MoCA Question: Cable splits outside of house

[pearl]

Hello, I could use some help on some basic MoCA questions. First though I am amazed at this forum and that there is expertise here on MoCA which seems to be a bit hard to get good info on. I posted this question on another forum and was recommended I try over here. Clearly I am in the right place now.

I have read a bunch of posts on MoCA, and the manuals for some of the products available, but all seem to point to a single point of entry inside the home while mine is outside.

Brief (but not really relevant) Background:
I am in the process of moving from one apartment to another (rentals so no in wall wiring can be done), and it appears that my only option in the new place is Wireless, Powerline or MoCA. As it is a three floor townhouse, Wireless is most probably out, and Powerline seems to be questionable at best with 1950’s wiring in the apartment. So I am thinking MoCA is my best option if possible. We have a lot of gear, including several servers running the TVs/Projector, multiple laptops, a slew of media streaming boxes (WDs and Rokus). All together about 25 IP devices a few of them wireless.

Issue:
So onto the questions/issue. I have read as much as I can find on MoCA, and one part that I am coming up against is that all the coax cable runs stem from one main line that splits to 6 in a box outside the house. Thus, I cannot run the Modem, Router and primary MoCA adapter on the main input, and then go from there to a splitter to the rest of the house.

Question:
Can I put the primary network setup on one of the coax runs, and have the other MoCA adapters on the other runs in each room, with them all connecting to the outdoor splitter? I cannot seem to find a diagram that has a setup like this. Everything I have seen seems to show the main line coming into the primary setup, and then forking from there to the different rooms. As above, it is a rental, so reworking the outdoor cable box to the basement or something similar is not really possible. The runs go to rooms on three different floors.

Attached is a very basic diagram of what I am looking to do if possible, with the main splitter outside of the house, and a POE Filter in front of it. One very important note (I think) is that I do not get cable TV so I don't plan to split the cable runs in each room. They would each endpoint at either an IP device or a switch. It is simply Internet coming from Comcast, their 50Mbps+ Blast service. My primary needs for this setup is for all rooms to have video equipment that is served from two media servers, and for computers in those rooms to access a file server.

Thanks for any help or advice you can offer, and hopefully one day I’ll own a home that I can actually wire the way I need.

-P

 

[azazel1024]

Yes you can do that.

Ideally the cable modem would be at the single point of entry so that it has the highest possible signal before it gets broken out.

Since that isn't possible, you work with what you have. It should all work. A 6 split shouldn't reduce the signal too much for any of the MoCA bridges to operate properly. I've seen more and it still worked.

You are likely to have some pretty significant congestion if you are running ~25 IP devices on what is effectively a 100Mbps wired network. I realize not all would be running at once or using up much bandwidth...but that is only 4Mbps per...

The only real question would be, is the signal from Comcast strong enough when it reaches your modem to support 50+Mbps speeds. Probably, but they may have to add an amp if it isn't strong enough.

 

[abailey]

You may run into some issues with the outside splitter. Some splitters are not rated for the frequency of the MOCA adapter. When I set up MOCA in my house I had to replace the splitter with a new one that would support the frequencies. If it does work for you I think MOCA would be fast enough. I can pull about 75Mbit/s through mine. Streaming HDTV from things like Netflix and such is usually less than 3Mbit/s. I use Microsoft Media Server on my network and when I watch HDTV from it I pull about 13Mbit/s. So one 100Mbit line could service quite a bit.

 

[azazel1024]

Oh, it might work dandy, its just that if you put any loads on it, it might bring everything else crashing down. I speak to, say, trying to do file transfers between machines might crush netflix streaming, for example.

Netflix is usually between 3-12Mbps depending on how high quality the stream is. Even if your internet is 50/15 or something, all it takes is a single file transfer between machines on your MoCA network and it might crush the one or many video streams you have going on. Especially if, say, you are trying to transfer a 4GB file between machines or something where it might be crushing the network for 7-8 minutes.

I haven't done enough MoCA usage to know how well they will allocate bandwidth between each other...but I'd expect that makes things problematic, especially if you have several other devices trying to use the MoCA network at one time, not just, say, one lowly little video stream going or something.

 

[pearl]

azazel1024 & abailey, thank you both for your replies.

I didn't mention it but I do plan to swap out the splitter when I add the POE filter and put in a MoCA rated splitter instead. Congestion may be a problem, but I am not sure I have any other options right now on how to setup the network. That said, a few things may make this workable.

I plan to put the all the servers, and a bunch of other gear all in the basement along with a few media players, a TV and a projector, thus keeping them on the same switch. That is pretty much where any large transfers would take place. I should be able to contain all that traffic so it does not hit the coax except for incoming downloads. The other rooms will have TVs accessing the basement servers, but as there is only two of us, I don't expect we'll have streaming video going in more than one room at a time.

I am glad to hear you think this will work, and I do recognize that I will see some congestion or latency if I am not careful on how I segment the rooms and figure out how to keep the most traffic possible contained at each endpoint. When serving a TV on one of the upper two floors, I may just have to make sure that the servers in the basement aren't doing a lot of other things that take up bandwidth on the coax. Such is life.

Comcast is coming today for the initial setup, and I'll probably buy the MoCA hardware this weekend to at least make sure that I can get each room live. then the stress testing begins

Thanks for the help

-P

 

[stevech]

Know that if you buy whole-house DVR from CableCo,ususally those employ MoCA. So you'd have to move your MoCA to a different frequency than theirs. Or some MoCA's will, at power-up, sense the other frequency is in use and automatically select.

 

[pearl]

Thanks Stevech for the info. I am in good in that respect though. I did not purchase any cable television services, just Internet. I use an OTA Tuner/DVR that outputs over DLNA to the TVs around the apartment.

Off topic, but Comcast came out today, and I was very pleasantly surprised at the unit they installed. Previously I had always just received a modem with a WAN port and then hung my own router(s) off of it. The one they gave me today is an Arris combo Modem and Router with four Ethernet ports plus WiFi, a firewall and even some VOIP options. Not sure if I'll use all of it's features or just bridge to my own router for a bit more security, but certainly interesting how much tech they are packing into one unit.

Thanks for the input, you all have been very helpful

-P

 

[azazel1024]

Sounds like a good setup to avoid congestion. One other thing you could always try if you do find some stuff is getting congested is try running power line also. You could offload one or two things (or more?) to powerline and connect that back to your core switch and dangle the rest off the MoCA (where it can't be on ethernet).