Avoiding IP Address Conflicts and Data Collisions

[eshock]

I'm considering using moca adapters to extend the network in my house. I'm a little confused about some of the details though. I was going to buy three moca adapters total. One I would connect from the lan port of my router and the coax in the wall. The second moca adapter would connect to the tv in the family room and the third moca adapter would connect to the computer in the bedroom. If my tv and computer each have unique IP addresses how can they effectively share the same port on the router? Does my router know to forward data for both IP addresses to the same physical port on the router? How do they also avoid data collisions? For example, what happens if my computer and tv want to send data over the Internet at the same time? Will this cause interference on the coax line? What is the limit to the number of moca adapters that can share the same coax line? Do I need an alternate set up such as a using a pair of moca adapter for each device and connecting each one to a unique port on my router? Thanks for clearing this up for me.

 

[abailey]

No your solution will work just fine. You can generally hook up to 16 MOCA devices together max, but it also depends on the manufacturer of the MOCA device. Yes you can share the same port on the router. Collision avoidance is built into both your Ethernet connections on the router and into you MOCA devices. If multiple MOCA devices are requesting information from the internet at the same time, it is not a problem, they will just have to share bandwidth. If you have a really fast internet connection you may see some gains by using a pair of MOCA adapters for each device so they don't have to share bandwidth. Personally I would set it up to share at first, and if you see problems with sharing bandwidth, then order some more MOCA devices.

 

[thoma]

MoCA shares the physical medium using TDMA. Each MoCA device is assigned a timeslot in which it can talk, and all the other devices listen. There are no collisions, unlike Wi-Fi or classic Ethernet.

 

[CaptainSTX]

...The second moca adapter would connect to the tv in the family room ...

I assume you mean that this adapter would provide an Ethernet connection to a smart TV and the TV would also have a coaxial connection.

 

[stevech]

MoCA and power line adapters are "layer 2" devices - they move packets based on the MAC addresses of the source and destination interface devices. So do Ethernet switches and WiFi access points. IP addresses don't come into play in layer 2 devices - except some have an IP address just to do admin.

 

[eshock]

I assume you mean that this adapter would provide an Ethernet connection to a smart TV and the TV would also have a coaxial connection.

Yes, it's a smart tv and the moca adapter would provide an internet connection for streaming things like Netflix.

 

[stevech]

My smart TV connects to the LAN via a MoCa Link over coax. Works fine. I did this because to get cat5 to where the TV (due to construction) is would have to be outside via a trench and I'm too lazy for that. The TV end on mine connects to a cheap ethernet switch to fan-out to the TV, DVD, a WiFi access point, and a HTPC.