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Ask HN: Any LAN alternatives other than PowerLine or MOCA?
70 points by tetris11 on Sept 1, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 111 comments
I've been trying to get a stable connection from my living room to my work room, for almost a year now.

The Wifi repeater[0] I had is too unreliable to deliver anything for very long. The Powerline[1] adapter works for maybe a hot minute and then loses the pairing over the power socket, and now I'm seeing the same with MoCA[2] over coaxial (yes I have PoE filters).

Are there any other alternatives?

0: https://fritzshop.nl/2222-large_default/fritzwlan-310-wifi-r... 1: https://www.digitalred.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/71oxmx... 2: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41UgxVVrRBL...




Going to have to go with the others and say that if MoCa isn’t working, there’s a bigger problem (PowerLine is always a bad idea). Make sure:

You have the PoE filter (no “S”, there’s should only be one) installed on the entry point only. Since you said “filterS” it implies you have multiple throughout the network. If so, that’s the cause of your problem as those are designed to prevent MoCa signals from passing through.

Next would be the main splitter. You really should have only one in the house, and it should be good quality and support up to 2500MHz. Bamf makes good ones. It should only have enough taps as cables you need to connect (don’t get a 7-way splitter if you only have 3 cables).

For any unused splitter ports, make sure they are terminated.

Check the connectors on each end of the cables and replace any that are loose or flimsy.

MoCa really does work very well, so I suggest you figure out what the issue is instead of looking for something else. The only thing I can think of as a showstopper is if they nailed through (or stapled too tight) when installing the wires in the walls. That would compromise the cable and there’s not much that will be able to handle that.


Re: multiple PoE filters for MoCa..

My MoCa network was terribly unstable with a filter at the entry point, until I also added a 2nd filter on the cable going into the modem.

No idea why, but wanted to add this in case it helps anyone. Lots of trial and error but once figured out, the network has been extremely stable for years.

Also make sure all splitters are compatible with MoCa (some aren’t)

These are the adapters I use.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088KV2YYL?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_dp_F0...


It’s because frequency range for MoCA overlaps with the upper frequencies of DOCSIS3.1. The modem was probably receiving/transmitting in the MoCA range and that data looked like junk. Installing a PoE filter at the modem prevents both of these at the cost of not being able to utilize some of the DOCSIS3.1 range which may result in reduced speed if you’re paying for 1Gb+ from your ISP.


Because of some cable run through cement, among other atrocious coax work I needed to reuse, I ended up with two splitters. I needed to run MOCA and DOCSIS over the same span, but also needed to filter out the DOCSIS on both ends (to not leak MOCA into the neighborhood and to not conflict with the MOCA on the modem that had its own temperamental issues.)

Two of these worked perfectly as combo splitters and filters. I have a backhaul cable connecting two of them together, and then the correct signal leaves out each applicable port. "Input" goes to the modem on one end, and the cable provider on the second splitter. M1 and M2 go to MOCA on each splitter (4 total). H1 is the backhaul between the two. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CQTHL33/


+1 on ditching PowerLine, they've been shown to exceed local RFI limits by turning all your house wires into a giant radiating antenna[1] but somehow they haven't pulled them from the market. The cynic in me says this is because it only tends to impact HF bands, if they they hit > 400mhz I'm sure they'd be gone tomorrow.

[1] https://ham.stackexchange.com/questions/2032/do-ethernet-ove...


Hold on, I setup a few powerline kits in a few buildings and never had issues once you have it working. It's not as great as cat6 but it never crashed or gave up if the power was on for years.

I'll agree the first generation had its problems and wasn't the best or most stable (late 90s or 00s I forget but it was like 10mbps) and I don't count that.

It also can't usually jump breaker panels so if you go in knowing this limitation the 200mbps gear I've used is a solid solution but wifi has usually beaten it with mesh these days.


I've had a positive experience with a pair of cheap moca adapters to get wired net to a far room in a house with old coax in the walls. Splitters are absolutely something to avoid. RG6 coax plugs are also notorious for getting right; definitely check all the connections in run if not the whole tree; one rogue strand might be a problem. Try only a straight coax run first to test and then add back all the splitters and other devices.


Single mode fiber is small, easy to run, insensitive to interference, future proof and... a little bit more expensive than copper. But worth the hassle.

What got me started: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-05-16-home-network-...

