Getting MoCA Bonded 2.0 going on older FIOS Installation
jw_in_ma
Enthusiast - Level 2

Hello All ~

I have a poor wi-fi zone on the second floor in my home, which is wired with Coax for Cable. I'm ready to get Ethernet over MoCA. Done a lot of reading on it but have not found anyone doing my particular setup. They always seem to have a coax jack on the wall they can put the MOCA/EN adapter into.

I have Verizon, FIOS hardware, but only bought the 75m/75m plan (no cable or phone svc). It's an older ONT cable modem -- an ARRIS ONT1000GI4.

Fiber comes into the basement, then the MoCA (WAN) coax from the oNT goes back out of the house, where it attaches to a 3-way splitter (PDI-3WMS5 which is 5-1000Mhz). Two outputs go back into the basement and one goes up the outside of the home to the 2nd floor. I believe there are

additional splitters in the attic to get it to all the rooms up there.

One of the in-basement lines routes over to beneath our dining room, where it comes up through the floor and connects into an (oldish) ActionTech M1424WR modem. I didn't let VZ upgrade me to the G1111 or whatever because I tried it and it wouldn't support my IP Phone.

I then have a Netgear Nighthawk R8000 attached to the actiontech to provide the WiFi for the home because the actionTech was too weak.

So what I'd like is to run Ethernet over coax back up to the upstairs where there' s a coax for cable TV.  Normally, you'd buy a pair of coax/internet adapters and create a virtual connection via coax.

From what I've read, you'd take one of the ethernet outs from the router, and connect it into the ethernet port of one of the adapters. The coax connection  then goes from the adapter into the wall coax jack. (the other adapter goes upstairs in the obvious way). Well, all I have is that one cable coming up from the outdoor splitter.  No wall jack!

Q1) Can you put a splitter before the modem, and then run the first adapter coax (out) back into the same splitter? Seems as it should work, but I just can't seem to find any examples of it discussed.

Also, I notice the 3-way splitter is only up to 1000Mhz so probably all the ones in the attic are as well.

Q2) To get Bonded MoCA 2.0, will I have to swap out that 3-way, as well as any splitters in the attic? But before I invest in those... 

Q3) Is that old cable modem ONT even to be able to support MoCA bonded 2.0. Does anyone know? IS there some way to get VZ to upgrade it to one that would support it?

Thanks so much.

Jesse

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Re: Getting MoCA Bonded 2.0 going on older FIOS Installation
Edg1
Community Leader
Community Leader

Here is the link...

https://forums.verizon.com/t5/Fios-Internet/Bonded-MoCA-2-0-with-Gigabit-plan-and-STBs/td-p/877845

They said they logged in directly to their laptop. But if you plug the first one into your Nighthawk it should get an IP. Once you connect it to your Nighthawk look at your client list to find the adapter's IP that is given from the router. Then type that IP into your internet browser and that will take you to the adapter's admin page. If the MoCA channel is set to 1000 MHz then change it to 1175 MHz and do the same with the other. 

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Re: Getting MoCA Bonded 2.0 going on older FIOS Installation
Edg1
Community Leader
Community Leader

Yes you can split the coax before the M1424WR. Take coax out of M1424WR and put on input of 2 port splitter. One out will go to the M1424WR and other will go to your MoCA adapter. Then take a LAN port from your Nighthawk and plug into the ethernet port of the MoCA adapter. Plug coax into the MoCA adapter upstairs and the ethernet port will connect to an ethernet switch or wireless AP. 

Q1. Yes you can split coax before the router. 

Q2. I wouldn't worry about swapping splitters since Verizon's VMS cable boxes use MoCA 2.0 and they work through those same PDI 1000MHz splitters. 

Q3. ONT doesn't come into to play since this is MoCA LAN traffic. All Verizon ONTs have a MoCA 1.1 WAN port  which is why they top out at 75/75 on coax. 

Re: Getting MoCA Bonded 2.0 going on older FIOS Installation
jw_in_ma
Enthusiast - Level 2

Thanks, @Edg1!

I have hooked them up as you said, and got a coax light on both ends. However, now my WIFI on both my Nighthawk and the new router upstairs do not have internet. In fact, I have one PC on a wired connection with the NightHawk, and it too doesn't have internet when the things are plugged in.

I did power down both the actiontec modem and the nighthawk when hooking up the coax.

The actiontec instructions say to first activate the remote point, because your (source) router may already support MoCA. Interestingly, when I removed the source adapter and rebooted everything, the remote adapter still had a COAX light. But I am wondering if its getting the WAN signal, not a LAN signal, and there is some kind of contention going on which prevents either one from functioning.


What am I missing? Is it because you can't have two LAN-LAN connections?

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Re: Getting MoCA Bonded 2.0 going on older FIOS Installation
Edg1
Community Leader
Community Leader

There is a WAN signal which is 1000 MHz and a LAN signal which is 1175 MHz. So there is a possibility they are set to a 1000 MHz which would interfere with your internet. 

I read in another post that someone logged into the admin page of the adapters via their IP address and changed the frequency. I'll look back and try to find the post. 

Re: Getting MoCA Bonded 2.0 going on older FIOS Installation
Edg1
Community Leader
Community Leader

Here is the link...

https://forums.verizon.com/t5/Fios-Internet/Bonded-MoCA-2-0-with-Gigabit-plan-and-STBs/td-p/877845

They said they logged in directly to their laptop. But if you plug the first one into your Nighthawk it should get an IP. Once you connect it to your Nighthawk look at your client list to find the adapter's IP that is given from the router. Then type that IP into your internet browser and that will take you to the adapter's admin page. If the MoCA channel is set to 1000 MHz then change it to 1175 MHz and do the same with the other. 

Re: Getting MoCA Bonded 2.0 going on older FIOS Installation
jw_in_ma
Enthusiast - Level 2

@edg1 - this was very helpful, thanks!!

Yep, that was the problem. Evidently, the VZ ActionTec M1424WR router puts its own LAN traffic (for the STB's I don't have 🙂 )out on 1100Mhz, so the traffic was getting completely scrambled since by default the adapters are talking on 1150Mhz.  The adapters are designed for networks with no existing LAN traffic on it.

The directions given in the link were pretty much accurate. 

I found you do have to mod your network connection on your PC to the IP setup noted in the link and plug directly into the ECB6200. The Router could not "see" the ECB6200 in its connected devices list. Maybe if I had waited longer? 

After adjusting both frequency settings and powered everything up, the other endpoint (a new Netgear AC1000 router) didn't show it had internet connectivity when I connected to it. But at least my old WiFi was back, so I could go back to work.

In a few hours when I checked in on my Nighthawk R8000 web admin page, I noticed another "wired" connection to R6080. At first I thought it was the ECB6200, but I looked it up and it's the AC1000. I switched my mobile phone over to the new AP and voila! Internet!  This may further explain why I couldn't connect to the adapter without adjusting my internet connection settings on my PC -- these guys are designed to be invisible adapters, providing a virutal wire to the destination adapter.

I did read somewhere in my research that it takes time for the coax network to negotiate and settle out all the circuits. Seemed to be true here.

The one downside, and I don't yet know if it was corporate VPN issues, or my home network (have never experienced this before, though, so I am leaning towards the latter), the 5G WiFi connection seems to freeze every 20 to 30m, and then reconnects in about 10 seconds. Seems connectivity on the old wifi 5G is a little less reliable, with more drops (as noted in VOIP calls). 


Thanks again for all the tips -- I tried ActionTec support at one point but they were honestly not very helpful - I ended up losing the cell signal and just never called them back.  Kudos, to you!