DIRECTV Broadband DECA Ethernet to Coax Adapter - Third Generation

[dfarning]

I was wondering if anyone has any experience working with DIRECTV Broadband DECA Ethernet to Coax Adapter - Third Generation. Amazon is currently selling them for about $25 for a pack of two. Seems like a really good price if they work.

To make a long story short my WRT1900AC died of heat exhaustion. Falling back to the type N wireless router that came with the DSL modem is causing the family to revolt! I need to rethink my home network.

After looking at various solutions it seems the best way to go is the install four TP-Link AC1200 Wireless Wi-Fi Access Points and use moca adapters to use the existing coaxial cable for backhaul.

We don't currently use the coaxial cable for anything (ie no cable tv) so I don't think interference will be an issue. I can disconnect the cable going out of the house so that there is no issues with signals being push outside the house.

I am left scratching my head thinking these things must be to good to be real.

 

[abailey]

Yes I use 4 of them in my house (I actually use the Generation II type). They work really well. Yes I would disconnect your feed from outside the house. If you use the Generation 3, make sure to get the ones with power supplies. Trying to power them with USB type chargers is a fail. Also the DECA adapters have 100Mbit port speed so you limited to that max. Anyway I purchased mine in 2014 and have been using them 24/7 since then with no problems.

Also if you use splitters make sure they are rated for at least 2000MHz.

 

[abailey]

Also, I don't know about your home layout but 4 WAPs in one home is usually overkill. You don't want too much overlap of your going to have problems with finding enough clear channels as well as problems getting roaming to work well.

 

[dfarning]

Thanks for the help. I have a bit of a weird situation. My guess is every one's house is weird in its own way.

1. In one corner of main floor of the house is my office/electronic lab which has the incoming modem, router, NAS and a wired network. All of the walls of the office and bedrooms have a sound reduction barrier which is hard on WIFI signals.
2. At the other end of the house is my garage/workshop. There is usually a laptop or two with a couple of raspberries PI controlling and/or recording one of my DIY projects.
3. In the middle is the living area.
4. Finally, most of the media and kid's stuff is in the family room in the finished basement.

I placed an order for two of the DECA adapters. I'll start with a cable between the office and living room. Then put an AP in living room. That AP should be able reach to the basement and garage if only with a slower connection.

Edit for clarity. I was using the terms DECA and MOCA interchangeably. It seems that MOCA is a standard while these DECA devices seem to be proprietary to DirectTV. Either way, it seems worth a try.

 

[sfx2000]

One challenge with DECA's is that if one has MOCA (for CATV box extensions) and DOCSIS broadband on the same cable along with DECA, one can run into interference concerns... that's why most MOCA adapters have two profiles - one for cable, and one for DBS (DirecTV/DISH)

Other than that, DECA's are pretty reliable... no management options, but not really needed, as they're basically layer 2 devices... they're sensitive to the quality of the coax and splitters, that's why most DTV installers will insist on doing a separate cable run if they do the install rather than run on the existing coax runs already in place.

 

[dfarning]

Yes, it seems that a lot of the people who have problems with either DECAs and MOCA are running into unexpected interference issues.

Signal attenuation seems to be a significant issue for DECA installs. I was unable to find much useful information for DIY installer on the interwebs. There are a couple a DirectTV installer manuals floating around which provide some reasonable information if one can wade though the proprietary jargon.

When I get home, I'll have to check what kind of cable we have.

 

[sfx2000]

Yes, it seems that a lot of the people who have problems with either DECAs and MOCA are running into unexpected interference issues.

Signal attenuation seems to be a significant issue for DECA installs. I was unable to find much useful information for DIY installer on the interwebs. There are a couple a DirectTV installer manuals floating around which provide some reasonable information if one can wade though the proprietary jargon.

DECA's are fine if you don't have CATV running... they run outside of the DOCSIS broadband channels...

If you're getting TV over the air, and sending it across cable, should be fine...