(Michael, if you are out there, I owe you many beers)


How do you get the fiber through your walls? Isn't the appeal of PowerLine and MoCA that the cables are already there?


> How do you get the fiber through your walls?

Lawrence Systems has a good demo of how they do it (wall fishing) commercially:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5XePwAO4m0

> Isn't the appeal of PowerLine and MoCA that the cables are already there?

Yes, that is the appeal. But that doesn't mean it gives a better/faster long-term result.


How are these guys doing the top hole drills through the wall? In that demo, they have direct access to the top board. Is this for new construction or something? Are they removing drywall from the upper floor?


Attic/crawl space.

If you don't have access to either there is a drill bit on a 40-80 inch flexible shaft. You cut a hole in the wall for the box you'll mount the ethernet in and then use it as access to drill up/down/sideways behind the wall.


The attic I would think


I have a smaller house, but I just decided to drill straight through the outer wall. Ran a couple cat 6 cables around the outside of the house and stapled it up underneath trim. Can't even see the cable hardly. Just use a little silicone on the holes to seal it up and if you slap some paint over it it'll disappear. It's pretty much the same way cable or satellite installers do it.


Standard LC connector is small enough to pass through a standard drill bit. If smaller, you can apply your connector with no specialized equipment.


For some reason, I assume that you needed an arc splicer machine to run fibre at home, but it looks like that all you need is a specialty cutter. Much less expensive than that splicer.


No, to put up connectors you just need a little patience. And maybe a cleaver, but not necessarily. Read the blog post I linked.

The splicer is needed to joint two fiber runs only.


pre-terminated fiber is also so damn cheap on a marginal per-ft basis, that I just bought a bunch of I-know-this-is-way-too-long runs and I spent <$10 more than I would have if I bought in bulk and applied the connectors myself.


I was going to suggest running a cable, and like you say, fibre would be better than a CAT cable, especially if drilling holes are required.

I had to rerun all our cables after the company that did the trunking in the wall used a cheap CAT cable which was picking up interference from the mains power cables in the wall.


What kind of wall plates did you get? How much were they?


You can use standard keystone wall plates and an lc-lc coupler (I used pre terminated lc fiber from fs.com and ran that through conduit. Just add slack on both ends to make sure it’s long enough and no need to terminate fussy fiber)

* keystone jacks: https://www.fs.com/products/143313.html * pre terminated fiber: https://www.fs.com/products/143475.html * sfp+ transceivers for the switches and endpoints: https://www.fs.com/products/65337.html


Never heard of FS before, solid company?


They're fairly well known in networking circles.

They're basically THE company for buying cheap, but functional, networking bits-and-bobs-- either in bulk, or as an alternative to prowling ebay for smaller purchases.

I use them all the time for transceivers, cables, DACs, etc.


Absolutely. Highly regarded, excellent customer service and fast shipping.

My only complaint is their service is a bit too good- they’re used to dealing with businesses so you’re assigned a sales consultant even for a $100 order. But that also means you have easy access to a person if you have any concerns or questions.


I bought an SFP+ thingy three years ago and my sales consultant is a darling, we chat at least once a quarter. I haven’t bought anything since, but her kid recently graduated!!


This is sweet. Now I feel bad for blocking them.


Definitely. I am using DAC cables I got from them for my Mellanox x3 10Gbe cards.

Even thought I didn't need it you can specify the compatibility of the transceivers if your other networking gear is fussy.

The only negative for me was they tried contacting me on WhatsApp after the sale but I just blocked them.


Yes, it is. I have 4 10Gb SFP+ module couples and some other networking equipment going on for years and never failed. Their advisory/support is very good too.


Standard 4 port SC/APC female to SC/APC female. Nothing fancy.


If you have baseboards or carpet, this job becomes much easier.

You can get thin or flat cables that you can just push between the carpet and baseboard. If you have hard floors, you can get a trim crowbar and pull the baseboards off. As long as you are careful, when you replace them and add a bit of caulk, it will look like new. Going around door frames is usually not so difficult: the worst case is that you would need to remove the baseboard from both sides and drill through the floor plate, which will also be invisible after you've finished.

If you have a run that would have to go under carpet, you can use an undercarpet fish tape and some very thick sewing needles to raise the carpet and underpad at any place it is stuck.

If you would have to go through a wall, often there is a cable box in the same section of the wall on both sides. That would let you string a cable between the boxes. In some cases you can add a box without it being obvious. Most corporate landlords aren't going to remember if the 11th layout in their building has an ethernet box in that location.

https://www.amazon.com/LABOR-SAVING-DEVICES-85-125-Undercarp...

