000 kb/s downstream and 500 kb/s upstream. At the time, this was more than the competition.
The ability to have internet throughout the building via the electrical outlet. For me, not being a fan of wireless connection, this seemed fantastic. Plus, the phone cable would no longer run through the bedroom! I was almost ecstatic.

I soon realised my mistake. So much so that 2 weeks later I already cancelled my contract.

Here are the points on which I was not satisfied at the time:

Slow start-up of the modem. It should be noted that the installation of powernet is rather cumbersome. Not only do you need a modem for each connection, but also another “modem” installed at the electricity meter.
The thermal dissipation of the modem. On this point too, it must be understood that the powernet modem (from iLevo, a sub-company of Schneider) contains complex electronics that consume a lot of energy: at least 8 watts (announced)! A real monster.

I wrote to Group E customer service and they assured me that everything would be done to the best of their ability and that my satisfaction was important to them.

Unfortunately for me, I learned from the letter from Groupe E that the powernet home contract was for a minimum of 18 months! For me, the termination would be done on August 31, 2008.

I will explain the consequences of this later here. For the time being, I advise you to take a look at the disadvantages of the powernet home solution.

Disadvantages of powernet home

This chapter is not yet complete, but check back regularly for useful information.

Slow start-up of the modem. The modem starts up very slowly, if at all, under certain conditions. This is because some of the sockets in your building are totally unfavourable to it. Usually the socket that works well is on the opposite side of the building from your computer equipment.
Strong signal degradation depending on the location of the modem.
Problem with other frequency ranges. Indeed, the PLC interferes strongly with amateur radio signals. See here for more information.
High power consumption. The iLevo ILV201 modem consumes quite a bit of power (advertised as 8 Watts see here, actual 231.1V * 0.064A = 14.8 Watts). The measurements were made with a Fluke 115 TRMS multimeter.
No router integrating PLC technology available from Groupe E. Yes, you will still have to buy an additional device that will connect to the PLC modem and act as a router. If you want to have a second access point without buying a router, you need a second modem. This will cost more than a router (CHF 199 per modem). In the Ilevo shop, it was previously possible to buy modems at lower prices. The shop is now closed. Is Ilevo on the decline?
Frequent rebooting and disconnection of the modem. The modem seems to reboot frequently, causing unexpected disconnections.
Low throughput. The throughput measured by SpeedTest is low. See the result here:

Interesting Fact

According to a reliable source, even the director of Group E has unsubscribed from this service. That says it all!

Result of a ping

$ ping www.groupe-e.ch
PING www.groupe-e.ch (195.141.249.104) 56(84) bytes of data.
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=1691 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=1635 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=67.0 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=4 ttl=60 time=45.3 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=5 ttl=60 time=738 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=6 ttl=60 time=89.7 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=7 ttl=60 time=141 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=8 ttl=60 time=56.9 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=9 ttl=60 time=1725 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=10 ttl=60 time=1431 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=11 ttl=60 time=69.9 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=12 ttl=60 time=77.5 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=13 ttl=60 time=48.8 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=14 ttl=60 time=161 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=15 ttl=60 time=132 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=16 ttl=60 time=2692 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=17 ttl=60 time=2906 ms
...
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=89 ttl=60 time=106 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=90 ttl=60 time=147 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=91 ttl=60 time=124 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=92 ttl=60 time=79.9 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=93 ttl=60 time=73.2 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=94 ttl=60 time=83.5 ms
bytes from 195.141.249.104: icmp_seq=95 ttl=60 time=41.8 ms

--- www.groupe-e.ch ping statistics ---
packets transmitted, 92 received, 3% packet loss, time 1407504ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 26.731/858.747/4292.187/1127.274 ms, pipe 4

Result of a nslookup

$nslookup www.groupe-e.ch
;; Warning: ID mismatch: expected ID 53730, got 0
;; Warning: ID mismatch: expected ID 53730, got 0
;; Warning: ID mismatch: expected ID 53730, got 0
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Benefits of powernet home

Practical throughput higher than advertised with 2 modems. Indeed, if you have 2 modems, in practice the throughput is the same on modem A and modem B. So it is practically possible to download at 2x 5000 kbps. However, given the frequent disconnections, this advantage is very small. (I still need to do some tests on this).