Newbie assistance - basic MoCA cabling

[Bill Reid]

Sorry for the newbie post - I've googled in depth and have yet to find answers.

I'm currently doing Powerline networking in 5 rooms of my house with fair results, but it's proven unsatisfactory in certain conditions/locations. I've been reading about MoCA for years but have no real experience.

My home was prewired for cable, but never used. I have coax home run to 2 outlets per room to an outdoor location. Terminated in wall outlets indoors, unterminated outside. There's literally a sheaf of unterminated coax cables hanging out of a pipe on the side of my house. I have DSL that comes in on the copper and currently has a switch and wireless router attached to it.

What I don't understand is how everything needs to be physically connected. The outdoor cabling seems to prevent any sort of homerun setup since I can't put anything powered out there. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to connect all those outdoor ends together so that the MoCA link to my existing switch can be run off one of the indoor cable terminations.

If someone would be willing to explain and/or point me to a reference, that would be a great help. I'm also interested in what rating or quality of equipment I need to look at for maximum throughput. I am much more interested in quality of service than cost.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Basically what you need to do is follows:

1. Decide which of the coax cables you want to use. More than four will probably require some sort of amplification. Any cable you are planning to use will need to be terminated. Because the cable has been outside for some period of time cut off at least a foot to eliminate any cable damaged by water ingress. You will need to use excellent quality compression f-fittings to seal out water. Don't even consider using screw on connectors or crimp on fittings.

2. Search on Amazon for cable splitters MOCA as you will need a splitter rated to pass more than 1000 Mhz. The Splitter can be installed outside with no problems. Just use drip loops, grease the threads, and run a ground wire to your main ground point. This device will be installed outside near your bunch of coaxial cables.

3. If you are going to use an amplified splitter with more that a four ports it will need power which you can feed using power over coax cable run.

4. Install one of your MOCA adapters near your router. Connect the Ethernet jack to a LAN port. Connect a coaxial cable to the coaxial jack. This cable will be connected to the in jack on your splitter.

5. Place other MOCA adapters where you need them. They will connect to one of the output ports on your splitter. Connect a computer or AP to the Ethernet port.

6. Build your network gradually to make trouble shooting easier. If I were doing this setup I would test everything on a bench inside using short jumpers to make sure everything is working.

 

[Bill Reid]

Super! Thanks so much for the guidance!

 

[gatorback]

It would be cool if there was a MOCA switch that could direct traffic to the multiple outlets / terminals. Until then, I thought this was interesting:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XOMJ76/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[degrub]

Sorry for the newbie post - I've googled in depth and have yet to find answers.

I'm currently doing Powerline networking in 5 rooms of my house with fair results, but it's proven unsatisfactory in certain conditions/locations. I've been reading about MoCA for years but have no real experience.

My home was prewired for cable, but never used. I have coax home run to 2 outlets per room to an outdoor location. Terminated in wall outlets indoors, unterminated outside. There's literally a sheaf of unterminated coax cables hanging out of a pipe on the side of my house. I have DSL that comes in on the copper and currently has a switch and wireless router attached to it.

What I don't understand is how everything needs to be physically connected. The outdoor cabling seems to prevent any sort of homerun setup since I can't put anything powered out there. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to connect all those outdoor ends together so that the MoCA link to my existing switch can be run off one of the indoor cable terminations.

If someone would be willing to explain and/or point me to a reference, that would be a great help. I'm also interested in what rating or quality of equipment I need to look at for maximum throughput. I am much more interested in quality of service than cost.

Get an outdoor electrical box, maybe a large enough breaker box without the busses, pass the cables in through a water tight bushing and make your connections between the cables.

Alternatively, depending on what is on the inside wall, you could tear off the sheetrock, pull the cables inside, seal the conduit outside the house, and do all of the connections inside. Best to figure out where the conduit comes from first - it could just be passing from inside the wall cavity to outside the exterior sheathing or it could be a vertical run inside the wall.