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=44496


Depending on how far apart your rooms are, it's not too difficult to wire up a long, flat ribbon ethernet cable[1] between rooms. They usually come with clips to help install it cleanly as a fixture. Then you can just connect it to a separate switch/WiFI access point in the other room and have the same connection speeds. However, if you have two WiFI access points, you'll likely run into radio interference if they don't have mesh capabilities.

I use an 100ft cable to go from living room to basement, and have an mesh AP for each. The Eero devices are relatively affordable compared to Ubiquiti for how powerful they are, if you want a seamless experience using multiple WiFi APs.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Cat-Ethernet-Cable-White-Connectors/d...


I finally put all my network gear/rack in the garage, where the cable and fiber are, then proceeded to run an outdoor ethernet cable to my office with a small ubiquity PoE switch.

Before that I was running a flat ethernet cable (like you suggested) and tucking it between the carpet and the wall making it invisible for the most part.

Wifi is good in the house, but the speeds I get on wired just blow it out of the water.


This is sensible advice. They are very convenient.

However I will clarify that although you can get great speeds with a flat Ethernet cable (thanks to modern manufacturing?), you must not use these to carry power.

I want to make this clear because first cables tend to describe themselves as Cat6 or whatever. This may be close enough in terms of signal/speed, but these don't use a thick enough wire guage to do PoE (Power over Ethernet), let alone PoE+.

(I am reasonably sure real Cat6 cables must support at least PoE, but it is hard to be certain when standards are behind paywalls.)


For smaller draw devices it may work fine. I powered 2 Unifi ac lites via Poe with a 25ft and 50ft flat Ethernet cable for a couple years, no problems.


I am glad that worked for you. The reason I flag it is: it may silently appear to work, but be heating up the cables without you realising it.


Oh no, yeah I made sure that wasn’t the case with my setup. Monoprice 30awg flat Ethernet cables in 25-50ft with a 6.5w power draw from the devices, no heat at all.


I'm not surprised you had issues with that wifi repeater. The way those kinds work, they just take an existing wifi signal and repeat it back out. This kills 50% of your bandwidth for devices connected to the repeater. A better option is a mesh network system (like anything on this list https://www.wired.com/story/best-mesh-wifi-routers/). These are much smarter and can tolerate things like a node being taken down, so should work better than that repeater.


I would second a mesh network system. They are far better than they were a few years back, with enough radios to keep everything fast and enough smarts not to step on each others' frequencies. Remember to keep them placed as centrally as you can, not on outside walls.


about moca...

1. replace your ethernet cable to moca adapter. even cable that seemingly ok it still can be faulty. friend of mine had recently similar problem with cable. he replaced $300 worth of equipment before he replaced cable

2. if coax going through splitter and splitter is old, it may cause issues (moca using higher frequency ranges). get new splitter that is moca compatible from reputable company. for example https://a.co/d/0SIcvRP . don't use splitter with more ports than you need and all unused coax connectors should have terminator on them

3. get some coax signal meter to make sure that you have no problems with cable/connectors. in case that wiring is old (>10-15 years), get new connectors and recrimp coax. also replace wallplate couplers (neighbor of mine had problem with moca month ago. i traced it down to bad wallplate couplers. ).

moca adapters can be accessed via browser to see their internal state/quality/etc. take a look at it as well


These steps above should get you on the right track with MoCA.

Specific to the goCoax adapters - are you connecting the MoCA adapters to 2.5GigE devices? If so, the goCoax adapters have an (unfortunately) not well-known-enough issue where you need to disable EEE/Green Ethernet to get a stable connection with some devices.

Screenbeam makes a MoCA adapter that doesn't have this issue, the ECB7250S02, and goCoax claims to have a firmware without EEE enabled on the adapter side if you email their support email as well.


That coax splitter only handles up to 1675MHz, which isn’t that great anymore. It’s better to use ones that go up to 2500MHz for the newer MoCa standards.


is there moca standard that goes above 1675 ?


No https://mocalliance.org/MoCA2/specification/MoCA_2.0_and_2.5...


this is what i remembered. it's just given that docsis 4 is up to 1794mhz, it won't surprise me if they will make moca3 that will try to climb up in frequencies to avoid overlapping


I've had excellent results from both powerline and MoCA in my 100 year old brick and plaster home. Powerline, I was careful to locate the origin node near the service entry and that worked well. (I'm not sure it was needed, but it seemed sensible to not try to locate the origin and the destination nodes both on branch circuits far from the panel.)

