Pogoplug Wireless Adapter

One of the biggest selling points of getting a Pogoplug, besides being able to hack it's firmware and use it's internal Linux operating system for my own purposes, is the ability to make it wireless. To say the least the wi-fi adapter, which can be purchased directly from the Pogoplug Online Store by clicking here, works great. However, I have been running into issues with it disconnecting when using Samba. As of right now I am awaiting for a new wi-fi adapter (my old one crapped out and is getting replaced) for further testing.

I believe that my backup connection using Home Plug technology may be the culprit due to the fact that FTP transfers between my desktop and the Pogoplug remain stable at a very low speeds (about 280KB per a second). The Home Plug has had in the past crashed my NSLU2's Samba services that resulted in having the  entire machine completely crash (buffer overflow or memory leak???). The only way that resolved that issue was to not use Home Plug adapters with my NSLU2. I am hoping that this is the case and it is not something else. I checked the log files on the Pogoplug for Samba and nothing is out of the ordinary prior to the crash, so it leaves me to question whether it is a memory issue, which shouldn't be an issue thanks to the 512MB swap file, or something else. Either way stay tuned for an update when I get my replacement adapter.

* One note about Home Plug that many are unaware of, is that it is very susceptible to line noise that causes corruption of packets as they travel across the power lines within a building; especially when they share the same outlet with other devices (e.g. computer, lamp, etc).

UPDATE: Its not HomePlug as I had originally thought. Surprisingly the Wi-Fi adapter was the cause of the slow connections for FTP and the crashing of Samba. I average about 2 megabytes per a second (MBps) to almost 4 MBps on some occasions. From further testing, I was able to get the Wi-Fi adapter to average 1MBps from originally ~500KBps by moving it closer to my Wi-Fi router. I find this very odd, even when I used USB 3.0 ports to ensure the adapter was getting enough power, it was still averaged below 1MBps. Now back on Ethernet directly connected to the router, the Pogoplug averages ~2.3MBps, slightly faster than my NSLU2. I think I can tweak it and see if I can get additional performance, but as of right now it is rock solid stable with Samba v3.6 and FTP transactions taking place at the same time.

I am still waiting to get my replacement Wi-Fi adapter and hopefully it will lead to faster transfers over the HomePlug connection.

UPDATE 11/18/2012: Over night the FTP and Samba transfer rates are now roughly 3~4MBps sustained. Apparently the Wi-Fi adapter is not all that great, because of the slow transfer rates. I am uncertain why that is the case, but I am assuming it must by either due to 802.11G or just not that great of an on-board antenna, either way I am glad my Pogoplug is finally out performing my NSLU2.