MoCA Network Setup | Ethernet over TV cable

[whyee]

Hi All, I set up my home MoCa system with GoCoax 2.5 back in 2022 with 1 Gpbs broadband.

Now I’m looking to upgrade the broadband speed to 5Gbps. Does this mean only the main router connected to the ONT modem in the living room will get the 5Gbps speed and the mesh/APs at the other MoCa points in the bedrooms will only be limited to 2.5Gbps speed.

So no point even looking at the 10 Gbps broadband since the rest of the MoCa points won’t benefit from the higher speed.

 

[BBCWatcher]

Hi All, I set up my home MoCa system with GoCoax 2.5 back in 2022 with 1 Gpbs broadband.

Now I’m looking to upgrade the broadband speed to 5Gbps. Does this mean only the main router connected to the ONT modem in the living room will get the 5Gbps speed and the mesh/APs at the other MoCa points in the bedrooms will only be limited to 2.5Gbps speed.

So no point even looking at the 10 Gbps broadband since the rest of the MoCa points won’t benefit from the higher speed.

The fastest speed you can ever get between your device and a remote server is governed by the slowest aspect of the many things in between. If for example the remote server is sending data via a cloud data center connection that's only ever going to hit 100 Mb/s (~0.1 Gb/s) peak to you then who cares whether your home Internet connection is 500 Mb/s, 1 Gb/s, 2.5 Gb/s, 5 Gb/s, or 10 Gb/s. It doesn't matter. (And that's exactly what happens with audio and video streaming, by the way. Even 8K streaming video requires less than 100 Mb/s. These speed numbers only ever matter for huge file downloads or uploads, if they ever do. They won't help make a video game play any better, or a Netflix show look any better.)

In terms of your coax cable, if you have the goCoax MA2500C or MA2500D adapters then the fastest speed you can ever get across that cable is (something less than) 2.5 Gb/s. In the future there may be MoCA 3.0 and/or G.hn Wave 3 compatible adapters that'll be able to drive (something less than) 10 Gb/s over a coax cable, but there are no such products yet as far as I know.

But that might not be your bottleneck either. In the real world in Singapore, with often crowded Wi-Fi spectrum, it's very difficult to get even one wireless device with the whole Wi-Fi radio to itself to be constrained by a 2.5 Gb/s hop.

In short, don't worry about it unless you're trying to upload/download huge files with wired devices and you're actually experiencing some delays that you find unacceptable. For example, you've got some 100 GB video game you want to download to a gaming PC right now. On a 1 Gb/s home Internet service the best you could ever do is about 13.5 minutes for 100 GB. On a 2.5 Gb/s home Internet service the best you could ever do is about 5.5 minutes. And 5.0 Gb/s would cut that to under 3 minutes, best case. To wired devices, assuming no other bottleneck. (Wi-Fi, probably very little help if any.) Any wired device attached across the coax cable with MoCA 2.5 adapters will be subject to that 2.5 Gb/s best case limit.

 

[Apparatus]

Hi All, I set up my home MoCa system with GoCoax 2.5 back in 2022 with 1 Gpbs broadband.

Now I’m looking to upgrade the broadband speed to 5Gbps. Does this mean only the main router connected to the ONT modem in the living room will get the 5Gbps speed and the mesh/APs at the other MoCa points in the bedrooms will only be limited to 2.5Gbps speed.

So no point even looking at the 10 Gbps broadband since the rest of the MoCa points won’t benefit from the higher speed.

With 10Gbps there are 2 benefits

1) If your devices in the entire network are 10Gbps then speed will be greatly enhanced at least for intra networking

2) 10Gbps bandwidth can be spread to different devices if they are accessed simultaneously by different users. Example if you have 4 users accessing internet or performing network activities. 10Gbps will be distributed to the 4 users so speed will be better as compared to 1Gbps distributed to 4 users

 

[BBCWatcher]

With 10Gbps there are 2 benefits

Potential benefits.