MoCA, I'm only using for the TiVos, though I've tapped into it for speed testing when I first installed it and it was "perfectly more than adequate" with no real tuning other installing the MoCA point of entry filter [singular, not plural] (in my case a PCT-VC-F18a) and hooking everything up.

I'm on US powerline, but in case it helps, I'm using the "devolo Magic 2 WiFi next starter kit" for powerline and, once again, that also "just worked".

0 - https://www.pctinternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/...

Maybe the best tip I can give is "make sure your coax is properly terminated AND properly tightened". This is no place for the old hex-crimped crappy ends and no place for finger-tightened F-connectors. Put high-quality compression connectors on the coax and snug all connections with a wrench.

Second tip: If you have unused ports on a splitter, cap them off with terminating resistors (or better, replace the splitter with a 2+ GHz splitter with the correct number of ports).

Third tip: Throw out any old 850 MHz, 1 GHz, etc. splitters if you're trying to run MoCA.


Is it too early to be feeling nostalgia reading the word "TiVo?"


My cable company used these Tivo-branded Arris devices as STBs for years. https://zatznotfunny.com/2017-02/tivo-heads-back-future-new-... They are now upgrading to a tiny Android TV device that streams TV over IP. It draws 10W max and has a better Youtube and Plex app than the old one. It still has the Tivo interface for TV shows, but now I can rewind live TV and start shows up to 3 days after they air.


I am genuinely curious if they are using actual Tivos. I gave up on my Cable card hdhomerun box due to the pain it caused and just went with their dual over the air digital tuner and Plex. Do old devices even work with anything these days?


I am using actual TiVos. Roamio with a multi-stream cable card and some satellite TiVo minis. I have no cable company owned equipment in my house (other than the cable card) for TV, phone, and internet that I get from cable.

Now, I’m considering dumping cable TV service, because the price over value has gotten kind of stupid, but for now, I still have TiVos in service and they have a good story for digital cable as well.


VDSL is surprisingly capable, and would certainly work well within a house’s existing wiring (ADSL works over a wet string[0]). I’ve used modules you can buy on Amazon[1] to run private VDSL halfway up a mountain for one client.

[0] https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet...

[1] http://amazon.com/dp/B01BOD8C9W


1. If you don't care too much about it looking pretty ethernet cable can be done with very little effort. I've got an ethernet cable running from a bedroom on the far side of the house (where one of my cable outlets is) to the adjacent laundry room, then down a hall, then into another hall, then into the living room where it comes in diagonally opposite of where I need it, then along two walls to get to where I want it.

Most of this is done on the top of the walls next to the ceiling. I simply screwed in cup hooks every so often and drape the cable over them. Here's a short section to show what that looks like [1]. The other cable in that is a speaker cable heading to my right rear surround sound speaker.

If aesthetics is a concern some sort of conduit or cable tray could be put up there to hide the cable, and probably even be made to look like it is decorative.

2. You might also consider a partial wired solution. See if there is some place you could move your wireless router to that would give a stable connection in your work room and still give stable connections in the other rooms you use wireless from.

Often a poor wireless connection in one room is due to something between that room and wireless router and moving the router over a room or two might fix it.

[1] https://imgur.com/gallery/uZ0VvtM


It would help to know more about your home, including the materials and composition of the walls and the general layout. WiFi, powerline and MoCa all failing to perform suggests pathological levels of interference or a problem with your computers. Have you tried stringing a long cat 6 patch cable from one room to the other, just for the sake of experimentation?


MoCA is the best alternative to running Cat5 cable.

https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html#improvewif...

Disconnect any extraneous splitters or lines. Use a high quality splitter and ideally one that can pass up to 1.65 GHz. If the coaxial cable is damaged, has inferior push on connectors, or is RG59 there's a higher risk of issues. GoCoax brand is great so it's probably not a dud unit.

https://www.duckware.com/tech/solving-intermittent-cable-mod...


How far is the distance between the rooms?

What’s in the way? Concrete, bricks maybe?

Because modern mesh networks are very reliable.

To troubleshoot it all, I’d get a long run of loose laid Ethernet cable and demonstrate that I can maintain a stable connection to two known good switches on either end.

