MoCA 2.0 Actiontech ECB6000

[stevech]

I have retested and am now seeing peaks over 40MB/s transfer rate.

Good news. Troubleshooting is sometimes a slow process!

 

[jmelan]

I installed two Actiontec ECB6200's, MoCA 2.0 Bonded device, on the same ~80' of dedicated coax on which the ECB6000's were installed. Download performance on Speedtest.net to my local ISP is 820 to 835 Mbps.

-pc

just installed a pair of ECB6200s

running across two ideal satellite splitters (5-2400) with multiple unterminated ends and at least a few hundred feet of coax with cisco sg200-08 switches on either end

file transfer of a 1 gb test file on windows completed at ~62MB per sec (~496 Mbps). Capped at 50Mbit on internet speeds, so no useful speedtest results.

certainly not optimized, but still far better than I ever got with the Netgear MCAB1001 kits

 

[stevech]

That's lot faster than my old D-Link MoCA boxes at 70Mbits/sec net yield at the IP layer.

 

[jmelan]

well i have had some recent issues with the pair of ecb6200s

the connection is great and stable for 15 mintues to a couple of hours, but then all of a sudden the connection in at least one direction drops to almost nothing

unplugging and plugging back in one of the adapters seems to restore the connection until it drops again. if i reconnect the powerline adapters i was using before, the connection is perfectly stable but obviously much slower.

when working, I have speeds of 70-90 MB/s using file transfer of test files on windows and I can cap out my cable connection on speedtest at 63Mb/s

was advised to exchange the adapters by actiontech tech support - any other ideas?

 

[Pinotphile]

well i have had some recent issues with the pair of ecb6200s

the connection is great and stable for 15 mintues to a couple of hours, but then all of a sudden the connection in at least one direction drops to almost nothing

unplugging and plugging back in one of the adapters seems to restore the connection until it drops again. if i reconnect the powerline adapters i was using before, the connection is perfectly stable but obviously much slower.

when working, I have speeds of 70-90 MB/s using file transfer of test files on windows and I can cap out my cable connection on speedtest at 63Mb/s

was advised to exchange the adapters by actiontech tech support - any other ideas?

Does the connection drop completely, or just slow down a great deal? I haven't noticed a problem with my ECB6200s dropping the connection, but I've not done any extended testing over time to see if it ever slows down. But they still seem to be performing well and they haven't been powered off and on since about 10 days ago when I was doing some testing.

 

[jmelan]

it drops down to less than 1 Mbps when I check on speedtest (download, upload actually stays at 6 Mbps), has now done it repeatedly about 10-15 times

 

[bds3151]

it drops down to less than 1 Mbps when I check on speedtest (download, upload actually stays at 6 Mbps), has now done it repeatedly about 10-15 times

Ditto for me. I just added two ecb6200's and within a few days, the speed dropped to under 1mbps. I power reset and the appropriate speed returned.

 

[stevech]

Ditto for me. I just added two ecb6200's and within a few days, the speed dropped to under 1mbps. I power reset and the appropriate speed returned.

sounds like early adopter syndrome

 

[pec]

well i have had some recent issues with the pair of ecb6200s
....

After one week of operation with the ecb6200s, I had speed in one direction drop to ~14 Mbps. Speed in the other direction dropped from perhaps 825 Mbps to 725 Mbps. Power cycling one device made no difference, but power cycling the other device restored the original performance in both directions. The system was stable for another week, but then experienced the same problem again. Power cycling the same device again restored the original performance. This is on an ~80' run of 25 year old dedicated coax.

On this same run of coax, I had earlier installed a pair of ecb6000s, which in two weeks of operation did not exhibit the problem described above. Probably not enough data to draw any conclusions, however.

 

[Pinotphile]

I'll do a test on mine when I get time. I haven't noticed a slowdown, but that's just based on normal usage, not testing.

sounds like early adopter syndrome

Yep, probably so. I hesitated a little to order these adapters right out of the gate because there's pretty much zero chance that that the firmware won't have some bugs in it, but I figured that if there were problems they could be fixed with a firmware update. The problem is, there doesn't appear to be a way to do firmware updates, at least not at this point. Maybe Actiontec will release software that will enable that later (I believe there is utility software for some of their earlier MoCA products that includes that ability).

