No matter how hard I tried, the internet connection in my kitchen has always been less than dependable with several Wi-Fi dead spots that I just couldn’t seem to get rid of. I tried using one of the best Wi-Fi extenders and even one of the best powerline extenders all to no avail. Short of running Ethernet cables through the walls as well as a thick concrete floor, what else could I do to fix my connectivity troubles?
After exhausting all of my other options, I decided it was time to try using Media over Coax Adapter or MoCA technology. So much more than a mix of coffee and hot chocolate, MoCA uses cable TV wiring instead of Ethernet or a wireless signal to extend your home network even further. It’s an easy way to put data where you want in your home, but as you’ll see, it may not be for everyone.
First, the basics. MoCA is a technology that’s been around for years, and I’m sort of surprised that I never thought to give it a try before. MoCA routes networked data packets over the coaxial cabling in most homes to bringing cable TV to all of their rooms. In other words, it does double duty by distributing TV and data.
MoCA promises a setup that can be as easy as plugging in a box next to one of the best Wi-Fi routers and then running data over your home’s coaxial cabling. Then on the other end, there’s another MoCA device to convert this data back from traveling over coaxial cable to Ethernet.
A word of warning
The MoCA devices should work with just about any coaxial cabling, but while coaxial cable is well shielded from external interference that can degrade a data signal, older installations might cause a bottleneck. That’s because they have lower quality cables as well as inferior connectors and splitters that may hold back performance. In other words, the newer everything is, the faster the data should run.
MoCA is not for every house though. By using frequencies that overlap with the current DOCSIS 3.1 cable data standard, it might require an inexpensive filter. That said, MoCA doesn’t work with AT&T U-verse and satellite TV systems, like Direct TV and Dish, which use a similar and incompatible technology.
Data in, data out
Sold by a variety of networking companies, MoCA devices are available from Actiontec, Asus, ScreenBeam and TRENDnet. Even better, Arris and others have built MoCA into some of the best cable modems so all you’ll need is a receiver to grab data from a cable TV coaxial line where you want it. MoCA’s nearly 1,000 foot range should be fine for all but the largest of homes.
Inexpensive and small enough to hide, the TRENDnet TMO-312C devices I used cost $120 for a pair and $65 each for extras. Among the newest MoCA modules, they can connect up to 16 devices with gigabit per second (Gbps) wired networking ports.
Both MoCA units have a coaxial screw-on connector for the cable line, an RJ-45 networking port for the Ethernet data and a power connector. For many, the biggest constraint will be that with MoCA, you need an AC outlet close to the coaxial cable connector. This makes it so you won’t have cords running everywhere which is exactly why you may have considered going with MoCA in the first place.
Turning many into one
The secret to MoCA is the way it bonds separate channels to make them appear to the end user as a single, cohesive data stream.
The current MoCA 2.5 spec that the TRENDnet TMO-312C uses can bond up to five 100MHz data channels that can carry a maximum of 500 Mbps each. The data travels over the coaxial cables in the 1.125 to 1.675Ghz range to yield a total theoretical throughput of 2.5 Gbps.
As fast as that is, the TMO-312C retains compatibility with MoCA’s older standards that range from version 1.0 (maximum of 100 Mbps) to version 1.1 (175 Mbps) to version 2.0 (1 Gbps). The upcoming MoCA 3.0 spec offers a theoretical peak speed of 10 Gbps but there’s still no word on when equipment that supports this new standard might appear.
At 4.4 x 3.5 x 1 inches, the TRENDnet TMO-312C devices are about the size of a pocket calculator and tiny compared to the networking equipment I usually use.
That said, you’ll likely need a few other things, like a couple coaxial splitters that turn a single cable connection into one for your cable modem and another for the downstream data connection. Be sure they’re rated at a minimum of 2 GHz or you’ll risk slowing the data’s flow. There’s a good chance you’ll also need a couple Ethernet patch cords as well.
Nothing to load
After plugging everything in, the MoCA adapters take over with no software or app to install. Be patient, because it can take upwards of a minute for the connection to establish itself. To gauge its peak performance, I set up a mini MoCA network with a Netgear Orbi RBE871 router and a 50-foot length of high-frequency coaxial cable that I then doubled to 100 feet.
A word of advice, be careful to use a wrench to torque the cable line’s F connector tight. This will avoid the frustration of suffering through a slow or intermittent signal.
With everything plugged in and all three of the TMO-312C’s LEDs showing green, my mini network delivered 1.536 Gbps with 50-feet of coaxial cabling using Keysight’s IxChariot networking benchmark set to simulate 10 data-hungry users. On the downside, the network latency (or delay) rose from 8 milliseconds to 14 milliseconds. That may not thrill online gamers but it’s tolerable and about what you should expect from a Wi-Fi connection.
At 50 feet, Okla’s SpeedTest registered a throughput reading of 319.8 Mbps out of my Internet connection’s 341.0 Mbps. Doubling the distance to 100 feet had a marginal effect, lowering the throughput marginally to 318.9 Mbps.
Be sure to tighten the connectors
So far so good, but in the real world, MoCA would send my data over elderly coaxial infrastructure. After I put one TMO-312C device under the Lenovo all-in-one PC in my kitchen, I set the other up next to my router.
Using the kitchen PC, the MoCA networking leg connected after about 20 seconds and delivered an average of 92.6 Mbps out of my 341 Mbps connection. It’s more reliable, just as good for watching 4K videos and playing games online as for email and downloading files. Finally, I now had a fully connected kitchen. However, I suspect newer coaxial hardware would have delivered better performance. In fact, sub-gigabit data plans are MoCA’s sweet spot with more than enough throughput to satisfy several family members.
The devices are economical to use at 4.3 watts of power consumption each. If they’re left to run 24/7 and you pay the national average of 16 cents per kilowatt hour, the electricity bill should be about $12 a year, a very small price to pay for additional connectivity indeed. Neither device got over 87 degrees Fahrenheit despite gigabytes of data flowing back and forth.
Unfortunately, there are few customization options and using them might be a little difficult for home networking beginners. To get to the adapter’s interface, I had to change the Ethernet connection to a static “192.168.144.1” IP address followed by typing “192.168.144.200” into the browser’s address bar. This opened the basic and utilitarian configuration pages that allowed adding a password, rebooting the devices and upgrading the firmware, but not much more.
Happily, everything is encrypted with a 128-bit key. That way even if someone gets physical access to the cables, they can’t see your data.
Case closed
Start to finish, it took about 20 minutes to add a MoCA network extension to my kitchen, but I’ll need to put in another 15 or 20 minutes at some point to add an access point that turns MoCA’s Ethernet data into a wireless signal. It may seem modest but the speed that MoCA delivers is amazing to me considering that it travels over old coaxial cables buried in my walls for more than 30 years. The equipment had no effect on TV reception or quality either.
For all those with down-to-earth sub-gigabit data plans like me, MoCA is one of the easiest ways to extend a network into previously disconnected areas. It may not be perfect, but MoCA technology is good enough to use for pushing a network to places I wouldn’t have thought convenient or even possible. It’s now just another part of my networking toolkit and something I’ll keep in mind when others say they have difficulties bringing their network’s connectivity to parts of their home that are more difficult to reach.