Since DECA is a DTV thing - most DTV installs are a separate coax install/pull, and not connecting to the existing coax for TV - a physical overlay so to speak.

DTV uses the same runs from the Dish to the HVR to the Remote boxes - current DTV has either DECA directly connected to the remotes and the main box, or to a Wireless Video Bridge... DECA's are then attached to the existing broadband LAN via ethernet.

My install - DTV uses the LAN connection to get VOD, and for some, allow DVR access to the clients when remote over the WAN/

SWM dish --> DTV coax pull --> Splitter - Wireless Video Bridge --> HVR --> Wireless Genies
\ deca -- LAN connection

Get's complicated with DECA's - notice I have the HVR and the WVB inline - the HVR is a DECA endpoint, and it routes IP back thru the WVB back to the Genies, which are IPTV... it's clever stuff - the DTV gear runs on link-local address block - the 169.254.0.0/16 range for networking, but the HVR and Genies will attach themselves also to the local LAN block (example would be 192.168.1.0/24). The HVR is the GW for LAN/WAN, and also presents itself as a switch - so one does see a fair amount of STP chatter...

Since you're picking them up from Amazon, if they don't work, send them back...

 

[dfarning]

Thanks for the additional information.

I grew up in a 1960's ranch with attic access and drop ceilings in the semi-finished basements spaces. I was always running wires from one place to another.

The current house has a finished basement with drywall ceilings where I need access. The main floor has vaulted ceilings over the living/dining area. There is no attic access over the office and bedrooms. I guess I could run new cat 6 cable. But I would need to spend the rest of the winter patching drywall. That doesn't sound like fun.

The other potentially viable option would be to run an external cat 6 cable across one end and the back of the house if the DECA's don't work satisfactory.

Edit: For completeness, I tested powerline network adapters. I got reasonable results when both adapters were in the same room on the same circuit. When the signal needed to pass from one circuit to another through the distribution panel, the performance dropped significantly. My hypothesis is that the whole house surge suppressor which is connected at the panel interfered with the signal.

MoCa seems the way to go.

 

[Fyodor]

I have a few Verizon G1100 modems that I have reconfigured as integrated wireless access points/MoCA bridges. You basically disable the WAN interface, disable DHCP on the LAN interface, give the LAN interface an unused static IP on your subnet, and they work pretty reliably. You can usually find them for about 50-60 bucks used. They support moca 2.0, gigabit ethernet and wireless AC.

 

[sfx2000]

The main floor has vaulted ceilings over the living/dining area. There is no attic access over the office and bedrooms. I guess I could run new cat 6 cable. But I would need to spend the rest of the winter patching drywall. That doesn't sound like fun.

Similar situation - ran coax overhead where I could, and then did a vertical drop outside and drill thru... The white run was mine, the other was DTV... if you go outside, don't forget the j-hook there, keeps moisture outside of the wall.

 

[sfx2000]

Also, I don't know about your home layout but 4 WAPs in one home is usually overkill. You don't want too much overlap of your going to have problems with finding enough clear channels as well as problems getting roaming to work well.

I would agree...

Basic rule of thumb - 2.4GHz is good for around 1600 sq ft, 5GHz is good for 750 sq ft when laying out APs...

 

[dfarning]

A big thanks to everyone who took the time to answer this (and the 1000's) of other threads on this forum.

After sleeping on it... I got up early this morning and cut an access opening in the ceiling of a bedroom closet to the attic over the bedroom/office area. Good lord what a mess; 3/8 dry wall, ~10 inches of blown insulation, and 16 years of dust. All overhead as I worked. A quick look around showed there was a clear run to both the living room and garage/workshop.

Once I get the mess cleaned up and install some sort of removable panel over the access hole I should be able to get the green light from the wife to run the cable. After years of experience she has learned that I am much better at making messes than I am about cleaning them up.

Thanks again, I didn't end up going with the deca/moca solution. While initially much more work, I think the reduced complexity of the network will make it worth the effort of installing an access panel to the attic to run proper wiring.