I’ve been had issues using Powerline, but as others have said, there are perhaps other issues that I’d not been aware of before!

We don’t have MOCA over here in Australia as Coax I. The house isn’t really a thing here!


Yes, just draw some cat6 between the locations and either connect to it directly/through a switch or hang an access point off the work room end. In the latter case you configure the access point to the same SSID and password/certificate as the one in the living room while using a different set of channels so your equipment will not need to be reconfigured (you may have to manually toggle wifi to get it to connect to the nearest AP since hand-off is not part of the standard). In nearly all cases you'll be able to find some path for the cat6 which makes it close to invisible - ventilation ducts, along central heating pipes, through old conduits meant for copper phone lines, along base boards, etc. Do not use power line conduits for this purpose, that is against a number of regulations and also can cause interference and stray current flows through induction.

Why cat6? Because it is hardly more expensive than cat5 and more future proof. If you don't care about the latter and have some cat5 lying around, by all means use it but if you have to buy the stuff anyway you may as well choose the 'better' option.


I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about networking but I use Netgear's Orbi routers and receivers. I've tried MANY different router and powerline adapter brands and nothing even comes close. I know it has something to do with using a proprietary communication protocol but it honestly works so well that I just accept it as magic and live my life.


Depending on the layout of your space and how it's constructed, fishing cat 5 through the walls using fish tape might be relatively easy. A quick search will find you guides with the details. However since your place appears to be cursed for networking I'd try running cat5 outside the walls for a while first to make sure it actually behaves as expected.


A WiFi signal can improve a lot by changing to a channel that is not as overcrowded. You will likely need a prosumer WiFi device (e.g. Ubiquiti) or then something which supports OpenWRT. Consider also WiFi 6E -- if you carry your signal on a new spectrum then reception likely improves as well.

If cat cable is too thick, there's also the possibility to run SFP fiber instead.


I paid a guy $2000 to wire the entire house with cat6 and another guy $1000 to redo the walls.

I would imagine a single room is a bit cheaper.


It's trivial to run the cables yourself. Drywall is the hard part (I'll probably have walls I did redone). OP could easily save the $2000.


did you tried to install a phase coupler for powerline improvement

https://www.kemo-electronic.de/en/House/Home/M091N-Phase-Cou...


While this may be an option for homeowners it does not solve the problem for renters who typically cannot make these kinds of upgrades without their landlord's permission.


So what about fibre Ethernet ??? You might be able to squeeze a bidirectional fibre (single fibre which uses 2 different frequencies of light for tx/RX) next to your coax runs through your walls? Then all you need is a media converter / switch on both ends...


You can go cheap and do 1gbps with fibre too... Failing thst maybe try super thin ether net cable in the same way???

Edit: spelling


This is an anecdote but I used to use a variety of powerline adapters to connect my desktop PC to a switch two floors down in the basement of the house I am living in. The house wiring is pretty modern (done in the mid 90s) but I had quite an unstable connection and mixed results with various brands of powerline adapters. I think if the signal has to jump between two breakers in the power panel then you're just going to have a bad time vs if you are on the same loop.

I have used the TP-Links that you had in your pic (or a variation of that model) but I've found that they and all others tend to only last a year before their quality severely degrades. My guess is that extensive usage everyday causes them to endure multiple heat cycles and they just start to degrade in quality of transmission after too many of these cycles.

Despite this being solid state equipment, I swear there must be some component in there that degrades with extensive usage because this phenomenon happened with all powerline devices I've owned.

Furthermore, even before they start to degrade I would lose signal about once ever 2-3 hrs and it would require unplugging one side of the connection and replugging it in.

Over the course of 3 years this also wore out my power outlet(it became much looser)

Like I said, I tried various brands/models. This was because I would replace them once a year. The best experience I had was with TP-Link AV2000 (it had the longest time between disconnects and the best bandwidth)

Before that I used TP-LINK AV500 which I would say is average quality. It was good for the first year but then started to really degrade.

Before this I used Netgear Powerline 500. It was the worst of the bunch, requiring more frequent resets and it too degraded over time as well. I typically find Netgear business class equipment to be great but unfortunately their powerline offerings were a letdown. I dont know if they have improved on this.

Powerline is a fascinating technology and I'm thankful it existed as it got me through 3 years going from poor wifi to finally being able to get a ethernet cable going through the wall.


