When I Upgrade to Gigabit, How Am I Able to Preserve the MOCA Bridge to Different Locations?

[hey_walt]

I've got a question regarding an upgrade and was hoping for further guidance.  My old ONT is outside and coax is split outside to feed different parts of the house.  One coax enters the basement which feeds only an old ActionTec router.  The other outside split runs coax under the deck to feed the STB and an ActionTec router in the living room.  The last outside split runs coax into the garage, up through the ceiling to feed the master bedroom STB and ActionTec.  We run ethernet from each of the ActionTec routers to the various TVs, media devices and PCs in different locations of the house.  When I upgrade to Gigabit, how am I able to preserve the MOCA bridge to ehternet in these different remote locations?   I notice a thread here and was wondering if this is overly complicated. https://forums.verizon.com/t5/Fios-Internet/Bonded-MoCA-2-0-with-Gigabit-plan-and-STBs/td-p/877845

[Cang_Household]

The current setup you have will only deliver 175Mbps to various locations, thus bottlenecking the gigabit subscription.

If you cannot link an Ethernet cable between the ONT and the main router, you will need to follow the steps outlined in the post you linked and spent $170 there. I doubt the Actiontec main router you have has a throughout of 900Mbps, and it caps the MoCA speed to 175Mbps. You need to replace the Actiontec main router.

Regarding other locations in your house, it depends. How fast do you want to achieve? If you just want 175Mbps at a location, then keep the Actiontec you have. If you want 750Mbps and WiFi, you need to replace them with Verizon extenders as the simplistic solution.

Main router recommendations: if you have to use STBs, a Verizon router is required. Either G1100 or G3100 is fine. A G1100 requires another MoCA 2.0 adapter (for instance ECB5240M) to back feed an Ethernet connection to ensure 750Mbps on MoCA network. However, the combined cost is lower than a G3100.

For the extenders: you can buy ECB5240M ($55) for Ethernet only locations and WCB6200Q ($120) for WiFi 802.11ac.

[hey_walt]

Thanks for the info.  Very helpful.  It will be pretty easy for me to run a cat5 cable from the ONT into the basement to a new G3100 router.  It would be nice to have higher than 175Mbps at each of the other endpoints which have STBs.  Just to clarify.  Do I just need to replace the old ActionTec routers with a ECB5240M or WCB6200Q?  If I've got the G3100 on the other end, that acts as a MoCA bridge and I don't need anything else.  Otherwise, if I go the router of a G1100, I'd need another MoCA 2.0 bridge on that end.  Hope this all makes sense, because it's a bit confusing to me. 

[Cang_Household]

It is a price game for you.

G1100 costs ~$85 (on Ebay, all others from Verizon). G3100 costs $300. WCB6200Q costs $120. ECB5240M costs $55.

I want to save money even that means to add complexity or take time to configure.

G1100 and G3100 have similar NAT and switching performances. G3100 supports 802.11ax and MoCA 2.5 over G1100's 802.11ac and MoCA 2.0. If you don't have many 802.11ax compatible devices and over 1 gig broadband connection, it misses the point to have 802.11ax. I see the only difference as the MoCA 2.5 and MoCA 2.0. G1100's MoCA 2.0 caps the coax network at 500Mbps. That's why you need to disable the MoCA for G1100 and use ECB5240M to back feed the coax network from an ethernet port. The reason is that G1100 + ECB5240M ($140) < G3100 ($300). You get three extra ports near the router too with ECB5240M.

The difference between ECB5240M and WCB6200Q is the "W" versus "E." ECB52040M is Bonded MoCA 2.0 to 4 ethernet ports. WCB6200Q is Bonded MoCA 2.0 to 2 ethernet ports + 802.11ac wireless. At a remote location, if you don't have a weak WiFi signal there, it is suggested to buy ECB5240M.

[hey_walt]

I think I understand now.  Thanks for explaining.  I'm mostly interested in getting as much bandwidth possible via ethernet to the locations with the STBs.  All our media devices are hard wired which makes well for serving up streaming media from NAS.  What I've been doing upstairs is shutting down the wifi on the 2nd floor and taking a line out from the old ActionTec to a relatively newer router TP-Link AC1200 for the wifi upstairs on the 2nd level.  I use the ActionTecs in the basement and ground floor for wifi coverage.  All are using the same SSID with different channels.  Wifi is just for mobile surfing, occasional laptop use for video conferencing, etc.

[hey_walt]

Hi, one more point of help if I may.  I'm not really sure I understand how to back feed an Ethernet connection to ensure 750Mbps on MoCA network?  Where would it fit in this diagram? 

[Cang_Household]

You might want to reinsert the image because it does not display for me.

[hey_walt]

It was strange getting the pic to upload or even be viewable when posted to another site.  Perhaps this try works.  If not, the picture is at peaks.net / wiring.jpg   (forum isn't letting me post the URL) http://www.peaks.net/wiring.jpg 

[Cang_Household · Accepted solution]

You need to backfeed an ethernet cable to ECB5240M from G1100, ECB5240M backfeeds a coax cable to the splitter. MoCA adapters do not distinguish transmitters and receivers.

[hey_walt]

Thank you!  Makes sense now.

[Cang_Household]

After you installed the system, please come back and give some feedbacks here.

[hey_walt]

Feedback on the architecture.  The diagram works, I can access VOD and both my STBs.  Although I'm not confident I'm getting gigabit speed through the bonded ECB5240M adapters.  I'm getting similar speed with just one of the ECB5240M installed and G1100 on other nodes.  This could be time of day testing, etc.  Will give it another go late night to see what the comparable speeds would be with and without the bonded adapters.  Could one or more of the splitters not be compatible with bonded MOCA 2.0?  Or back to my OP there was a link about tweaking settings on the MOCA adapater changing the RF channel / band.  I don't see any options to do that in the config settings on the ECB5240M  device.

On the cost perspective, you can pick up a used G1100 for less than a ECB5240M.

[Cang_Household]

The OP, I said in the first post that using G1100 as a MoCA node bottlenecks the speed to 500Mbps because G1100 is only MoCA 2.0. You need ECB5240M’s Bonded MoCA 2.0 to get MoCA speed close to 900 Mbps. If you can get the MoCA signal, that means the splitters are fine. Since you are disconnecting the main G1100’s Coax port, no need to change the frequency and that setting is disabled on ECB5240M.

[Cang_Household]

Also, use a competent computer to test the speeds. My computer’s CPU maxes to 100% when pulling 300 Mbps. So, I need to run multiple speed tests on multiple devices at the same time then add them all up.

Update: On the right side of the web page (mobile Responsive Design places it at the bottom), there is a How-To video called "Actiontec ECB6200 Review" made by one of the community leaders. It will tell you how to use LAN-Bench (?) software to test LAN speed. For testing MoCA LAN, you don't need to use a broadband speed test. Those speed test results are influenced by a range of factors: time of the day, website server bandwidth, GPON saturation...

[hey_walt]

Excellent point about the computer to test the speed.  My Macbook Air (USB-C ethernet) does seem to be throttled more than my home PC (hardwired to motherboard).    Either way, I'm happy with the configuration working.  Thanks for all the help!