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I just picked up a pair of moca 2.0 bridges to serve wired in some rooms of my house. Plugged it into my OPNSense router and got it working just fine.

But one issue. My speed is capping out at around 150 mbps instead of 1 gbps.

I just used some coax cables I found lying around the house. They all say 'catv 18 AWG' on them.

Edit: more info:

  • The comcast modem is Model Number: TG3482G, CGM4140COM
  • I believe there is only one splitter to this coax cable that splits from the point of entry into the home. No POE filter.
  • The setup for my internet is:
    • the comcast modem set to bridge mode
    • OPNSense running in a Proxmox VM on a DL360 G7 (passthrough NIC with 2 gigabit ports)
    • Unmanaged gigabit switch to serve LAN
    • MoCA bridge (plugged into switch)
    • Other MoCA Bridge plugged into laptop

All ethernet connections are cat5 or cat6 cables plugged into gigabit ports. As for coax cables, the only one I can view right now says catv 18 AWG on it.

Using iperf3, I can get ~950 mbps to any of my VMs when plugged into the switch. But when testing with the MoCA bridge, it caps around 150. Using speedtest-cli I get ~850 on ethernet.

cclloyd
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  • MoCA 2.0 is up to 1 Gbps, in perfect conditions, without more information about the routers and/or the cable itself this answer is difficult to answer. – Ramhound Nov 15 '18 at 21:38
  • @Ramhound I don't know any info about the cable. The setup itself is comcast modem set to bridge mode, OPNSense running in a VM from Proxmox on a DL360 G7, connected to an unmanaged gigabit switch for serving LAN. Testing with iperf3 to another VM on the same computer (though different NIC) yields 70-150 mbps fluctuating. – cclloyd Nov 15 '18 at 21:50
  • All relevant information should be contained in the question body. "a Comcast modem" - Please be more specific then this if you want an answer to this question. What makes you think you should have the capability for 1 gbps transfer speeds outside of your network. 150 mbps is what Comcast typically provides, again, please provide all relevant information. "Is there a specific minimum spec of coax cable" - The type of coax is typically written on the cable itself. – Ramhound Nov 15 '18 at 21:52
  • @Ramhound I have gigabit internet, but that isn't the issue, since I wasn't even achieving near gigabit speeds on LAN with iperf3. I posted the model and more specifics in my original post. – cclloyd Nov 16 '18 at 00:21

1 Answers1

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MoCA is designed to work over the 75Ω coaxial TV antenna / cable TV (henceforth "CATV") / satellite TV cable you already have in your home. Topologically, it's expected to be a tree made by a single splitter or a small hierarchy of splitters.

In general, something like quad-shielded RG-6 is going to work better than RG-59. In fact, RG-59 should be avoided because its attenuation is too high.

The fewer splitters your MoCA signals have to to go through, the better.

The MoCA specs allow for MoCA devices to use different frequency bands in order to avoid the frequency bands used by the CATV or satellite TV signals that might also be on the same coax in some homes. In general, CATV is expected to use frequencies from 5MHz up to 850 MHz or 1GHz, and MoCA is designed to use frequencies above that, up to 1.6GHz, and perhaps up to 2GHz in the future.

Different cable designs can attenuate different frequencies to different degrees, so it would be helpful if you knew how much your coax cables attenuate the signal at frequencies between 1GHz and 2GHz. Coax cable attenuation ratings are often given in decibels per 100 feet.

It is helpful to make sure your splitters are rated for 5MHz (or below) to 2GHz (or above). If your splitters don't say a rating or say a rating that doesn't go up to 2GHz, that doesn't mean they don't pass those higher frequencies very well, it just means no one designed or tested them to do that, so you don't know. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. You could test it yourself if you were a EE or RF nerd with some lab equipment.

TV signal boosters (amplifiers) often only amplify frequencies traditionally used by CATV channels (i.e. less than 850MHz or 1GHz), and may filter out frequencies above that. So TV signal amplifiers on your in-home coax wiring can be a MoCA killer. If you really need a CATV signal booster, you may be able to find a MoCA friendly one nowadays.

It's important to put a low-pass filter at the "Point Of Entry" (POE) where the CATV line comes into your home, before the first splitter. These "MoCA POE" filters allow the lower frequency (DC to 1GHz) CATV signals to pass into your home, but block higher frequencies (1GHz and above as used by MoCA), keeping your neighbors MoCA from interfering with yours, and vice-versa. AND as a HUGE BONUS, rather than just absorbing the frequencies they filter, they actually reflect your own MoCA signals back into the rest of your home's wiring, which helps the signal cross splitters and generally improves signal strength. So go buy and install a MoCA POE filter if you haven't already.

Typically coax splitters allow lots of signal to pass from the "in" to the "outs" and vice-versa, but they often greatly attenuate (isolate) the signal between the "outs". This can be a problem if your MoCA devices are on separate "outs" of a splitter. If you go to RF equipment suppliers, you may be able to get splitters with low isolation between the outs.

MoCA devices often have a diagnostics screen where they show you what signal strength they're seeing from the other MoCA devices on the network. It might be interesting to know what signal your devices are seeing for each other, and see if that's what you'd expect given what you know of your cable ratings and lengths, splitter ratings, and topology. Ideally you want the received signal strength to be -40dBm or better to get the top rates. If the low rate you're getting is only due to too much attenuation, it suggests your received signal strength is -55dBm or worse.

The MoCA Alliance (the industry consortium that specifies, certifies, and markets MoCA) has a MoCA installation guide with a lot more information here (warning, direct PDF link): http://www.mocalliance.org/technology/Final_Best-Practices-for-Installation-of-MoCA_170516rev01.pdf

Spiff
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  • Where could I view some diagnostics with my setup? The bridges are just plugged into my switch that's plugged into OPNSense. I don't think the bridges have their own web interface. – cclloyd Nov 16 '18 at 00:30
  • @cclloyd Wow, you're right, those Actiontec ECB6200's are no-frills. There doesn't seem to be a way to get diags with that model. – Spiff Nov 16 '18 at 00:37
  • Do you know of any adapters that have a managed interface? – cclloyd Nov 16 '18 at 00:38