If you pull new ethernet, make it cat 6 or better. Times change.

I'm not using ethernet beyond the switch room, I threw money at the problem and got a 3 pack of those wi-fi 6 Nest units which form a mesh network. Works fine, covers the house and front and back yards. Costco is selling a 4 pack of those for $450 which is even better. https://www.costco.com/google-nest-wifi-pro,-wi-fi-6e,-4-pac...

It'd be way cheaper to drill some holes and run ethernet in your situation though.


Similar to you, I tried everything, powerline, moca, and wifi. The key is using prosumer stuff. I have a multi story house and a single EAP670 is enough to cover the whole house at 450 mbps+ on wifi 6. It has wifi 6E but only my work laptop has it so I keep it off to save power. I had a U6-pro before that but it would degrade to 200 mbps four floors away. I learned so much I probably can be a network engineer at this point. But I think the lowest friction is to go for Firewalla + a prosumer AP like the two mentioned before. For what it’s worth, I run OPNsense.


You can hook it up directly into your electrical control cabinet.

https://www.devolo.global/magic-2-lan-dinrail


Most repeaters are garbage from day one. I wouldn’t bother. I also wouldn’t depend on Ethernet over power.

Use a controller that allows for multiple wired base stations.

If you can’t go through a wall with Cat6 you can at least get right up to it and plop a base station right there.

I use Unify gear. The unify dream router and a wired base station near where I want coverage. I have two base stations. My service works great in a big ranch style house (never a single problem). Keep in mind that these routers cast a mushroom shaped beam so place them high and pointed where you want signal.


Tri-band mesh Wi-Fi routers are great for this. Their dedicated backhaul keeps your own connections stable. Redoing wiring and walls is too complicated and expensive for so little gain in comparison.


whats wrong with Ethernet over cat5?


It only works if there is cat5 cabling.


Have you considered laying flat or slim cat5e under the floor skirting, carpet or even just along the floor? Had this setup in rentals, it‘s the most reliable way and not or barely visible if you spend an hour or two.


This is the correct option. Also OP says 'for a year' this problem exists? could be also the computer issues.


Ethernet over residential cat3 is often viable. Many homes have cat3 wiring for telephone. The spec for gigE says you need cat5 (maybe cat5e) for running 100m in dense bundles; shorter links in single runs can work on lesser cable.

Telephone wiring is pretty tolerant, so you might have daisy chain, star/home run, or a cursed mix. With star wiring, you just put rj45 ports on both ends, and a ethernet switch at the nexus point (which hopefully isn't outside, but often is). For daisy chain, you can put an upstream and a downstream port in each room where the connection chains, and either place a switch there if you've got wired devices for that room, or a short patch cable if not.

For a cursed mix, you've got to find the splice points, and break apart and have one port for each direction.

Depending on your wiring and your immediate connectivity needs, you might be able to do this a little bit at a time. There are also some in-wall access points with ethernet switches which could be worth considering, if you need a switch in each room anyway.


cat3 cable will work fine for 10Base-T Ethernet. If you want higher speeds than 10Mbps, you'll need something better.


Eh. I had a run that was a mix of cat5e and cat3, and it ran gigE just fine. About 50 ft cat5e, 10 feet cat3; it was in crowded conduit to an out building, no sense trying to pull something new, when it cost zero to try what was already there. And it worked, so great.


That's strange, gig uses more pairs. Maybe yours has all 4 pairs?


Yes, 4-pair cat3. I should have mentioned that at some point.


Distance/obstacles between the two rooms?


You can easily run a few dozen meters of cat5e while still having a better signal, latency and throughout than wifi or powerline will at equivalent distances.

In a pinch, I once ran an in-door Ethernet cable along the building exterior to connect multiple floors together. The cable held on for over 3 years until I left. Total length was about 70m.

A longer time ago, I did the same, with a cable going from my window, over the roof, to my sister’s window. Granted, this was in a time where 54Mbit/s was the pinacle of wifi performance.


I'm kind of thinking of doing the outdoor side of the house run myself. All my network equipment is in the basement and the second floor would involve difficult drilling and cutting holes in drywall to get access to drill. I don't really like the idea of drilling holes in the exterior walls of my house all that much though.

One tip I read while researching this is to make sure the low point where the cable enters the house has a loop or other feature such that the cable's lowest point isn't also the entry point of the house. This way condensation and water will drip off the cable instead being fed right into your wall.