1) If your devices in the entire network are 10Gbps then speed will be greatly enhanced at least for intra networking

Only if there’s no other bottleneck. If for example a storage device involved can only handle 2.8 Gb/s for the particular data movement underway then that’ll be the limiting factor. Moreover, it only matters in terms of reducing the time required for large data (files) movement. If you don’t move large files, or don’t care about whether it takes X seconds or X+Y seconds, then it doesn’t matter.

2) 10Gbps bandwidth can be spread to different devices if they are accessed simultaneously by different users. Example if you have 4 users accessing internet or performing network activities. 10Gbps will be distributed to the 4 users so speed will be better as compared to 1Gbps distributed to 4 users

Only if they can actually do that. They can’t do that if they’re gated by a shared 2.5 Gb/s network segment (the MoCA hop over coax for example). They can‘t do that if they’re sharing a wireless network in a real-world environment. And again, it doesn’t matter unless it’s simultaneous large file transfers AND the difference in transmission time is meaningful, has value in terms of experience. It doesn’t matter if for example the devices are simultaneously streaming audio or video, which won’t saturate a slower link. It doesn’t matter if they’re browsing the Web, which won’t saturate a slower link.

 

[Apparatus]

Potential benefits.

Only if there’s no other bottleneck. If for example a storage device involved can only handle 2.8 Gb/s for the particular data movement underway then that’ll be the limiting factor. Moreover, it only matters in terms of reducing the time required for large data (files) movement. If you don’t move large files, or don’t care about whether it takes X seconds or X+Y seconds, then it doesn’t matter.

Only if they can actually do that. They can’t do that if they’re gated by a shared 2.5 Gb/s network segment (the MoCA hop over coax for example). They can‘t do that if they’re sharing a wireless network in a real-world environment. And again, it doesn’t matter unless it’s simultaneous large file transfers AND the difference in transmission time is meaningful, has value in terms of experience. It doesn’t matter if for example the devices are simultaneously streaming audio or video, which won’t saturate a slower link. It doesn’t matter if they’re browsing the Web, which won’t saturate a slower link.

Then get a storage device that can give about 10Gbps. I already said using 10Gbps devices in the network. A M.2 NVMe SSD NAS or using a 5-bay HDD NAS with a 10Gbps output can easily achieve that

That's the purpose in using 10Gbps.....also for sharing.

 

[BBCWatcher]

Then get a storage device that can give about 10Gbps. I already said using 10Gbps devices in the network. A M.2 NVMe SSD NAS or using a 5-bay HDD NAS with a 10Gbps output can easily achieve that

That's the purpose in using 10Gbps.....also for sharing.

OK, but will that additional expense make your life better — and enough better to justify the additional expense? Not for most people, not at the present time. But if you’re that unusual household that’s copying or moving large files in your household, and you get value from being able to copy or move them within X minutes instead of X+Y minutes, sure, spend the money and have fun if you want.

This thread is about coax cable connections using MoCA adapters. Currently that technology offers a notional 2.5 Gb/s speed over the coax cable since there aren’t any MoCA 3.0 or G.hn Wave 3 compatible adapters available yet. If you want something faster than coax then you’ll probably have to run new cables in your house. The whole point of MoCA adapters is to reuse existing coax cabling so that you don’t have to run (ugly?) cables.

 

[TanKianW]

Now I’m looking to upgrade the broadband speed to 5Gbps. Does this mean only the main router connected to the ONT modem in the living room will get the 5Gbps speed and the mesh/APs at the other MoCa points in the bedrooms will only be limited to 2.5Gbps speed.

Yup.

So no point even looking at the 10 Gbps broadband since the rest of the MoCa points won’t benefit from the higher speed.

Yup, I will think so too. I doubt most home users could saturate or optimise a 10G WAN/LAN network. Unless it is not just raw speed you are after but also IOPs, but that is still bottleneck by your internal MoCA LAN network.