 

[Derelict]

MacBook Pro i5 <-> ECB6000 <- 3-foot coax -> ECB6000 <-> Gig Switch <-> em0 pfSense 2.2.4

Starts dropping frames at about 540Mbit/s unidirectional and about 260Mbit/s bi-directional

[ 4] local 172.29.99.1 port 5001 connected with 172.29.99.221 port 54357
[ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 646 MBytes 542 Mbits/sec 0.014 ms 14726/475866 (3.1%)
[ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 1 datagrams received out-of-order

[ 5] local 172.29.99.1 port 5240 connected with 172.29.99.221 port 5001
[ 5] 0.0-10.0 sec 333 MBytes 279 Mbits/sec
[ 5] Sent 237671 datagrams
[ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 317 MBytes 266 Mbits/sec 0.029 ms 11888/238079 (5%)
[ 4] 0.0-10.0 sec 1 datagrams received out-of-order
[ 5] Server Report:
[ 5] 0.0-10.0 sec 333 MBytes 279 Mbits/sec 0.071 ms 0/237670 (0%)
[ 5] 0.0-10.0 sec 1 datagrams received out-of-order

The router is just an Atom 525 so it could be that but I'm pretty pleased with the throughput. If I can solve the encryption issue I'll test it whole-house.

 

[bds3151]

I'll do a test on mine when I get time. I haven't noticed a slowdown, but that's just based on normal usage, not testing.


Yep, probably so. I hesitated a little to order these adapters right out of the gate because there's pretty much zero chance that that the firmware won't have some bugs in it, but I figured that if there were problems they could be fixed with a firmware update. The problem is, there doesn't appear to be a way to do firmware updates, at least not at this point. Maybe Actiontec will release software that will enable that later (I believe there is utility software for some of their earlier MoCA products that includes that ability).

I reported the issue to Actiontec and they said there is no software/firmware. Just a bridge from coax to ethernet so they don't understand how the speed could reduce without attenuation. My ecb6000's work fine so something is causing the reduction in speed for all of us.

 

[Pinotphile]

I'm not seeing the slowdown issue at this point. I just ran a few tests (just using speedtest.net, not an internal network test), and didn't see any slowdown despite the fact that my adapters had been on for almost two weeks without being power-cycled. My download speeds were in the 150-160 Mbps range, and upload speeds of 22-23 Mbps. I've certainly had higher results on occasion, but for the most part that's about the download speed I get. Just to be sure I went ahead and unplugged both adapters and plugged them back in, and after doing so I got the same range of download and upload speeds.

It shouldn't really matter, but one thing that may be different between my setup and others here is that I have a point to point, dedicated connection between the two ECB6200's. My house has two sets of coax cables (the cable company used to use both so that they could deliver more analog channels). I don't have cable TV anymore, but still get my Internet service over one of the cables. It goes to the cable modem, which is of course attached to my router. For the past several years I've use the other set of coax cables as an internal MoCA network. I have cable to four locations (including where the modem and router are), but now only need another connection in one other place, so when I got the new adapters I went to the basement where all the cable runs meet and used a barrel connector to create a point to point connection between the cable that goes to the ECB6200 where the modem and router are, to the cable that goes to the ECB6200 in the other location. So no splitters, and the coax between the ECB6200's has only MoCA traffic on it. I also don't have a cable attached to the "cable out" coax port.

None of the above should matter, except possibly splitters, and they shouldn't really affect anything unless they drop the signal too much, and in that case I doubt the adapters would work great for a while and then suddenly slow down dramatically, which is what some people are experiencing. Maybe some of the adapters are defective. In an earlier post jmelan said that Actiontec advised exchanging the adapters. It will be interesting to see if that takes care of the problem. In any event, I hope those experiencing the problem get a resolution (and that my adapters keep working okay).

 

[zeek987]

well i have had some recent issues with the pair of ecb6200s

the connection is great and stable for 15 mintues to a couple of hours, but then all of a sudden the connection in at least one direction drops to almost nothing

unplugging and plugging back in one of the adapters seems to restore the connection until it drops again. if i reconnect the powerline adapters i was using before, the connection is perfectly stable but obviously much slower.

when working, I have speeds of 70-90 MB/s using file transfer of test files on windows and I can cap out my cable connection on speedtest at 63Mb/s

was advised to exchange the adapters by actiontech tech support - any other ideas?

I, too, am experiencing the same exact problem with my set of two ecb6200 adapters. They work fine when first plugged in, averaging about 400mpbs in each direction. However, after a few hours, the speed in only 1 direction slows down to about 3mpbs. To fix the speed issue, I have to reset or unplug the power from one of the units. Does anyone else have any ideas as to what might be going wrong or causing this slow down?

I tested by using both speedtest.net and using LAN Speed Test from TotuSoft. After running several tests over the weekend, both confirmed that the upload from my office desktop pc slowed to about 3mbps. If I power cycled the adapter near my switch, the speed would go back to between 300 and 600 mbps. (Does this seem to be the typical speed that you are all seeing with these "Bonded" adapters? What kind of speeds are people seeing with the non-bonded ecb6000? Please share!)