Now that I have disposable income, and a fair amount of common sense, I would probably ask an electrician-friend to help me out on a project like this.

Although, Crosstalk Solutions has some very nice comprehensive videos on how they wired up some houses up at a lake[1], and it doesn't feel _that_ difficult, although there's probably a lot of know-how and gotchas they don't mention in the videos.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-bDxMgvG1I


For that last run - I'd be _very_ concerned about differences in electrical potential frying stuff.


In the realm of things that shouldn't have worked, I remember my brother in the early-mid 90s strung a telephone-grade wire around a house to directly connect two computers via their serial ports for serial-line IP (SLIP).

His best result was using one pair to connect send/receive lines like a null-modem. With XOFF/XON inband flow control and no grounding, he increased the serial port rates beyond what the modems of the day would achieve, and it worked. Our guess was that above a certain rate, it acted more like an AC transmission line and less like ground-referenced levels.


That's not a real concern, ethernet is galvanically isolated by design.

If the cable was shielded and/or foiled you might have a problem, but it almost certainly wasn't.


Sometimes it is just easier to use a preexisting outlet in the wall of outright make a new one. So long as it looks nice and clean no one is going to be upset. And let's be honest. The cost to do this is fractions of a penny compared to contorting around environmental obstacles for shitty gain.

Or you can spend another Hundred hours in search of a subpar solution. How much money has been wasted on doing that? Stop the insanity!


I've used devices like https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-110VDSLEXT-Ethernet-Exte... in similar cases. You will likely need to modify your phone lines to get a pair from the living room to the work room, though.


I work for a cable company and even we shy away from Moca if we don't have to use it. The problem with Moca is that we do not control the customers wiring on their side of the demarcation point. Who knows how many Gold Radioshack splitters are in those walls.

We also provide a mesh networking solution from plume and it uses a 5ghz backhaul and does a great job. I would recommend it.


Powerline AV2 has been very reliable for me in multiple locations (four houses/apartments in 2 different countries) with both netgear and d-link equipment. If it’s not working for you honestly I’d look at having the house wiring checked because it might well be weird, faulty, improperly grounded, “floated” and a number of other things.


I can't speak to the gocoax MoCA adapters, but I have the Motorola MM1025's and they work flawlessly. They are rather difficult to get nowadays, but I hear the MM1000's are just fine as well (just GbE rather than 2.5GbE).

Other than that, you could go for more serious p2p wireless or string a CAT-5/6 cable.


Fiber comes to my lower ground floor, from there there are several cat6 that runs across length and breadth of lower ground and ground floor. Provides excellent connectivity across the house. Just ensure there is minimal channel interference across various connected routers.


You should really make sure thrme ground for your house is in proper condition. The electricity finding other ways to the ground will mess up powerline or moca


One clever hack you can use in some homes is to run cat5 in your HVAC ducts.

Even if you can’t direct-connect to the router, perhaps you can move the router a few rooms closer.


That is probably not up to code


You clearly haven't run premise wiring commercially or residentially.

I would use non-halogen plenum, cat8, shielded cable. Stranded for bare connectors or solid core for 110 punchdown on a wall plate + J box.


There is plenum safe Ethernet cable.


if you have any twisted pair (or even untwisted):

https://www.netsys-direct.com/en-gb/products/kit-managed-g-f...

Works well for me (600mbit down / 400mbit up, over a single pair of cat 3)


I have the exact same issue. New home with cat6 cabling in every room except my office. I didn't want WiFi (WAP or bridge) because it's in a "smart home" community and there is much interference. I went with MOCA (Up to 1.4Gbps Gigabit Ethernet ZyXEL HLA4205) because there was a RG6 drop present. You say that you're having problems with your MOCA and that you have "PoE Filters", so I assume you mean something like the ones I use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KO5KHSQ

You did not say whether or not you are using the RG6 elsewhere in the house for TV. (I am.) Your RG6 cables probably terminate into a distribution transformer (splitter). I solved the interference problem by installing those filters between the antenna/CATV inputs and the distribution transformer. (If you have a cable modem fed by the same RG6 plant, you CANNOT use the RG6 plant for in-house MOCA.)

Here are some things to check:

1) Make sure you're using RG6 cable everywhere and that there is no RG59 cable being used anywhere.

2) Make sure all the F connectors on your RG6 drops are good. F connectors are generally poor and have a lot of insertion loss. You may need to scrape/sand the center conductor to ensure a good connection because it is sometimes coated/plated with some anti-corrosive.

