EDIT: I realise that an ethernet cable is always going to be the "best" option from a technical perspective and I'm well versed in the art of tearing up the walls to accommodate this, however I'm looking for alternative options to offer near-gigabit speeds and have a coax cable that already handily runs from point A to point B. Wi-fi isn't cutting it in my office any more, so I've been considering alternatives to somehow getting a cable from from the switch on the ground floor to the office on the second and Ethernet over Coax seems like a pretty compelling idea - there's a coax that runs from what will be Node-0 to the loft that's unused allowing me to throw a switch up there and possibly even an AP as well to improve wifi all over the house. The only gigabit-over-coax adaptor I've found so far is this one though - http://www.cclonline.com/product/10...nmanaged-Network-Extender-Kit-2-4km-/NET0786/ And the ability to extend gigabit over 2.4km is massively overkill I'm not necessarily averse to £290 if that's the only option, but this one seems decidedly industrial grade, when I really only need garden-variety. Gigabit is a must though. I'm after an layer-1 solution as opposed something like MoCA, as MoCA seems to be as variable as Powerline in it's speeds. Ideas?
Yeah, pull a cable, I looked into every option with power lines and Ethernet over coax but dropping a cable is the only robust and fast solution. Your coax will likely be stapled behind the walls so you'll need to drop a plumbob or conduit first.
Pulling a cable just isn't feasible, sadly. I've been trying to figure out a route since I moved in last September, and it's just not going to happen without a huge amount of mess and disruption - Hence looking for feedback on alternatives. I'm not convinced powerline or MoCA will be much better than wifi, but the Coax extender looks promising. I'm thinking that since it seems to be a L1 device it should be full rate gigabit.
What WiFi standard you running? You able to run an external cable? I punched a hole in the wall and ran shielded CAT6 up one floor and back in. Hid the cable behind a down pipe, which made drilling a bit fun! Gunk the holes with good quality mastic, and finish indoors with a nice wall plate. Also for the price of £300 for a coax solution, wouldn't it be cheaper to spend a weekend pulling a cable? (Throw a fibre line in there aswell )
If you own the place, seriously consider cutting out a few key sections of drywall (or is it still plaster in the UK?) to pull the cable in. Try to wire as many other rooms as possible (or run conduit to a place that you could finish the job later). I'm not sure what the local cost of a tradesman is in your corner of the village, but surely it would be cheaper to have the holes patched up, than to shell out £300 on that converter you mentioned? Plus, at the end of the day, cat5e/6 runs may be worth it and then some in flat resale value. If you're renting.... blah, suffer wireless until life leads you to a new flat.
Crikey, I don't know why I bothered asking . I appreciate the input and all, but if pulling a cable was at all feasible it would have been done months ago. N over 2.4 and 5Hz from the main AP, and another AP broadcasting over 2.4 and bridged back to the main one at 5GHz. I'm getting around 6MB/sec on the top floor at the back of the house, 2MB/sec at the front of the house. There's a block wall that bisects most of the house on the bottom two floors which causes the biggest problem. If I can get a wired AP in the loft that solves all the wifi issues (But then if I have a wired AP in the loft, I may as well drop a cable in to the office too). I've considered AC as it might improve things a little, but it's not exactly a solution and subject to the same issues I'm getting now. In an ideal world I would be after the full 100MB/sec available from gigabit for backups, at a minimum 40-50MB/sec, and I don't think AC can reliably give me that over the distance. Yes, but not really. Technically possible, and that was the preference for a while, but it would be terribly unsightly as there's nothing to hide it behind. It would also involve rental/purchase of a dock-off ladder (~12m) and drill/bit. Alternatively paying someone to do the job, which I hate doing generally for reasons of pride, and adds quite the cost to the "cheap" option. Nope! Where did you get flat from? I mentioned in my first post the office was 2 floors up from the switch. Sadly it's more than a few key sections of plasterboard as I would be travelling up two floors and across most of the house. I'm quite capable of pulling cables and patching up the resultant holes and have done before on many occasions, but in this case it just isn't a job I'm prepared to start, I've got enough other jobs to do right now (and a broken rib that's preventing me from doing most of them )
I do not understand why you say powerline would be no better then wireless. Unless you have shockingly bad electric wiring and old fashion non magnetic fuse box then its should work without issues. Case in point I used AV 200 (from Delovo) to bridge between house and barn through 2 fuse boxes and floors without issues. In my current house we use AV 500 from solewise (uses the same nic as Delovo). I do hear AV 1GB is quite temperamental though. This is just my personal experience, I hope it may be of some help to you.
