Setting Up A MoCA 2.0 Ethernet-Over-Coax Network, Linux LAN Benchmarks

[NotMine999]

Michael, I have no idea why your powerline ethernet is so bad. I have an older home with tons of previously done "mr. diy wiring" and I don't get less than 40mbs with mine on the second floor on the outside of the house when I only pay for 50mbs internet. And thats over the wifi emitted from that said powerline device.

I love mine, was the best thing I ever bought for my home internet network.

I also agree with these Powerline line speeds. In my case the wiring is original to the house (1993) and the devices are Netgear Nano Powerline adapters.

I considered MoCA at one time, and DECA before that, but it meant rearranging the coax cabling within the house to achieve the connections that I wanted. That rearrangement effort made Powerline look like a decent short-term solution and "hardwire" the correct long-term solution since I would rather run Ethernet twisted pair cable compared to coax.

If you have the option to "hardwire", make the effort if you know how to do such work safely. If you have a multi-story house, then the "hardwire" effort may be immense or "darn near impossible"; your dwelling will be the deciding factor.

[tjwhaynes]

I have a pair of ZyXel PLA5456KIT Powerline Pass-Thru 2-Port Gigabit Ethernet (rated up to 2Gbps). These manage just a little over 100Mbitsps in my own testing in a house built in the 1960s and were purchased to improve the streaming video performance to my TV. They wake up from sleep fairly quickly (four seconds until DHCP is up from cold) and are vastly better than the wifi in my place. The 2Gbps max is essentially a theoretical limit - every plug/socket/junction box between the two powerline adapters halves the signal strength.

I might try these MoCA adapters if I really need more than 100Mbps as there are a few coax cables through the house that are essentially unused (I have satellite - at least until I can get at the sports channels via streaming WITHOUT needing a satellite or cable subscription).

[Holograph]

For some US readers, those with Verizon FIOS, MoCA is actually what FIOS uses in most cases and you can buy MoCA adapters to add additional networked devices in your home (and you'd only need one adapter per extra device - Verizon's router has 2 MoCA adapters built in - 1 for WAN and 1 for LAN, on different channels. The WAN segment is encrypted and the LAN segment is not.

I've had mixed luck with some brands of MoCA adapters, though. I had a lot of packet loss with a D-Link one even though the cable was recent and was RG-6 and not some old RG-59 crap. This was with using the D-link on the WAN segment into my own router (Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite). Switched my FIOS to ethernet, packet loss fixed. Same router. This was with a MoCA 1.x adapter as MoCA 2.0 is relatively new.

Actiontec is the brand that Verizon themselves use and is probably better than D-Link for MoCA. Benchmarks look pretty good.


Edit: By the way, there is a similar spec to MoCA 1.x called DECA. It's used by DirecTV and it uses a lower carrier frequency to avoid interfering with satellite signals, but would conflict with standard cable in the US. I mention that it's similar to MoCA 1.x because both MoCA 1.x and DECA are much slower than MoCA 2.0, but the signal is still more stable than wifi and is in some cases still a much better option than wifi. And you can buy DirecTV DECA adapters for under $20/adapter on Amazon/Ebay.

Not everything I've mentioned is directly related to the article, but since some people were unfamiliar with MoCA, that's what I know about it. Maybe someone else will find this information useful.

[blackout23]

Haha wtf, I was researching this the entire afternoon already and now there's a review on Phoronix. I'm using 200 Mbps DLAN and on the second floor performance is just shit. The nearest sockets give me 14 Mbps and when I put the adapter in another room on the second floor and run a very long Ethernet cable back to the PC i get ~34 Mbps. Wifi is just terrible and so I bought some new 2000 Mbps DLAN Adapters (there are only 2 products on the market) hoping they'd scale linearly even with the bad connection to the second floor, but nooooope same shitty 20-30 Mbps.
So I thought about the TV sockets that are on both floors and also quickly stumbled upon the ECB6000 and ECB6200.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetwork...ontec_ecb6000/ (includes 6200 review)

The only problem is that they aren't sold anywhere outside the US and I'm not sure if they'd conflict with the EURODocsis 3.0 channels used by my cable modem and cable TV. Basically every channel above 850 Mhz should be free:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multim..._Coax_Alliance but this says that MoCA 2.0 also uses 500 Mhz, which is occupied by the TV signal. I'm not sure if these adapters can be configured to only use specific channels. The ECB6200 seems to be as good as just having a real Gigabit Ethernet bridge between the floors and only adds 2-3 ms of latency.

[dh04000]

Michael, I have no idea why your powerline ethernet is so bad. I have an older home with tons of previously done "mr. diy wiring" and I don't get less than 40mbs with mine on the second floor on the outside of the house when I only pay for 50mbs internet. And thats over the wifi emitted from that said powerline device.

I love mine, was the best thing I ever bought for my home internet network.

[Benson B.]

Almost two years ago I used the ActionTec ECB2500C to extend my internet down into the basement. No interference with the internet or cable TV coax, which mostly use the same coax runs. Quite Pleased.

[Michael]

These are fascinating products. I didn't know MoCA existed (or the ZyXEL for that matter). They are a little expensive but they also seem like great alternatives for buildings where neither wifi nor tearing down walls for ethernet are good options.

To clarify - I'm guessing moCA doesn't get affected by normal cable internet or TV?

I am using 'normal cable Internet' and have no issues at all with it. It's not supposed to affect the TV either, but since I only use Vue and not any cable TV service, can't personally confirm but in all my research haven't hit any people complaining of it causing problems with their TV.

[torsionbar28]

To clarify - I'm guessing moCA doesn't get affected by normal cable internet or TV?

From the product description: "Will not interfere with cable TV services"

[schmidtbag]

These are fascinating products. I didn't know MoCA existed (or the ZyXEL for that matter). They are a little expensive but they also seem like great alternatives for buildings where neither wifi nor tearing down walls for ethernet are good options.

To clarify - I'm guessing moCA doesn't get affected by normal cable internet or TV?

[_blk]

Interesting. How about round-trip time on an idle line? Many applications profit a lot more from quick round-trips than from bandwidth.