Why does the Fios extender half gig speeds, and is there a way I can fix it?

[navic]

I have a computer in an area of my house which does not have any ethernet ports wired to it, so I bought an extender connecting via Coax to my ONT outside, which allows me to use ethernet to that computer and get better WiFi signals in that area of the house. I understand both the extenders half my gig speeds to about 450/450 avg, and I don't need but it would be very benificial if I had the 950/840 or whatever it is for that computer. My question is why does it half the speeds even in the specs for the extender (under features > LAN Interface) , and it there a way to use the extender at full gig speeds? If not, what would be the best way to get the gig speeds at least for ethernet in that room? (My thought is ethernet from ONT or buying a second Quantum Gateway, which I would not like to purchase at this time) Sorry if this is a dumb question, and thanks in advance.

[Edg1]

Over the coax there is no way. The extenders on coax talk moca 2.0 to the router. With is why you only get the 400 mbps out of the extender. The only way to get a gig out of the extender is wiring ethernet from router lan port to one of the ethernet ports on the extender. 

[Capricorn1 · Accepted solution]

As @edg1 said, there's no way to get above the theoretical 500 Mbps with MoCA 2.0, which is all the Quantum router offers. There's a pretty good chart the bottom of this page found at the MoCA Alliance website, that shows what the various MoCA standard support. From that chart, you can see there are MoCA standards that support higher speeds. If you are willing to ignore the MoCA adapter built into the Quantum Gateway Router and buy a pair (or more) of other adapters, you should be able to get near to the speeds you would like.

To get that level of speed from my office downstairs up one floor and to the living room on the opposite side of my house, I used a pair of Actiontec ECB6200s that I bought from Amazon. (I have plenty of coax in the walls, but no Ethernet cables.) They use bonded MoCA 2.0 signaling. While I don't quite get gigabit speeds from them I do get:

From Living Room to Office

in one direction and: From Office To Living Room

in the other.

How you would use these is to plug one of the Quantum Gateway's gigabit Ethernet LAN ports into one of the ECB6200s. Connect that to the coax (via [wide frequency range] splitter or directly). Then in the other room, connect the coax to the other ECB6200 and then to your computer (or a switch if you need to connect more than one device). If you have Verizon STBs for your TVs, bonded MoCA 2.0 is supposed to be able to coexist peacefully with regular 2.0 on the same coax. That is to say, they should still work (at their 450-500 Mbps rate) while the speed between the Actiontec ECB6200s should stay around twice that. I have not tested that myself though.

As you probably noticed, neither of these supply a wireless signal. If you like boosting your wireless coverage, you would want to get one Actiontec ECB6200 (for use at the Quantum Gateway side) and pair it with the Actiontec WCB6200Q also available at Amazon (for use where the current extender you have is). I've never used the WCB6200Q personally, but it is the appropriate one to use as it supports bonded MoCA 2.0. (As a side note, I believe the Network Extender you get from Verizon is a rebranded Actiontec WEB6000Q.)

Ideally, one would like to get MoCA 2.5 or MoCA 3.0 adapters to get the very last bit of speed from Verizon's (near) gigabit service. However, while the roadmap at the MoCA alliance shows that 2.5 should be out (2017) and 3.0 should out or close (2018), I have not found the adapters for sale. Actiontec offers a MoCA 2.5 adapter, but only to "Service Providers ONLY."

[sonnoio]

I read your response to @navic re getting more out of VZ fios' moca network. I have a question re your suggestion: when you say to connect the LAN eth output of the quantum to the anactiontec ecb6200's, and the ecb coax to the house coax, you're assuming the quatum is receiving the fios signal via ethernet from the ont, correct?

For those with just coax from the ont, is there a solution?

Thank you

[Edg1]

---

@sonnoio wrote:

I read your response to @navic re getting more out of VZ fios' moca network. I have a question re your suggestion: when you say to connect the LAN eth output of the quantum to the anactiontec ecb6200's, and the ecb coax to the house coax, you're assuming the quatum is receiving the fios signal via ethernet from the ont, correct?

For those with just coax from the ont, is there a solution?

Thank you

---

If your router is connected to the ONT via coax only and not ethernet then your max speed will be up to 100 mbps. In your case the extender getting 100 mbps over the coax shouldn't be an issue. 

[Capricorn1]

@edg1 has a good point about coax vs Ethernet (from the ONT) speeds, but to answer your question, I was specifically thinking about when you get your service via Ethernet from the ONT. That said, the LAN ports on the router are still live and getting Internet traffic even if your service comes from the ONT on the coax. The Verizon router still takes the MoCA WAN, applies firewall rules to it, and puts the Internet traffic on both the MoCA LAN and Ethernet LAN on the router. Similarly, if you get your service via Ethernet from the ONT, the router still takes the Internet WAN traffic from the Ethernet WAN port, applies firewall rules to it, and puts the Internet traffic on both the MoCA LAN and Ethernet LAN ports on the router.

The issue you may run into if you have set-top boxes, in either case, is that they need the MoCA LAN signal to get their video on demand and guide information. (If you don't have Verizon STBs [and by extension, Verizon FiOS TV service], don't use the coax coming from the router at all.) The frequencies in use for that (I believe) are on one of the two of the bonded channels that the ECB6200 uses. It is supposed to work with non-bonded MoCA nodes operating at 400-500 Mbps and bonded MoCA nodes (i.e., the ECB6200s) running at twice that. I'd have to see it myself to believe it. What you may have to do is to program the ECB6200s to use the Band D Hi channel that is talked about in this post. That would get the RF frequencies used by the ECB6200s away from anything that FiOS uses for the STBs. That approach, I feel confident will work.

[sonnoio]

Thank you for taking time to be helpful. I do have 3 cable cards for my TiVo boxes so I used MoCA via coax. I want to try the frequency split from the ONT using a couple of ECB6200s, leaving one side dedicated to MoCA 2. That spares me from adding a cat5 in the crawling space between the garage (ONT location) and the basement. And I just got an actiontec extender 6200Q which will give better wireless coverage. I need to find a way to convince Verizon to upgrade the old ONT if it doesn't support MoCA 2. Will report back my experience when done.

[Capricorn1]

Please do let us know how that goes. I'm really curious to hear if and how well it works.

[4Jays]

The word is “halve.”

[kh-gary]

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