I'm not averse to powerline in principle, however reviews all seem to suggest that even the best of the 500Mbit ones can only muster around 10MB/sec in normal conditions, and that the gigabit powerline adaptors are a waste of time, as you suggest. I could just about settle for 40-50MB/sec, but I'm used to 100MB/sec from my last place.
My only concern with coax is whether the cable quality is good enough. Is it proper networking coax or cheap-as-chips builders' TV coax?
I share your concern - I've seen better and I've seen worse. It's fairly standard looking RG-6, solid copper conductor, solid dielectric, tinned copper + alu/tin foil shield. The GigE-over-Coax extender doesn't seem to state any pre-requisites for extending the network out to 2.4km, so <100m should be a breeze even if it's not the best coax cable under the sun. On the other hand, there's not a great deal that's stated. EDIT: Turns out that this converter is telling as many porkies as the gigabit over powerline adaptors and the MoCA adaptors. I've just found the manual, which seems to suggest that the max speed is 144Mbit regardless of distance and cable type used... (for RG-6, 144Mb @ 900m, 144Mb at 800m, 144Mb at 100-700m) I wish that was a good deal more clear in the product descriptions. Looks like it we might be back to an Ethernet cable run being the only option .
I understand this is not strictly what you are asking but I think the message is to just bite the bullet and wire it. Even if using a tradesman to do the job (and putting aside the pride bit) it is still better to pay that rather than invest in some exotic one-use coax solution. That is, unless the cabling operation would be vastly more expensive. In my last place I just had a cat5e running upstairs stapled to the wall. Luckily it didn't cross any footpath, and it was unsightly. In the new place I am still trying to think of a solution but I will probably just rely on a tradesman and get it over with. If you find a way to pass ethernet over the coax cable it could suit me as well, so I will be following this thread with interest.
Yeah, I get it, pulling a cable is always going to be the "better" option on a technical level, and I'm just upset that it's going to be such a pain in the arse in this case and seems to be the only option since the EoCA adaptors were lying to me about the "gigabit" bit. I won't call a tradesman for anything other than plumbing or where building regs require me to though (e.g. electrical work in a bathroom). Part of this is pride, the other part is that based on experience, a tradesman will do it "well enough", and no more. It's my house, and I'll make sure it's damn well perfect. Pulling a cable down soil pipe enclosures (if these are internal for you) can be a fairly straightforward way to get cables to the loft and then back down again. Sadly this option isn't available to me. I'm going to keep looking for alternative options involving coax for a good few weeks anyway (as I'm not able to pull a cable at the moment on account of injury), so I'll make sure to report back if there's any magic solution. The fastest reviews powerline adaptor coming up on a search on Hexus shows 68Mb, unless I've missed something?
apologies it was engagedt http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/25/netgear-moca-coax-ethernet-adapter-review/ and manual on new stuff suggests >244. looks interesting if you have coax in already.
I think we're looking at the difference between theoretical and real-world - just as 802.11AC can theoretically transmit >1Gbit. I would have hoped (nay, expected) that a point to point device like ethernet-over-coax would be able to do far better than that though (compared to powerline), with the only limitation being the quality of the cable used Wifi and powerline seem so prevalent that standalone MoCA adaptors and bridges seem few and far between, and focussed on set top boxes, so enough to stream 1080p is plenty. WM2500RP Uses MoCA 2.0, which should do better, but is still limited to 500Mb on paper, so raises a question as to what that gets in the real world - if it drops by a similar margin (e.g. to 50Mbit) it's a waste of time entirely. (not that it seems to be available to actually buy either here or in the US anyway...)
What about using external Ethernet cable? Run the cable on the outside wall and into the upsatirs office?
ah i see they suffer the same issues as Powerline, they probably aren't going to work as fast as you'd like. what about an outdoor wireless bridge to avoid the walls and have no unsightly wire up the side of the building, course you may not like the antennae either.
Thanks. I may not have been quite so polite Seems to be teh case, but that's the bit that confuses me . Powerline is sharing the medium with another signal and is going through a hub as well. Coax could be the same case, but I don't need an aerial feed in the room with the networking gear and because of that I'd disconnect the connection in the loft for that room from the splitter, so any bridge has exclusive use of that cable. If I could actually find MoCA 2.0 kit in the UK from a brick and mortar store I'd give it a go for myself safe in the knowledge that I can return it if I get poor speeds (for instance, if the review results are based on a sharing the cable with CATV and going through splitters), but it seems to be fairly difficult to get one's hands on in the UK full stop, let alone from Currys et al. Now you're thinking outside the box! Might be a little over-engineered, mind, but I appreciate a different idea to "just shut up and run a cable"
