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MoCA network adapter


dslabbekoorn

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A bit off the usual topic but I wanted to share this with the community as I've had such good luck with it.  It is MoCA, it stands for multimedia over coax alliance.  Practically, this is an adapter that connects to your router and bridges Ethernet to coax, a second adapter, wherever you need a fast and stable network signal converts it back to Ethernet.  This will work with any coax network, so if your house is wired for cable, it's now wired for 100mbs Ethernet.  The signal is solid, strong and fast.  I stream 1080p from my server in my office upstairs to the xbmc in my living room through several splitters.  Could not get it to work consistently with wireless and now it's as smooth as butter, no buffering, no stutter.  The only thing that seems to be a problem is a cable/coax amplifier between the sending and receiving units.  A little re-wiring for me and it worked fine.  Install is plug and play.  Coax is pass thru the adapter and it has an Ethernet jack out to your device or switch if you have more than on at the location.  Hooked it up and the network picked it up in seconds and I was good to go.  They cost about $45 each, you usually need 2, some devices for example the newer TiVo's and some TV's and Blu Ray players are set up for it already with an internal adapter.  None of my stuff was.  :(  The MoCA trade group is sponsored by some big names in computers, networking and cable so this is no fly by night start up.  Adapters are just coming on line but are available through most major retailers though you have to look for them as they are so new.  Best one seems to be from ActionTec (new version out this year), followed by Netgear and D-link.  Got mine from Best Buy through a marketplace partner for $109 for the pair.  Current network speed being reported is 80 mbs on average, more than enough for high def streaming.  The big plus is the stability of the signal, no blips or anything has been seen so far through online gaming and streaming high def movies over the network.  I am giving the links I used to check this out and order below, this is worth checking out if you are wired for cable, always wanted to have hard wired Ethernet but didn't want to tear up the house, and find wireless a bit lacking.  I use 2 ghz splitters in my cable wiring and the run to my cable modem is kept separate to avoid any interference. 

 

Sorry if this has run a little long and sounds like a sales pitch, but I am really liking these things, they just work and work well.  Plus they saved me from hard wiring my house or having to put up with my wife's rolled eyes every time a streamed movie stops and goes "Buffering".  Check out the links below and see if maybe this will work for you.  Thanks for all the drivepool help I have received here, hopefully this can be a bit of pay back.

 

Dave

 

Links:

 

http://www.mocalliance.org/

 

http://www.mocaisinyourhouse.com/

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+1..if you have the cables running through the house, this is much nicer than using powerline, since the coax cable is shielded (so less pollution from the "radiating" wires in your home).

 

Unfortunately, with a home cabled for digital SAT TV, this will not work, since the signal will not traverse through the SAT-switch.

Some SAT-switches offer a inbound-connection for a landline/cable-coax wire but you will need to feed it directly into the switch.

In 90% of homes, the switch is near the SAT-dish, but your broadband connection is elsewhere and connecting the LAN side of the MoCA is not possible hence.

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A bit off the usual topic but I wanted to share this with the community as I've had such good luck with it.  It is MoCA, it stands for multimedia over coax alliance.  Practically, this is an adapter that connects to your router and bridges Ethernet to coax, a second adapter, wherever you need a fast and stable network signal converts it back to Ethernet.  This will work with any coax network, so if your house is wired for cable, it's now wired for 100mbs Ethernet.  The signal is solid, strong and fast.  I stream 1080p from my server in my office upstairs to the xbmc in my living room through several splitters.  Could not get it to work consistently with wireless and now it's as smooth as butter, no buffering, no stutter.  The only thing that seems to be a problem is a cable/coax amplifier between the sending and receiving units.  A little re-wiring for me and it worked fine.  Install is plug and play.  Coax is pass thru the adapter and it has an Ethernet jack out to your device or switch if you have more than on at the location.  Hooked it up and the network picked it up in seconds and I was good to go.  They cost about $45 each, you usually need 2, some devices for example the newer TiVo's and some TV's and Blu Ray players are set up for it already with an internal adapter.  None of my stuff was.  :(  The MoCA trade group is sponsored by some big names in computers, networking and cable so this is no fly by night start up.  Adapters are just coming on line but are available through most major retailers though you have to look for them as they are so new.  Best one seems to be from ActionTec (new version out this year), followed by Netgear and D-link.  Got mine from Best Buy through a marketplace partner for $109 for the pair.  Current network speed being reported is 80 mbs on average, more than enough for high def streaming.  The big plus is the stability of the signal, no blips or anything has been seen so far through online gaming and streaming high def movies over the network.  I am giving the links I used to check this out and order below, this is worth checking out if you are wired for cable, always wanted to have hard wired Ethernet but didn't want to tear up the house, and find wireless a bit lacking.  I use 2 ghz splitters in my cable wiring and the run to my cable modem is kept separate to avoid any interference. 

 

Sorry if this has run a little long and sounds like a sales pitch, but I am really liking these things, they just work and work well.  Plus they saved me from hard wiring my house or having to put up with my wife's rolled eyes every time a streamed movie stops and goes "Buffering".  Check out the links below and see if maybe this will work for you.  Thanks for all the drivepool help I have received here, hopefully this can be a bit of pay back.

 

Dave

 

Links:

 

http://www.mocalliance.org/

 

http://www.mocaisinyourhouse.com/

Moca didn't work out well for me, at least with high bite rate material, it would choke and stutter, YMMV, but I'm still waiting for moca 2.0 devices to be released, and that should do the trick,  there's a fantastic article over at smallnetbuilder.com, must be a few years old by now, but my through put was around 95% of 100MB's which is exactly what they had, but I'm thinking there must have been a lot of lost packets in overhead, I'm fairly certain My house has RG59, but you may have better luck with RG6,

You can also buy the old fios equipment on ebay, as  Moca  has been the backbone of their multi room DVR's systems for some time.

 

in the end, I ran 3 drops of cat 6. 

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Ok, so after I posted that I realized that I didn't explain at all what I meant in terms of MBits.

  • Most people are aware of Megabytes and Gigabytes (because that's what hard drive space is measured in).
  • I was talking about network bandwidth. Network bandwidth is typically measured in Bits. 1 byte has 8 bits. So in order to convert bits to bytes you need to divide by 8.

But the math aside, MoCA is "up to" 100 Mbits /s

 

Which means that it can transfer "up to" 12.5 MB/s. Twelve point five mega bytes per second. Yes, megabytes the same stuff that's on your hard drive.

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And that's what I love about "standards" for computer measurements.... they really aren't. And tend to be used in a way that is meant to confuse people.

 

And yeah, that's what I thought.

On the plus side, for just one or two connections, that should be more than plenty of bandwidth. HD doesn't take that much to stream.

 

 

But if you're running cable and have the money to spend on it, then cat6 is worth it. ;)

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