11-17-2019 07:16 PM
Thanks @Datalink for the quick reply. I was away and couldn't respond until now. I read those posts previously before posting here... great detail and I learned quite a bit... but I'm still left with some unanswered questions and look forward to your input.
To answer some of your questions:
- I do use Nextbox Home PVR capability
- The house is wired with RG-6 (~15-20 year old house)
- no luck on the structured wiring... only has one RG-6 behind the wallplate.
- there is Cat5e cable on the opposite side of the room that was wired up for a phone line (which I don't use as I have VoIP and only leverage 2 RJ11 ports (1 for the VoIP adapter, 1 for the main phone... other phones connect to the main over bluetooth I presume).
My alarm system uses the VoIP house line which is about the only reason we have VoIP to being with... still a lot cheaper at ~$3 per month compared to using a non-phone line option for our alarm which would cost $10 per month.
Given the above, what would you recommend?
- if I go MoCA, do I need 1 adapter or 2? Any recommendation on which adapter(s) to use?
- should I instead use the Cat5e cable? my only concern here is the location of the cable... it's on an exterior wall and I fear it may be a challenge to get to through the attic and the sloped roof at that location.
Ultimately, I'd like the modem, router and switch in the basement with the wifi access point ceiling mounted on the 2nd floor while maximizing my gigabit connection (hence not sure if the Cat5e is ideal even though I have read that it may be able to handle it).
12-07-2019 09:30 AM
12-07-2019 09:59 AM - edited 12-07-2019 10:00 AM
1. My personal opinion is to go with two MoCA adapters, such as the Adaptec ECB6200 or goCoax WF-803M
https://www.actiontec.com/products/ecb6200/
https://www.gocoax.com/products
The modem does have a MoCA port on it with a claimed throughput rate of 800 Mb/s. How well it works, don't know. In any event, if you bought one adapter, you could try the modem as other half of the MoCA bridge to see how well it works and consider buying another adapter if you weren't satisfied with its performance. And then again, it might be just as easy to buy a pair of adapters up front. Food for thought.....
2. Do you have telephone ports available throughout the house, that you're not using? If so, are they fed with Cat-5 or Cat-3 cabling? If they are Cat-5 you could probably repurpose them to ethernet cable ports.
3. How is the upstairs ceiling access point connected and where is the other end of the feed cable? I'm assuming that there is a POE adapter somewhere in the cable system.
12-09-2019 08:12 AM
02-24-2020 07:47 AM - edited 02-24-2020 07:49 AM
02-24-2020 09:47 PM
02-24-2020 10:20 PM
@rmann2020 in either case you're going to need a MoCa filter on the cable that arrives in the house from the external demarcation point. Neither of those splitters have built in MoCA filters.
The first choice looks like a satellite dish splitter, possibly used to connect a receiver to a multi-LNB dish, so it has higher frequency specs, above MoCA 2.0/2.5 specs of 1675 Mhz, along with lower loss specs. The only drawback is the bottom frequency of 10 Mhz versus 5 Mhz that the current Antronix splitters have. I don't think that's a major impediment as I can't see Rogers running upstream channels as low as 10 Mhz due to potential noise problems. My upstream channels are currently running in the 30 to 34 Mhz range. Over the last 6 years that has gone as low as 23.7 Mhz.
The second choice is a new splitter that Antronix brought out a few short months ago. The frequency range is set to match the MoCA 2.0/2.5 frequency range and runs from 5 to 1675 Mhz.
Either splitter works, but the first one has a higher frequency range and lower losses. If buying either one is equally easy or hard to order, I'd probably go with the first choice.
Something to keep in mind, Rogers is getting ready to extent the upper frequency range in the cable system, up to 1218 Mhz, where the lower MoCa D band frequency is 1125 Mhz. So, there is a potential for overlap between a DOCSIS 3.1 OFDM band and a MoCA D-Low band channel. But, its probably going to take month, years, maybe never(??) until Rogers enables an OFDM channel above 1002 Mhz, which is the current upper cable system limit. So, when that happens, MoCA users may have to lock out the MoCA D-Low band on their adapters. So, that will cost some amount of bandwidth on the MoCA system.
Food for thought, if you happen to have structured wiring installed which has a pair of RG-6 cables running to each room, you can use one RG-6 cable for cable / satellite tv purposes and use the other cable for an internal MoCA (ethernet) system. As long as that internal system is never connected to the external cable system, there wouldn't be any need for the MoCA filter. Usually in a structured wiring bundle, you might find one black jacketed RG-6 cable and one white jacketed RG-6. I would expect that if you happened to have structured wiring installed, that would also contain a Cat-5e or Cat-6 ethernet cable. If you haven't checked behind your current wallplates, it might be worth having a look, just to see if there are any unused cables behind the wallplate.
02-25-2020 04:56 AM - edited 02-25-2020 04:58 AM
02-25-2020 02:18 PM - edited 02-25-2020 02:21 PM
Hi @rmann2020
For the splitter, if you bought the first splitter, you should install a 75 ohm terminator on the unused port to prevent any reflection off of the unused port. If you were ever thinking of possibly adding another cable line to the MoCA network, that would give you some flexibility down the road.
If you were to simply purchase the Antronix MoCA splitter with three output ports, that would be fine and you don't have to find a 75 ohm terminator.
The MoCA filter that you referenced is a PPC 344 filter, shown here:
https://www.amazon.ca/Filter-MoCA-Cable-coaxial-networks/dp/B00KO5KHSQ
Rogers uses Antronix MoCA filters shown here:
https://www.antronix.com/products/filters.aspx
Those filters are available in a higher MoCA band rejection than the PPC filter shows, but, I don't know which particular Antronix filter is used by Rogers. If you happen to see a Rogers tech while you're enroute to somewhere, stop and ask if you can scrounge a MoCA 2.0 splitter and a MoCA filter from him. If the tech happens to have those on hand, that might save you a few dollars. You want to ensure that the MoCA 2.0 splitter is the correct splitter with the yellow face and a 5 to 1675 Mhz frequency range.
02-27-2020 06:08 PM