What might cause powerline networking to disrupt other ethernet connections?

Question

I have a pair of powerline ethernet boxes set up to connect the top floor of my house to the rest of the home network.
Periodically, I've found that the network in the rest of the house becomes extremely slow.  Disconnecting the ethernet from the powerline ethernet appears to fix the problem.
I originally thought it was a problem with the powerline ethernet boxes, and replaced them with new boxes.  However, the problem has reoccurred with the new boxes, which makes me think that it's not the boxes, but something else.
Unfortunately, I don't know what that would be.
My home network is rather complicated, with several switches.  Yet the networking disruption appears to occur across the entire network.

davidgo · Answer

My guess would be a routing loop - ie you have 2 ethernet connections between points.
Assuming you don't have spanning tree enabled (its really only available on more expensive managed switches), My first step in diagnosing the problem would be to look at how much the lights are flickering on the various switches, then systematically disconnect wires one at a time until the problem goes away.   Alternatively, cable trace everything and do a diagram.
It is, I guess, possible that the issue is something else - maybe your neighbour is also using powerline and the devices are getting mixed messages on default gateways to use etc.

What might cause powerline networking to disrupt other ethernet connections?

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