With the caveat that I have not done thorough testing... What is really odd is that the slow down is always from my office desktop to the network switch on the other side of my house (thus it is the upload from the office which is slowed), and it does not matter which of the 2 adapters is being used in the office. I found this out by switching them to see if it was a particular adapter, and I did experience the problem again. However, this time I had to reset the unit that was now near the network switch. Also, prior to buying the ecb6200s, I was using 2 of ACTIONTEC's Home Theater Coax Network Adapters (ECB3500T01), and they never experienced any dropouts, disconnections, or slow downs. They always were able to achieve about 125mbps in each direction. My coax lines are not connected to satellite or cable. Thus, since my old Moca adapters worked in the same setup, I think the problem must be with these 2 adapters.

I also just spoke with Actiontec support, and they recommended that I return the product since it has been less than 30 days since I purchased it, and they suggested it is due to the product being brand new (Early Adopter Syndrome!). (Side note: I was not impressed with their support.) I am not thrilled with this solution, as I will have to eat the shipping costs. I wonder what they would do if I had purchased these more than 30 days ago... I hope they would offer to replace them and pay for shipping each way. To this point, does anyone have any experience they can share with regard to Actiontec support or purchasing through the actiontec website?

Further, where is everyone buying these adapters from? I cannot seem to find them in-stock online anywhere anymore, at least not the kits of 2.
I would like to buy another set, but only after I either figure out and solve the speed issue or get my money back from the return I guess I am about to have to do.

Thank you for any help or feedback anyone can provide!

 

[bds3151]

I, too, am experiencing the same exact problem with my set of two ecb6200 adapters. They work fine when first plugged in, averaging about 400mpbs in each direction. However, after a few hours, the speed in only 1 direction slows down to about 3mpbs. To fix the speed issue, I have to reset or unplug the power from one of the units. Does anyone else have any ideas as to what might be going wrong or causing this slow down?

I tested by using both speedtest.net and using LAN Speed Test from TotuSoft. After running several tests over the weekend, both confirmed that the upload from my office desktop pc slowed to about 3mbps. If I power cycled the adapter near my switch, the speed would go back to between 300 and 600 mbps. (Does this seem to be the typical speed that you are all seeing with these "Bonded" adapters? What kind of speeds are people seeing with the non-bonded ecb6000? Please share!)

With the caveat that I have not done thorough testing... What is really odd is that the slow down is always from my office desktop to the network switch on the other side of my house (thus it is the upload from the office which is slowed), and it does not matter which of the 2 adapters is being used in the office. I found this out by switching them to see if it was a particular adapter, and I did experience the problem again. However, this time I had to reset the unit that was now near the network switch. Also, prior to buying the ecb6200s, I was using 2 of ACTIONTEC's Home Theater Coax Network Adapters (ECB3500T01), and they never experienced any dropouts, disconnections, or slow downs. They always were able to achieve about 125mbps in each direction. My coax lines are not connected to satellite or cable. Thus, since my old Moca adapters worked in the same setup, I think the problem must be with these 2 adapters.

I also just spoke with Actiontec support, and they recommended that I return the product since it has been less than 30 days since I purchased it, and they suggested it is due to the product being brand new (Early Adopter Syndrome!). (Side note: I was not impressed with their support.) I am not thrilled with this solution, as I will have to eat the shipping costs. I wonder what they would do if I had purchased these more than 30 days ago... I hope they would offer to replace them and pay for shipping each way. To this point, does anyone have any experience they can share with regard to Actiontec support or purchasing through the actiontec website?

Further, where is everyone buying these adapters from? I cannot seem to find them in-stock online anywhere anymore, at least not the kits of 2.
I would like to buy another set, but only after I either figure out and solve the speed issue or get my money back from the return I guess I am about to have to do.

Thank you for any help or feedback anyone can provide!

I have the same issue and I think I'm on to something but it's only been 10 hours or so. I have a Cisco managed switch and noticed it reporting many pause frames. I took flow control off the end points and the switch ports. My speed returned to about 400Mb/s and has been stable. Flow control can conflict with TCP congestion control in some instances so maybe this is the issue? Can you try this and see if this helps?

 

[Pinotphile]

...
Further, where is everyone buying these adapters from? I cannot seem to find them in-stock online anywhere anymore, at least not the kits of 2
....

I got mine at MacMall. It looks like they may be out of them right now, though.

 

[jmelan]

I have the same issue and I think I'm on to something but it's only been 10 hours or so. I have a Cisco managed switch and noticed it reporting many pause frames. I took flow control off the end points and the switch ports. My speed returned to about 400Mb/s and has been stable. Flow control can conflict with TCP congestion control in some instances so maybe this is the issue? Can you try this and see if this helps?

i have cisco sg200-08 switches at either end of the moca adapters - will try disabling flow control when i get home

 

[bds3151]

i have cisco sg200-08 switches at either end of the moca adapters - will try disabling flow control when i get home

I also disabled flow control on the HTPC ethernet adapter.

