devolo Magic: a faster connection for Microsoft Flight Simulator

A powerline adapter may not be the first thing you associate the new Microsoft Flight Simulator with, but here is some advice: look at what devolo offers to get more out of your Internet connection.

Microsoft Flight Simulator needs some bandwidth to show its graphics in all their glory. According to Windows Central, a 5 Mbps internet speed is the minimum requirement, which is probably a lot less than many users have. The recommended Internet speed is 20 Mbps, which is still below what many consider normal. Ideal, according to Microsoft, is 50 Mbps, which many also have. In fact, if you’re like me, you probably have more. But here is the catch: it may not be enough!

I’ve lived with an Internet speed of 120Mbps for a while now, but I am about to move to 500 Mbps (or maybe 1 Gbps), partially because of Microsoft Flight Simulator. The math was simple: if I need 50 Mbps to get the best experience in Microsoft Flight Simulator and my son wants to fly with me, we will use around 100 Mbps of my 130 Mbps connection. If one considers the fluctuations in speed, we may find that sometimes our actual speed is not enough to live happily.

The bandwidth requirements are not excessive, if one considers how much visual information you get on a good PC running Microsoft Flight Simulator. The more power you have, though, the more you’ll want to crank up the graphics, meaning you’ll need the bandwidth to have a good experience. Now, if you’re sharing the home space with more people, and someone wants to download a film or files, you may find that suddenly your flying experience is less than great.

When your Internet is a bottleneck

The speed of your Internet connection can, in fact, become a bottleneck. We’ve known for a while that our 130 Mbps — which may fluctuate a bit but has been, otherwise, pretty stable — is a problem. One practical example: I am working on the back office of a website I write for and suddenly I feel that the connection is slow: I only need to look next door and ask my son if he is downloading anything, be it files, a video or a game: the regular answer is yes, and when this happens he gets most of the bandwidth, meaning there is little left for other things.

As we’re, now, three working from home due to the pandemic, and this is the new normal, we’ve decided to move to a faster connection, both due to work and leisure needs. In fact, it probably costs more to wait for files to download due to a slow connection then to pay the difference to get a faster connection, meaning more bandwidth.

Some do suggest that a solution in terms of lack of bandwidth is to turn off data features in Microsoft Flight Simulator, in order to get better performance. While this may help, it makes no sense if you can solve the bandwidth bottleneck any other way… meaning getting a faster connection. If you’re really interested in exploring Microsoft Flight Simulator graphics that’s the most logical step to reduce the eventual problems of the simulation slowing down.

Flying is better when wired

With Microsoft Flight Simulator I’ve also experienced moments when the info reaching the screen seems to take a long time, a clear indication that my bandwidth is a bottleneck and it is about time to move to a faster connection. No, the problem is not the computer, as I am running on a i7–9700K/RTX 2070/32GB RAM and NVMe SSDs.

Moving the Internet connection speed up a notch also meant looking at the home network, which could be done immediately. For reasons it is hard for me to understand, most people seem to opt for Wi-Fi to connect computers at home. While I believe Wi-Fi is great — especially for smartphones and other small devices — nothing beats a wired connection in terms of stability and security. Yes, I know having cables all around the house is not a viable option, but the truth is that for many of us, especially in Europe, the cables are already there, you just need to plug in the adapters and you’ve your own “ethernet”. Only that it is called powerline!

We’ve had a wired network at home since 2007, when I first tried the powerline adapters from a German company, devolo. I’ve written a long article about the experience — Work-From-Home and the Magic of devolo’s Powerline — which you can find following the link. In it I explain the technology and a lot more about the evolution of the system, which has provided us at home with both a wired and wireless Internet that covers all the house without any of the problems usually associated with Wi-Fi repeaters and expanders.

A Magic not compatible

The magic of devolo is that, contrary to Wi-Fi repeaters, that have to pick a signal from the air and try to resend it, the powerline adapters, which can have Wi-Fi, carry the base signal to the wall socket in the room you need your connection, and then distribute Wi-Fi… and optionally a wired connection. No wonder that the latest series of adapters from devolo is named after what it does: Magic!

Until now, our devolo network at home was based on 500 Mbps adapters, some with Wi-Fi, offering good coverage on the two floors of the apartment. It has worked without any problems, but as we’re moving to a faster Internet connection, we thought it would probably be a good idea to try the devolo Magic adapters, which offer speeds up to 2400 Mbps, thanks to the use of technology that promises, in the future, to reach up to 10 Gbps.

One word of caution if you decide to try the powerline solution from devolo: the Magic family is not compatible with any previous powerline adapters from the company or, in fact, any other powerline adapter using the standard HomePlug AV, as this is a whole new technology. Installation is easy, but do read the manual to understand what you need to do to get everything working in a matter of minutes.

From 488 to 803 Mbps

Or aim with the move to the devolo Magic system was to be able to have a better connection between the computers and distribute Internet. The numbers don’t lie: our maximum speed now is 803 Mbps against 488 Mbps with the previous adapters. The minimum speed is also 412 Mbps against 117 Mbps. During installation I saw values over 1100 Mbps, but I believe these are more inline with what I can expect from my network, which is always dependent on factors as the distance, noise on electrical wires, quality of electrical installation and other adverse conditions.

One important information is that our download speed from the Internet through the adapters also changed. On one adapter, a Magic 1 WiFi, it topped at 45 Mbps using the 100 Mbps Ethernet port, this with our 130 Mbps Internet connection. I am curious to see how the numbers change when we get 500 Mbps or more on our Internet connection, especially on the Gigabit connections offered by the Magic 2 devolo adapters.

The change to the speed of our Internet connection and the move to devolo Magic adapters meant that we have both a fast connection to the world and a faster connection between computers, to make it easier to share files between them, play games, and, when flying Microsoft Flight Simulator, to get it “as real as it gets”. It’s some kind of Magic…