3) Depending on the brand of MOCA adapter, you may be able to access the (undocumented) user interface by browsing to: http://192.168.1.3

Note that you'll need to change/add the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet to your LAN, and pick a non-conflicting IP address on that subnet in order to connect. Also, all the MOCA adapters have the same fixed IP address, so to connect to each one, you'll need to be on the Ethernet LAN side of the one you wish to communicate with. Once connected, you can see diagnostics with signal levels and a PSD graph that will show you if the frequency response of your RG6 cabling is poor. There may be some settings on the page that will allow you to change the "channel" numbers being used in your MOCA network. The menu on my (ZYXEL) MOCA adapters has a left pane with the following (JavaScript) links:

Device Info

Node Info

Statistics

Configuration

SW Update

The information page for each link loads in the frame to the right of the left pane.

With my MOCA adapters/filters, I get nearly gigabit speeds.

Here's what I get in my office (via MOCA):

     Server: CenturyLink - Las Vegas, NV (id = 16446)

        ISP: CenturyLink

    Latency:     6.72 ms   (0.13 ms jitter)

   Download:   884.27 Mbps (data used: 834.4 MB)                               

     Upload:   866.54 Mbps (data used: 690.7 MB)
Packet Loss: Not available.

Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/db691c92-eb75-4307-8050-3...

And here's what I get in the rest of the house:

     Server: CenturyLink - Las Vegas, NV (id = 16446)

        ISP: CenturyLink

    Latency:     2.94 ms   (0.33 ms jitter)

   Download:   938.62 Mbps (data used: 457.8 MB)                               

     Upload:   940.63 Mbps (data used: 447.1 MB)
Packet Loss: Not available.

Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/0a2005ee-b225-4d33-9bb9-0...

Note that the MOCA bridges add 3-4ms of latency.


>If you have a cable modem fed by the same RG6 plant, you CANNOT use the RG6 plant for in-house MOCA

you can. they use different frequencies. only docsis4 may start overlap with moca. i had docsis 3.1 modem and moca 2.5 on same wiring without any problem


There is a weird setup that can happen as well -- MoCA overlaps with DirecTV. DirecTV gets around this by using their own frequency variant of MoCA for their set top boxes and the like (called DECA), which overlaps with standard cable frequencies.

So yes, you can't use RG6 plant for in-house DECA, but you can use standard MoCA. Just make sure there's a MoCA filter at your cable entrance.


the only interaction that i had with directv in my life, it's when i took down directv dish in order to put starlink on it.

about moca filter, strictly speaking - it's not required. but if one doesn't have it, he could have common network with neighbors or have filter slapped by telco on tap in case "noise" create problems


Okay, it MAY be possible for them to coexist, but speeds will be degraded.


i had 1.2gb down from xfinity and 1gb via moca. if something were degraded - i didn't find it


Can you get full bandwidth to/from the Internet while also getting full bandwidth between your MOCA adapters?


not in any particular order

- i have better things to do with my life than doing those tests

- i have now fiber and proper ethernet wiring, so i can't test even if i want

- moca and docsis usually operate at different frequencies. if it's not bottom shelf equipment - why should be there any interaction ? it's same like saying that because you have cable internet your tv will have problems with tv programming

- most of docsis modems top out at 1002mhz iirc. moca starts at 12xx

- moca doesn't just starts running. in the beginning iirc it figures out what frequency range is usable. you can also lock it to specific range i think

- i never saw xfinity provisioning channels even close to 1000mhz range


I've heard rumors that you can use an adapter to plug Coax into a Wifi antenna port on two different routers, and run "Wifi", but it's actually over a cable rather than airwaves. I have not tested this or verified its effectiveness, or tested if actual wireless devices will see it or not.


It absolutely is possible to run Wi-Fi over coax, but you'd want it to be 50-ohm coax with an attenuator, not a straight shot through 75-ohm CATV cable.


That doesn’t work well at least with commodity routers and if you are laying cable you might as well just do Ethernet.


I think the idea is to re-use existing coax cable to link the devices without laying any new cable.


You can do that with MoCA but not with wifi routers.

TBH this is a bit of an odd one Wifi Meshes are extremely good these days and provide excellent coverage as long as you spend money on actually decent equipment if you use your crappy ISP provided router then ofc repeaters won’t work.




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