 

[zeek987]

bds3151, thank you for the suggestion and for following up.
jmelan, let us know if that worked for you!

I did some more troubleshooting, but the problem persists.

After the power cycling each adapter, the slowness began again in about 3 hours, so I tried all of the following, but nothing worked.

• reset the other adapter
• move the other adapter to another desktop
• move the other adapter to a laptop 3 ft from the first adapter
• connect the adapters to each other with a 3 ft coax cable
• connect the adapters via Ethernet directly to each pc (pc1 <ethernet> ecb <coax> ecb <ethernet> pc2)
• restarted each pc
• swapped the pc that was connected to each adapter (from pc1/ecb1 and pc2/ecb2 to pc1/ecb2 and pc2/ecb1) [obviously, the direction with slowness swapped as well, from the pc perspective]

in the end, the only fix to work is to power cycle the adapter near my unmanaged switch.

I have not changed any settings with the nic adapters on any oy my pcs, so I do not think that should be an issue, since they worked fine with the moca 1.1 devices and powerline adapters that I had previously.

Unless someone has some other insight into this, I think that Actiontec support is right. These devices are simply defective.

I would really like to hear from someone with a set of ECB6200 s that could run some test using Lan Speed Test and let us know what speeds they are seeing for both upload and download, as well as test over a few hours and days. This will help us determine if I just have a defective unit or if all of these adapters are flawed. I would also like to see if someone could test their ECB6000 s in the same manner, as this might tell us that the problem has to do with the "bonding" feature.

Thanks everyone for your help and feedback!

 

[bds3151]

bds3151, thank you for the suggestion and for following up.
jmelan, let us know if that worked for you!

I did some more troubleshooting, but the problem persists.

After the power cycling each adapter, the slowness began again in about 3 hours, so I tried all of the following, but nothing worked.

• reset the other adapter
• move the other adapter to another desktop
• move the other adapter to a laptop 3 ft from the first adapter
• connect the adapters to each other with a 3 ft coax cable
• connect the adapters via Ethernet directly to each pc (pc1 <ethernet> ecb <coax> ecb <ethernet> pc2)
• restarted each pc

The only fix to work is to power cycle the adapter near my unmanaged switch.

I have not changed any settings with the nic adapters on any oy my pcs, so I do not think that should be an issue, since they worked fine with the moca 1.1 devices and powerline adapters that I had previously.

Unless someone has some other insight into this, I think that Actiontec support is right. These devices are simply defective.

I would really like to hear from someone with a set of ECB6200 s that could run some test using Lan Speed Test and let us know what speeds they are seeing for both upload and download, as well as test over a few hours and days. This will help us determine if I just have a defective unit or if all of these adapters are flawed. I would also like to see if someone could test their ECB6000 s in the same manner, as this might tell us that the problem has to do with the "bonding" feature.

Thanks everyone for your help and feedback!

bds3151, thank you for the suggestion and for following up.
jmelan, let us know if that worked for you!

I did some more troubleshooting, but the problem persists.

After the power cycling each adapter, the slowness began again in about 3 hours, so I tried all of the following, but nothing worked.

• reset the other adapter
• move the other adapter to another desktop
• move the other adapter to a laptop 3 ft from the first adapter
• connect the adapters to each other with a 3 ft coax cable
• connect the adapters via Ethernet directly to each pc (pc1 <ethernet> ecb <coax> ecb <ethernet> pc2)
• restarted each pc
• swapped the pc that was connected to each adapter (from pc1/ecb1 and pc2/ecb2 to pc1/ecb2 and pc2/ecb1) [obviously, the direction with slowness swapped as well, from the pc perspective]

in the end, the only fix to work is to power cycle the adapter near my unmanaged switch.

I have not changed any settings with the nic adapters on any oy my pcs, so I do not think that should be an issue, since they worked fine with the moca 1.1 devices and powerline adapters that I had previously.

Unless someone has some other insight into this, I think that Actiontec support is right. These devices are simply defective.

I would really like to hear from someone with a set of ECB6200 s that could run some test using Lan Speed Test and let us know what speeds they are seeing for both upload and download, as well as test over a few hours and days. This will help us determine if I just have a defective unit or if all of these adapters are flawed. I would also like to see if someone could test their ECB6000 s in the same manner, as this might tell us that the problem has to do with the "bonding" feature.

Thanks everyone for your help and feedback!

My previous settings were fine with Moca1.1 also. It wasn't until I tried to go past 100Mbps that I encounted issues. I'm on my 2nd day with speeds in excess of 360Mbps and no fallback to 1Mbps one way. Disable flow control and report back, what do you have to lose? If you elect to try it, make sure you do it on the end equipment as well as the switch ports (it worked without disabling FC on my NAS as I don't know how to accomplish that).