My router’s a Mikrotik CRS317-1G-16S+ and I’d hoped to continue using the RJ45 port for internet.
Will the above cable be compatible tho? The more I read up on things, the more a MoCA adapter seems required.
Never heard about MoCA as name before. (We do have cablemodem/router devices form TV+internet ISP, maybe it is the same)
The cables you are referring to are only either coax+cat6 in parallel, or impedance balun (balanced-unbalanced) adaptors for sending the coax signal over cat6 cables.
(Like the very old IBM cabling system 1 , sending 2 IBM terminal coax signals over UTP ???)
(Cat6 has 8 wires, coax has 2, so getting 802.3 ethernet over coax would need more than a balun)
Running the modem as a bridge is out of the question. Granted the Technicolour router’s worked fine till now, it now drops connectivity whenever it feels like, and it seems to be increasingly worsening. (from once a day, to once an hour)
I’d prefer as little unnecessary equipment clogging up the line as possible as well, and after a tedious call to my ISP it turns out the Technicolour router transmits plenty info to my ISP - bandwidth that I’d rather reserve for myself.
^This is what I’ve been considering, in case the cable didn’t do the trick.
It sounds like I’ll have to cancel the cable I ordered and look for a MoCA alternative.
I’ve also been looking into Coax to SFP converter adapters, however these are seemingly pricey and possibly proprietary.
Just like stated above, there are no alternatives to your cable modem.
Those MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) devices work in pairs, so unless your ISP is using them for the services provided to you they would do you no good. Unless you want to use a pair of them in your house for something else. But they can’t replace your modem.
If your modem is faulty ask your ISP to fix/replace it.
If the modem isn’t faulty ask your ISP to fix the signal quality.
I guess you can check the signal quality yourself from the modem’s interface.
As written above, most ISP MoCA devices are paired and even if replaced by a fully compatible MoCA alternative device, it may not work because of restrictions on the ISP side or frequency band incompatibility etc.
Easiest way is to switch off all firewall and other unused features on the ISP modem, put it into bridge or DMZ mode and do all routing/NAT/whatever you need on Mikrotik behind it.
That $20 cable you linked looks way too cheap and simple to be active MoCA device. I can’t find any details like what chipset it may be using or internal photos… but would be very interested if anyone tried it.
Cheapest (and real MoCA) adapter I know of is made by DirecTV, just look for DoCA on ebay or amazon. These are small devices with F connector on one end, ethernet on the other and USB or power brick power connector. But as always, being MoCA compatible says nothing about used frequency bands, so no one will guarantee it will work with your ISP. I have only used these DoCA adapters once, when I had to use existing CATV wiring… and they were cheap (much cheaper than other MoCA boxes) and worked great at 100Mbps FD.
Yeah, seems like I’ll have to give up on this idea.
Thankfully my ISP apparently provides free replacement units on demand, without even having to send the old unit back, so that’ll have to be my go-to whenever.
I’m still sadface about having unnecessary bridges throughout my network, but really I can’t argue with free replacements whenever.
I’ll give my ISP a final call when the weekend’s over, and ask which equipment (if any) that I could use for a “dumber” / “simpler” alternative, as reading up on the posts here it sounds like I’ll need more than just a simple adapter.
I’d hoped to just jam the coax to my ethernet plug, and maybe punch in some PPPoE credentials manually or something, but yeah I’m forgetting that there’s more to it than just whether it fits in the slot or not.
Thank you all for clarifying the use cases of MoCA devices, EoC devices, and such.
This has taught me a lot of new things too.
That would be about like thinking you could (in the way back days) take a plain old phone line and plug it into an Ethernet jack - bypassing your dial up modem. In that case, the cable would actually fit, but it obviously would not work. The modem is doing it’s job and can not be eliminated. It’s doing a lot more than just changing the type of media that the signal is riding on.