2.5G will have been overkill for most, unless you enjoy seeing blistering speedtest results without any real life pratical use, or maybe just for learning/experience purposes. If there is no real need, I think what you having (2.5G) is more than sufficient. Unless the price of >2.5G is very competitive, then why no? Just understand that it will not go beyond the backbone 2.5G at your place with MoCA.​

 

[Apparatus]

OK, but will that additional expense make your life better — and enough better to justify the additional expense? Not for most people, not at the present time. But if you’re that unusual household that’s copying or moving large files in your household, and you get value from being able to copy or move them within X minutes instead of X+Y minutes, sure, spend the money and have fun if you want.

This thread is about coax cable connections using MoCA adapters. Currently that technology offers a notional 2.5 Gb/s speed over the coax cable since there aren’t any MoCA 3.0 or G.hn Wave 3 compatible adapters available yet. If you want something faster than coax then you’ll probably have to run new cables in your house. The whole point of MoCA adapters is to reuse existing coax cabling so that you don’t have to run (ugly?) cables.

But TS talks of 10Gbps and it's limited use with MoCA mah. So I offered my points of view to him in using 10Gbps as a whole

 

[BBCWatcher]

Of course if some Internet Service Provider is offering a higher speed for the same or lower price, that's fine even if you can't use the higher notional speed over the fibre. StarHub, for example, is currently offering 5 Gb/s Internet service for $29.55 per month (plus NLT fee probably) on a 24 month contract. That's a good price. WhizComms charges a little less for their 2.5 Gb/s (1.0 Gb/s per port) service on a 24 month contract (factoring in upfront fees too), although I think there are decent non-speed-related arguments why StarHub has the better overall offer.

 

[phayze]

Anyone know tried to pull fibre over existing trunking for build in coaxial cables in flats? I am thinking to replace the coaxial cable with fibre.

 

[sglandscape]

Anyone know tried to pull fibre over existing trunking for build in coaxial cables in flats? I am thinking to replace the coaxial cable with fibre.

If your trunking is not concealed this can be done easily, if not it's a little more challenging with the fibre connector attached.

 

[BBCWatcher]

Whenever MoCA 3.0 or G.hn Wave-3 coax adapters come to market — hopefully soon — coax should support 10 Gb/s notional line speeds. You can already get 2.5 Gb/s notional with MoCA 2.5 adapters(*). I think it really depends on when MaxLinear releases MoCA 3.0 and/or G.hn Wave-3 chipsets since that seems to be the gating supply factor.

If you're willing to use two or more preexisting cables then the multiple paths can deliver more than 2.5 Gb/s in the aggregate. Some homes have dual coax cable runs (installed to support separate TV and FM radio antenna hookups) and phone cable runs. Conceivably that can add up to about 6.0+ Gb/s total if you're using all 3 cable runs with today's technologies (MoCA 2.5, G.hn Wave-2). In the future that combination might support ~30 Gb/s total.

(*) MaxLinear seems to exceed the spec, so I think it's fair to treat a hop over unshared coax using MoCA 2.5 adapters with 2.5GBASE-T ports as speed equivalent to a 2.5GBASE-T Cat 6 Ethernet cable run. There might be a bit of latency introduced by the MoCA 2.5 adapters, but it isn't much.

 

[joshwong11]

trying to improve the wifi signal in one of my rooms. is this the coaxial outlet that can be used as ethernet?

 

[BBCWatcher]

trying to improve the wifi signal in one of my rooms. is this the coaxial outlet that can be used as ethernet?

Yes, with adapters, and assuming the coaxial wiring is still intact between the points you’re trying to connect.

On edit: By the way, it’s possible to date that outlet fairly accurately. Singapore added the prefix 6 to fixed line numbers in March, 2002. So a 7 digit fixed line telephone number must be before that date. But also StarHub acquired Singapore Cable Vision (SCV) in 2001. Maybe there was some old outlet/sticker stock that was installed after the acquisition, but that’s another limiting date. I don’t think the CP-39 standard was published before 1994, so that seems to be the earliest possible date.

It’s amazing what you can do with ~25-30 year old coaxial wiring. Pushing 2.5 Gb/s (notional) over that wiring is pretty impressive. Even ~100 year old telephone wiring can usually handle data traffic fairly well with G.hn Wave-2 adapters.