MoCA VLAN Tagging Feature

[willmatt]

I am moving to an apartment and plan to subscribe to Uverse, because the cable company will not provide competitive pricing. I would like to use MoCA to deliver the Uverse signal to one or more set top boxes through the existing COAX. I understand the frequency the Uverse routers, coaxial connection uses, will interfere with the cable signal provided by the HOA, on the other hand I was told the MoCA adapters will not.

I was reading the specification on the Actiontech ECB2500C. The specification indicates the MoCA adapter supports VLAN Tagging. The question I have is if VLAN tagging is a standard MoCA feature or specific to the Actiontec MoCA adapter. Does VLAN Tagging supports the same functionality as IGMP snooping to prevent IPTV flooding? I am also considering the Motorola SBM1100 and SBM1400 MoCA Adapters and wonder if the adapters also support VLAN Tagging. I was planning to connect the single port SBM1100 to a port on the Uverse router and the Set Top Box to one port of the SBM1400. The SBM1400 has four Ethernet ports. I plan on using one Ethernet port on the SBM1400 to connect a printer and another port to connect a computer. Will VLAN Tagging cause the switch in the SBM1400 to route IPTV traffic to the port the set top box is connected to only, or or will IPTV traffic be transmitted to all ports on the SBM1400 switch.

 

[abailey]

I don't know if all MOCA devices support VLAN tagging but I use the Actiontech and it does support VLAN's. I would assume most of the MOCA adapters do. Now the Motorola ones you referenced are cable modems. I would not use them in your setup. Anyway the MOCA adapter supports VLAN's, it does not create VLAN's. They only pass the VLAN traffic. Thus if you wanted to create VLAN's you would need a managed switch on each side of the MOCA connection. You would create the VLAN's in the switches and the MOCA adapters simply pass the ethernet traffic (including the VLAN tags) between the switches. Think of MOCA as a replacement for an ethernet cable. Thats all it does. Now some of the MOCA devices do have built in switches but I don't know of any that have built in managed switches.

 

[willmatt]

SBM1100 and SBM1400

I appreciate your prompt response. The SBM1100 and SBM1400 are MoCA Adapters as seen here:
file:///C:/Users/Mr.%20Bill%20A/Documents/Old%20My%20Documents/Old%20My%20Documents/Product%20Manuals/Motorola/MoCA/SMART_Video_Adapter_Data_Sheet_365-095-22659x1.pdf

The question is if VLAN Tagging is supported will IPTV traffic be directed exclusively to the port on the Four Port SBM1400, the Set Top Box is connected to. If the router applies VLAN Taggs to the traffic delivered to the connected single port SBM1100 MoCA Adapter will the switch in the SBM1400 send IPTV traffic to the port that requested it? Until I did some research I did not realize the Uverse router sent IPTV traffic only to ports an STB is connected to.

 

[abailey]

My bad. I was looking at the wrong product. Yes that is a MOCA adapter set and it looks like a pretty good deal. Anyway after downloading the data sheets and manual I can't tell if it supports VLAN's or not. If it supports VLAN's, it does not have a built in managed switch and thus cannot separate out the VLAN's by switch port. The switch on the back of the SBM1400 appears to be a standard unmanaged switch. Thus you would need at least one managed switch on the end where your set-top box is. This is assuming the Uverse router supports VLAN's.
Then again, a managed switch would support IGMP Snooping. If you are looking for an inexpensive managed switch TP-Link makes some. Here is their least expensive (that I know of):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K4DS5KU/?tag=snbforums-20

Update: After thinking about it I would be surprised if the Motorola MOCA adapters support VLAN's as that would be hard to do with a 4 port unmanaged switch attached to one (that and the fact they don't mention a feature like being VLAN enabled).