 

[sfx2000]

To make a long story short my WRT1900AC died of heat exhaustion. Falling back to the type N wireless router that came with the DSL modem is causing the family to revolt! I need to rethink my home network.

BTW - FWIW, it's likely the power adapter that did the fail on the WRT1900ac - the basic board layout and quality is quite good.

The WRT1900ac V1 does pull a fair amount of power compared to later models, and AC adapters are the key point of failure on them...

 

[dfarning]

This was one of the pre-release models they were sending to open source developers at the time.

The fan had been running full speed all the time for the last couple of months. Too much traffic would cause it to shut down and require a reset. This was happening every couple of day.

When if finally died, it had that distinct smell of magic smoke.

Interesting after doing a hard reset, I could ping the device but not ssh into it. I was going to open it up and try to reflash before throwing it out.

 

[Samir]

I have a few Verizon G1100 modems that I have reconfigured as integrated wireless access points/MoCA bridges. You basically disable the WAN interface, disable DHCP on the LAN interface, give the LAN interface an unused static IP on your subnet, and they work pretty reliably. You can usually find them for about 50-60 bucks used. They support moca 2.0, gigabit ethernet and wireless AC.

Thank you very much for this! Yep, you can get them for as cheap as $45 shipped on ebay.

Is there anything you can do with the USB ports? Is there anything to configure on the Moca part or is it pretty much plug and play? What type of throughput have you gotten with them? Near gigabit like the actiontec units?

 

[saiga6360]

I'm tempted to get one of these routers so I'm hoping Fyodor can give us some pointers. I assume Verizon G1100 is the same as the Arris NVG468MQ, so I should be able to use this like any MoCA adapter on my FIOS. I am thinking of getting one instead of another Motorola MoCA adapter. The good thing about that is it has built in gigE ports so I don't have to buy another switch, it also has WiFi which I might be able to use. The bad thing is that it is not a bonded device so I will get slower MoCA than what most of my devices (3 other Motorola MM1000s) can do and may even drag down the speed of the entire bridge. The router is actually cheaper too.

 

[Fyodor]

It's MoCA 2.0 but not bonded, which I think is about 400 megabits/s. I've seen wired transfer rates consistent with that. In terms of wireless, I've only ever accessed internet content and it maxes out my internet connection (100/megabits/s). If you want bonded MoCA there's a more expensive Actiontec wireless extender product that does bonded.

In terms of setup, I don't have a detailed walkthrough document but here's generally what I did.

You plug a laptop into the G1100 (not connected to anything else) via ethernet.

First go into the wireless settings and set the wifi SSID and passwords to those of your network. If you don't want to use the wifi, you disable the wifi networks. I do this step first because the next step sometimes may make the laptop-G1100 direct ethernet connection not work.

I think that on the front page you go click on networks and then there's some kind of network connections option. You first go to the wan connection and then disable it. Then you go to the LAN connection, choose settings, and give it a fixed IP address on the subnet of your main router. So if your main router is say 192.168.1.1 you'd pick 192.168.1.254 or something else that isn't in use. You give the G1100 a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask. You also disable DHCP on the G1100 so it isn't handing out IP addresses. I think that's it. You save your settings.

Assuming that your splitters are all set up for MoCA you should be good to go. If you have any security settings for MoCA you need to put those in. I have a completely isolated coax network so I don't know about security interoperability.

I've had very good experiences with these - I hope that it works as well for you.

 

[Fyodor]

I've never used the USB ports-my understanding is that it doesn't work as a network server. But I've never tried to YMMV.

 

[saiga6360]

Thanks Fyodor. I don't suppose you know if there are any specific hardware of software differences if I should get the non-Verizon variant like the Windstream or Frontier Arris NVG468MQ instead? There are versions of it being sold with a MEB1100 MoCA bridge, not sure why that additional piece of hardware would be necessary. From what I have read about it, it seems to be for the WAN coax so it may not be a concern but I'm not entirely sure.

 

[Fyodor]

I'm not familiar with those products so I can't say.