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Random disconnects and slow speeds with Actiontec MoCA setup

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JohnEnglish

Occasional Visitor
I posted an earlier thread (https://www.snbforums.com/threads/moca-approved-splitters-and-amplifiers.49216/) where I was looking for advice on setting up a MoCA network using 2 Actiontec ECB6200 adapters.

I got this filter and place it between the amplifier and the two way splitter and replaced all the splitters with Holland GHS-PRO-M splitters.

My issues are (1) the adapters seem to randomly diconnect. When I first set them up the power light came on but not the coax light. I had a look the next day and the coax light was on. Since then the connection seems to randomly disconnect for a few hours and then reestablish itself. Issue (2) is that the speeds are SLOW. A speed test gave me 20 Mb/sec down and 1 Mb/sec up. Using Wifi in the same location with the same device gives me 100 Mb/sec down and 25 Mb/sec up.

I don't have another other devices (eg cable boxes) on those coax connections but I did try setting up up cable boxes and a TV on those outlets and they worked fine. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the disconnects. It doesn't matter if other TVs are on or not or what time of day it is.

Any help would be appreciated,
 
I posted an earlier thread (https://www.snbforums.com/threads/moca-approved-splitters-and-amplifiers.49216/) where I was looking for advice on setting up a MoCA network using 2 Actiontec ECB6200 adapters.

I got this filter and place it between the amplifier and the two way splitter and replaced all the splitters with Holland GHS-PRO-M splitters.

My issues are (1) the adapters seem to randomly diconnect. When I first set them up the power light came on but not the coax light. I had a look the next day and the coax light was on. Since then the connection seems to randomly disconnect for a few hours and then reestablish itself. Issue (2) is that the speeds are SLOW. A speed test gave me 20 Mb/sec down and 1 Mb/sec up. Using Wifi in the same location with the same device gives me 100 Mb/sec down and 25 Mb/sec up.

I don't have another other devices (eg cable boxes) on those coax connections but I did try setting up up cable boxes and a TV on those outlets and they worked fine. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the disconnects. It doesn't matter if other TVs are on or not or what time of day it is.

Any help would be appreciated,

The first thing to try is take a piece of coaxial cable that is terminated on both ends and connect the two MOCA adapters. At one end connect one of the MOCA adapters to your router and at the other end connect your PC using an Ethernet cable. Then test your speed using an LAN speed test to establish your base case.

Then start adding your splitters and amp one by one to the mix to see if you can identify which if any piece of equipment is causing the issue. If nothing impacts the speed then your cabling in the wall is probably the cause. Could be bad terminations, damaged cable or splitters hidden somewhere.
 
the minimum is the 1m coax cable provided by Actiontec per their diagnostic for modem to modem sync.. If you have a 10 m or longer, that might be a better test.
It may be that you have a marginal connector on one segment of the cable or one of the splitters is not fully connected to cable even if it appears to be from the outside. Any whiskers from the coax shield inside the connector can play havoc with the signal as can a loose connection between the center conductor and the female receptacle in the connection.
 
Thanks. I’ll try connecting the adapters directly to each other and see what happens.

I think the cabling in the wall is OK as I’ve previously pulled the wall plates off the wall and the connections inside looks ok. I don’t think there are any hidden splitters as I have 8 coax outlets and 8 coax lines connecting to the splitters in the electrical room.

I do have a splitter on one of the coax lines but it’s not one of the ones that the MoCA adapters are connected to. Would that matter?
 
It can if it is electrically continuous to the moca cables via one of the other splitters. Mostly an issue for reflections or noise.
Make sure any unused ports or cable ends are terminated with 75 ohm termination screw on caps if they are electrically continuous with the moca coax.

You may have to take apart the connection at the wall plates to check the shield connection integrity.

A kink or crimp of a coax cable can cause issue, but it has to be pretty severe.

If your offline test confirms the moca modems are syncing correctly and you get correct throughput (via diagnostics/config page) then reconnect to the cable and bring up the diagnostic pages to see if there are any signal issues.

Any of the drop outs correspond to the time when any motors/device starting (dryer,washer, heating, ac, microwave, etc) or switching ?

I suspect there is a bad connection or cable somewhere in the system if the modems check out. You could try different cable segments as another field test.

Another possibility is the cable isp did not get their moca disabled. Usually, the moca sync is very quick, not minutes. What happens if you turn on the moca modems after removing the cable from the amp or turning off the cable co’s equipment ?
 
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An update, I noticed over the last couple of days that I was "missing" some channels when I watched TV. I called my cable company and they sent a tech over who identified the new splitters as the cause of the problem. Apparently they were blocking several channels.

He replaced the splitters, amplifier, and MoCA filer with an Antronix MVRA902B all in one unit (https://www.antronix.com/qr-details/).

.

It seems to be MoCA compatible although I'm still running into the same issues.
 
How did your moca units work in the single cable test? Were they able to sync at full speeds? If not, the problem is with the moca adapters themselves.

Otherwise, if they work fine with just the piece of cable, see if you can get proper speeds when just connected with just one of those 8 lines in between them (no television or anything else connected). If you can't pass signal with just the wire in between them, it's the wire or something related to it.

If the wire test works on all 8 wires, the wires from your electrical room to the rooms are good and it's something with the splitter introducing an issue.
 
So, they worked fine when connected to each other. I reset the MoCA adapters now they're working fine at decent speeds. The issue seems to have been the splitters which I was using originally. Even though they were "MoCA approved" there was clearly an issue with them since they were not only causing problems with my MoCA adapters but were also blocking certain cable TV channels.
 

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