Those cable outlets were originally installed to make it convenient to hook up television sets in every room. However, the coaxial cable connecting those outlets can also carry internet signals, thanks to a technology called MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance). The latest revision of this technology, MoCA 2.5, supports speeds up to 2.5 Gbps.

Let me emphasize that fact. I didn’t have Ethernet cable running from room to room, but I had coaxial cable that was capable of carrying just as much bandwidth. That cable wiring was more than 20 years old, but it could reliably carry a 1 Gbps signal over more than 100 feet. In a very old home with extremely outdated coax cable, you might run into issues. But if your cable is good enough to carry HDTV signals, it’s probably capable of running a modern network.

You can’t plug an Ethernet cable directly into a cable outlet, of course. Making use of that existing coaxial cable requires a MoCA adapter on each end of the connection. That adapter is a simple box that has two connectors on the back — one for a coaxial cable, the other for an RJ45 Ethernet plug.

I was in luck because my Xfinity cable modem supports MoCA technology directly. As a result, I needed only an adapter for my office PC. I chose the Trendnet TMO-312C Ethernet Over Coax MoCA 2.5 Adapter

If your internet arrives through a cable modem check whether it supports MoCA directly. If it doesn’t. you’ll need a cable splitter and a second MoCA adapter to connect to an Ethernet port on the cable modem/gateway. If your internet comes in via fiber or another non-cable option, you can likewise use a MoCA adapter to turn the cable outlet at that junction into an endpoint on your network.

If you have multiple cable outlets in your home or office, you can add a MoCA adapter at each one, and you can plug any Ethernet-compatible device into that adapter — a PC, a Mac, or a smart TV, for example. You can even use this technology in combination with wifi

One final addition I recommend on any MoCA network is a POE (Point of Entry) filter. This small device screws into the cable at the point where it enters the home — before it reaches the cable modem or any MoCA adapters. It blocks network signals from leaving your home network (helping to keep your communications secure) and also improves performance by reflecting radio frequency signals above 1 GHz back into the home network. I used this Belden POE filter, available from Amazon for less than $10.

The VC-202 has high-performance Ethernet-over-VDSL2 product that converts between twisted pair (UTP) and coaxial. It is based on two core networking technology: Ethernet and VDSL2 (Very-high-data-rate Digital Subscriber Line 2). This technology offers the absolutely fastest data transmission speeds over existing coaxial cable without the need of rewiring. When using a pair of VC-202 converters back to back, they connect between two Fast Ethernet LANs via coaxial cable. On the UTP side, the VC-202 uses a modular EIA / TIA 568 RJ45 connector that supports categories 3, 4, 5 or above wiring and connects to distance up to 100 meters (328 feet). On the coaxial cable side, the VC-202 utilizes a BNC connector and supports a 50ohm cable and distance up to 1.6km. It is ideal for extending the distance and signal conversion by transmitting the Ethernet data from the coaxial cable.

The VC-202 combines the well proven Ethernet and VDSL technology to transmit the Ethernet format data by using VDSL signaling over the most widespread coaxial cable.

Päivitä kameravalvontajärjestelmä IP-aikaan kaapelointia uusimatta. SC&T:n IP09CPHK PoE Over Coax lähetin ja vastaanotin pari siirtää PoE-signaalin IP-kameroille olemassa olevaa koaksiaaliverkkoa hyödyntäen. Säästät aikaa ja rahaa asennuksessa.

When it comes to networking these days, the vast majority of our devices are connected wirelessly. Beyond that, we’re all familiar with the Cat 5 and Cat 6 cables that form the high-capacity Ethernet networks in our homes, schools, and offices.

It’s only if you go back to the very dawn of Ethernet that coaxial cables are relevant… right? Wrong! MoCA networking is all about coaxial cables, designed to hook up devices over cable TV infrastructure!

MoCA hardware can be used to create networks on traditional cable TV infrastructure, such as that often laid in apartment buildings and hotels.

in the United States, there are a huge number of buildings with coaxial cables sitting in the walls. Today, they’re often still in use, delivering cable TV and cable internet services. In this era, though, many coaxial outlets are going unused. Sometimes, it’s because the transition to digital cable meant that a separate set-top box was needed per TV, adding expense. Other times, it’s simply because cable TV has been supplanted in some respects by the rise of streaming services.

This wide base of installed coax led to the devleopment of MoCA, a network standard intended to use these cable runs. 1.0 edition equipment first became available in 2006. MoCA stands for the Multimedia over Coax Alliance, and the technology was initially developed to send video over IP via existing coaxial cable runs. That use case didn’t really eventuate, but the underlying technology was sound.

Instead, the MoCA standard was developed into a networking technology to carry Ethernet over coaxial cabling. These days, it’s primarily touted as a solution to home networking problems. Common scenarios include when WiFi signals may not reach across a home, or where it’s desirable to get a wired network connection into a given room. MoCA can potentially help in these instances if coax hookups are available.

The MoCA concept may sound curious, given that Ethernet was originally carried over coax cables in its earliest iterations. Back then, the various standards for coax ethernet were colloquially known as thicknet and thinnet depending on the diameter of coaxial cable used. However, MoCA differs, as it was developed for a different use case. MoCA networking had to be able to run on coaxial cables that may still be in use for cable TV or cable internet delivery.

Functionally, this meant that MoCA signals had to avoid stepping on cable TV bandwidth, or interfering with DOCSIS cable internet signals. MoCA achieves this by simply running on frequencies not traditonally used by cable

The first 1.0 version of the standard allowed for half-duplex operation at up to 100 Mbit/s, and could handle up to eight nodes. MoCA 1.1 was released in 2007, bumping speeds to 175 Mbit/s and adding capability to handle 16 nodes.

MoCA 2.0 further increased speed to 500 Mbit/s, or 1 Gbit/s in a bonded mode, while achieving latency of 3.6 ms. MoCA 2.1 later added bridge detection to avoid neighbours accidentally forming networks together, while also adding power saving features. MoCA 2.5 included the MoCA Access development, intended for facilities like hotels, hospitals, or other facilities with existing sprawling coax networks. It offered networking at up to 2.5 Gbit/s down, 2.0 Gbit/s up, and provisions for up to 32 nodes.

MoCA 3.0 was later released in 2021, able to achieve up to 10 Gbit/s operation. However, achieving these speeds requires using the entire bandwidth available on the coaxial cable. Thus, only lower speeds can be used in concert with cable TV or cable internet on the same lines.

If you ‘cut the cord’, you probably have yards of now-useless coaxial cable in your walls. In this guide, we show you how to turn that dormant cabling into an integral part of your home network with just a couple of adapters.

But, as technology marched on, many of use moved away from these TV services in favor of streaming our TV and movies over the internet. While this left many homes still using a single coaxial cable line to carry their broadband signal to a modem, even those have often been replaced by Ethernet due to many ISPs requiring its usage for any service tier over 100Mbps.

Because of these transitions, millions of homes find themselves with seemingly useless coaxial cables and coaxial outlets emerging from walls and floors.

With a couple of relatively inexpensive adapters, you can use those lines that already spiderweb across your home to carry the same data that would otherwise require hundreds of feet of expensive-to-install Ethernet cabling.

How to convert your home’s coaxial cable into Ethernet lines
Materials needed: Built-in coaxial cabling, a coaxial-to-Ethernet adapter kit, any networking hardware you’re hoping to connect
Estimated time: 30 minutes

Estimated cost: $115 to $150 (depending on adapter model)