New MoCA 2.5 setup. Long run, many outlets & TV's etc.

[3Dogs]

I need some help with setup of MoCA 2.5, cable TV runs and an amplifier in a 100 plus y/o house. The existing cable TV input line from the street is an RG-11 line. Every other cable line on this property is RG-6. There is no existing Ethernet Infrastructure, and no practical way to do so in most every location here. That thick RG-11 line inbound from the street connects to an existing cable TV amplifier (presumably to drive all 10 of their TV’s and phones), and then out, through a MoCA -70 db filter, and on to various splitters and destinations. The splitters provide signals for digital telephone, television and Internet. We are replacing EVERY splitter we encounter, no matter the port count, with an Amphenol MoCA 2.5 (1675 Mhz) approved splitter. That’s working fine.

For the main house, after splitting off for telephony, we have 7 x 25’- 75’ “home run” cables that are run to each living space in the main house. Those 8 cables are all currently connected to an 8-way Amphenol MoCA splitter. 6 out 7 of those main house destinations now have a GoCoax adapter in place, and they’re working great. The 8th cable, a 175’ run, travels through an underground conduit to a separate building / wing that also needs MoCA and cable TV service.

Right now, that 175’ cable to the building / wing, connects / terminates directly to a 4 port Antronix “ARA 4-8” amplifier / splitter. Note that the 4 output connections go to 4 different locations in that wing, from 20’ to 100’ past that building / wing amplifier, and I’ll need to add a MoCA 2.5 device and run a TV at each of the 4 locations. (Again, this was all constructed this way by the cable TV provider).

Here’s my question: Based on the assumption that more TV signal was needed in the outlying building / wing, which would be the appropriate amplifier brand and model. PPC, Antronix, Commscope, etc., to pass both the amplified TV signal and unamplified MoCA signal down that building / wing line? This is new to me so I’m not sure which way to go.

 

[degrub]

@krkaufman

You should do some calculations as well to estimate the signal drop from the each endpoint to the furthest other endpoints on the same backbone moca coax as it sounds like you might reach the moca modem amp limits. i think the upper limit on the modems is around 35-40dB of budget.
For the 175 ft run, i would look at terminating one end of the coax into a moca modem, ethernet to a switch, another ethernet from switch to another moca modem to allow that run to be just a point to point pair, thus minimizing losses. Downside is a slight increase in latency for going through the extra pair of modems. You should be able to use a 5 port Gbit switch since unless you have high bandwidth demand on the lan or have high bandwidth ethernet ISP drop, you will never saturate a Gbit lan link.

 

[3Dogs]

For the 175 ft run, i would look at terminating one end of the coax into a moca modem, ethernet to a switch, another ethernet from switch to another moca modem to allow that run to be just a point to point pair, thus minimizing losses.

Hi DeGrub:

I understand the idea of bringing the MoCA signal off the Coax, through an Ethernet switch, and back onto the coax. That would accomplish getting a fresh repeated MoCA signal.

So the idea would be run the 175' from the main house with both the cable TV and MoCA 2.5 signals on board. Go through a 2 way splitter and offramp the MoCA 2.5 signal to an Ethernet switch, but keep the cable tv signal intact through the existing amplifier (which is only good to 1002 Mhz - but add a MoCA filter anyway?). Then on the other side of the existing amplifier for the cable TV signal, use only one of the 4 amplified outs (terminate the others) to it's own 2-way combiner(?) - one coming from an additional GoCoax MoCA 2.5, and the other the carrying the now amplified cable TV signal. After combining them, run into a 4-way splitter for home runs to the 4 additional locations?

Does that sound right?
Or should I get a different cable TV amplifier - and if so, which one?
And whose combiner should I use, or just a reverse a splitter and not worry about it?

 

[krkaufman]

The description of the setup lacks the details needed to make any specific recommendation (or suggest optimization alternatives), but if the secondary amp is actually required as described, you’d want it to be an amp designed to support MoCA to facilitate MoCA connectivity between output ports — and would potentially need a MoCA bypass setup akin to those described in section 3.7.1 of this MoCA Best Practices PDF. (like figure 10, but with the secondary amp in place of the downstream 2-way splitter)

———

Were such a thing available retail (see below), a MoCA/CATV diplexer would have been handy for the component fronting the secondary amp, to direct the MoCA and cable signals with minimized loss; barring that, a MoCA adapter with such a diplexer built-in could be used, but the preferred MoCA 2.5 adapters all lack this feature.

p.s. An elusive cable/MoCA diplexer:

 

[Waltski]

The description of the setup lacks the details needed to make any specific recommendation (or suggest optimization alternatives), but if the secondary amp is actually required as described, you’d want it to be an amp designed to support MoCA to facilitate MoCA connectivity between output ports — and would potentially need a MoCA bypass setup akin to those described in section 3.7.1 of this MoCA Best Practices PDF. (like figure 10, but with the secondary amp in place of the downstream 2-way splitter)

———

Were such a thing available retail (see below), a MoCA/CATV diplexer would have been handy for the component fronting the secondary amp, to direct the MoCA and cable signals with minimized loss; barring that, a MoCA adapter with such a diplexer built-in could be used, but the preferred MoCA 2.5 adapters all lack this feature.

p.s. An elusive cable/MoCA diplexer:

This diplexer seems to be discontinued. Have you seen any other MoCA diplexers available with the band splitting as above? Need these as my favorite MoCA adapter is no longer in production (Motorola MM1025)...

 

[krkaufman]

Have you seen any other MoCA diplexers available with the band splitting as above?

None that offer cable/MoCA signal splitting. The Holland DPD2 is the go-to for antenna/satellite diplexers, useful for OTA+MoCA setups.