cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/63691946
Looking for advice on setting up a new whole home network and the direction to take of MoCA over existing cabling vs running new Ethernet Cat6A:
Recently in a new space that has an existing HomeConnect CSMAPDU9VPI with coax cables run throughout the home, which seems like a great candidate to just use MoCA and get up and running faster:
But I am also interested in “future proofing” the network setup and replacing the coax cables that are already run with Cat6A Ethernet, all connecting to a central 10G switch / homelab setup.
Is it worth the effort to re-run all of the cables and swap out the wall plates or just go with the simple thing an run with a MoCA setup? I’d really prefer to not spend on one setup with the plan to update in the future, but maybe that’s the compromise solution to get setup and running sooner.
The CSMAPDU9VPI is currently completely isolated from the cable line to the modem (picture above is old and shows a cable connected to the IN port, this cable is no longer connected) so I don’t think I have to worry about interference with my DOCSIS 3.1 service / modem.
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Pros of MoCA:
-Easy to implement
-Don’t have to run new lines
-Reliable
-Up to 2.5gbps
Cons:
-Each run needs an moderately expensive adapter on either side, which also needs power
-Cable management at the endpoints can get messy
If you have one or two endpoints where you can tuck away some boxes, MoCA’s probably fine. If you want to wire up every room in your house, buy a roll of cat-6 and bite the bullet
Good timing: I just installed several adapters, as I had areas in my home with poor wifi signal and my house is unfriendly to running new Ethernet cables, but has a coax connection in almost every room. I am shocked by how good it is, even over my house’s ancient coax, which was installed by careless morons. I’m getting 930Mbps running iperf to another machine on my lan. I did make sure to replace the multitude of splitters in my house with MoCA rated ones, but those are cheap. If you currently have a cable provider make sure to install a POE filter where the line enters your home so you’re not sending your signal upstream.
MoCA is honestly really great. I’ve been running 4 MoCA nodes (2.0 and 2.5) in my house for 10 years now, over pretty shitty RG58 cabling and a bunch of splitters, quite long runs too, along with 1 gig DOCSIS 3.1 modem sharing the same cabling, and it has been absolutely bulletproof and reliable (especially compared to the powerline ethernet I was using before, which was absolutely terrible). Plenty of bandwidth for full duplex 1 gig - really the only downside compared to 1 gig ethernet is a few extra ms of latency.
Running ethernet cables everywhere would be very expensive in my situation, and while I considered it a few times to get more bandwidth between my main computer and the NAS which sits in my homelab in the basement, I still find it hard to justify the cost. If I were to pull the trigger now, I think I would go with fiber (or maybe both) - but I would have to replace so much stuff to get up to 10 gigs, all my homelab equipment is 1 gig only, server nics, NAS nics, switches, etc… it would not be cheap, beyond even just the cost of running the cables. So I am just sitting back and waiting to see how the technology evolves for now.
Depending on how the cables have been put in, it can be fairly easy to replace an existing run by tying the new cable to the old one and pulling it through.