Help with MoCa

[ArnoG]

Hi!

 

I need ethernet in some area’s of my house, like my desk and the bedroom furthest from the router in the living room. (For my computer to stream using moonlight and respectively to boost the wifi signal)

 

Drilling holes is certainly not an option, so this rules out placing ethernet cables. Powerline is also out of the question, because the added latency I would perceive when using Moonlight is just too much.

 

Lucky for me, this house was built 25 years ago when Coax cables were important. I have coax connections in every room I could wish for, next to the router/next to computer/in furthest corner of said bedroom earlier.

 

Before I bought the rather expensive hardware to use MoCa, I decided to check each Coax cable, identify where they went. For this I didn’t have a multimeter at hand, so I used a 9V battery and watched for sparks… (Don’t judge, it worked rather nicely)

 

But I’ve kind of hit a roadblock now. I identified and checked the main coax cable coming out at the location where the router is. But for the love of god, I cannot find where the 2 other coax cables I need arrive in the garage (where all coax come from). I’ve shorted said two cables at one end, and checked every other cable in the garage. None gave sparks, and as a sanity check that the battery wasn’t empty I checked the cable known to be good and it gave sparks.

 

I know this is VERY dependent on country, but why would not all coax connections come together 1 spot? Where they then get splitted to the different rooms. Could it be that the coax cables get daisy chained in some outlets and I have to check every outlet? Could a cable be broken? Could there be a hidden splitter somewhere else which might be broken also?

 

I’m just looking for some useful information, I’ve looked for 3 hours today and I’m clueless now.

[BillBill]

43 minutes ago, ArnoG said:

Hi!

 

I need ethernet in some area’s of my house, like my desk and the bedroom furthest from the router in the living room. (For my computer to stream using moonlight and respectively to boost the wifi signal)

 

Drilling holes is certainly not an option, so this rules out placing ethernet cables. Powerline is also out of the question, because the added latency I would perceive when using Moonlight is just too much.

 

Lucky for me, this house was built 25 years ago when Coax cables were important. I have coax connections in every room I could wish for, next to the router/next to computer/in furthest corner of said bedroom earlier.

 

Before I bought the rather expensive hardware to use MoCa, I decided to check each Coax cable, identify where they went. For this I didn’t have a multimeter at hand, so I used a 9V battery and watched for sparks… (Don’t judge, it worked rather nicely)

 

But I’ve kind of hit a roadblock now. I identified and checked the main coax cable coming out at the location where the router is. But for the love of god, I cannot find where the 2 other coax cables I need arrive in the garage (where all coax come from). I’ve shorted said two cables at one end, and checked every other cable in the garage. None gave sparks, and as a sanity check that the battery wasn’t empty I checked the cable known to be good and it gave sparks.

 

I know this is VERY dependent on country, but why would not all coax connections come together 1 spot? Where they then get splitted to the different rooms. Could it be that the coax cables get daisy chained in some outlets and I have to check every outlet? Could a cable be broken? Could there be a hidden splitter somewhere else which might be broken also?

 

I’m just looking for some useful information, I’ve looked for 3 hours today and I’m clueless now.

The coax could be in the attic or maybe a basement. They would split with a coax splitter. Sometimes the coax is on the outside wall. Splitters can go bad. They are not expensive if you need to replace them. Sometimes people disconnect the splitter if they choose not to use them. 

[Donut417]

55 minutes ago, ArnoG said:

I know this is VERY dependent on country, but why would not all coax connections come together 1 spot?

I know in our case when we first got Docsis Cable internet in the early 2000s the cable company would not run cables nicely. So the contractor put a splitter on the outside of the house and just drilled a hole from the outside to the inside where the computer was for the modem. There is a chance you have a box on the side of your home that the cable from the pole/underground comes to, it will go in to a grounding block and then to the rest of your home. There might be a splitter there. 

 

My advice would be to go outside, find out where the cable enters the home and trace it from there. Maybe you will get lucky. 

 

57 minutes ago, ArnoG said:

his house was built 25 years ago when Coax cables were important

eh..... Moca might not work well on 25 year old cable. Because it's likely that cable is RG59, which was replaced by RG6. 

 

58 minutes ago, ArnoG said:

, because the added latency

Moca also has higher latency from what I read. So just be aware. 

[ArnoG]

9 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

My advice would be to go outside, find out where the cable enters the home and trace it from there. Maybe you will get lucky.

I did that earlier, and the cable coming into the house is concreted in the foundations and remains underground up until the street without any box. In the house it then directly went into a splitter without anything else.

 

But I think I’m close to giving up. The only thing I can think of is that the contractor used splitters at different locations. I have yet to check 1 room, the one coincidentally above the garage where the first splitter was located. Having the upstairs coax terminate in this room is the only semi-logical possibility left.

 

 

16 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

eh..... Moca might not work well on 25 year old cable.

I did some research and it should be okay, I think I have RG6 cable but it wasn’t easy to tell because as compared to ethernet it’s not written on the cable. But I measured the cable thickness (0.7cm), which according to some online sources is almost certainly RG6. Only the router/computer/access point (optional) will be connected in direct coax runs and with high quality splitters and connections, which also helps I assume.

 

20 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Moca also has higher latency from what I read. So just be aware

Oh good to know, as I did not think this was the case. I’ll for sure look into it as this was my most important reason to go forward with this. Thanks!

[BillBill]

9 minutes ago, ArnoG said:

I did that earlier, and the cable coming into the house is concreted in the foundations and remains underground up until the street without any box. In the house it then directly went into a splitter without anything else.

 

But I think I’m close to giving up. The only thing I can think of is that the contractor used splitters at different locations. I have yet to check 1 room, the one coincidentally above the garage where the first splitter was located. Having the upstairs coax terminate in this room is the only semi-logical possibility left.

 

 

I did some research and it should be okay, I think I have RG6 cable but it wasn’t easy to tell because as compared to ethernet it’s not written on the cable. But I measured the cable thickness (0.7cm), which according to some online sources is almost certainly RG6. Only the router/computer/access point (optional) will be connected in direct coax runs and with high quality splitters and connections, which also helps I assume.

 

Oh good to know, as I did not think this was the case. I’ll for sure look into it as this was my most important reason to go forward with this. Thanks!

Count how many cable outlets you have in total. That would give you a better idea of where they are coming from. Most splitters I have seen are 2, 3 and 4 connectors. 

[ArnoG]

I thought it over overnight and decided MoCa was not worth it. The cost of approx. 160€ to set it up is not worth it. Specially when the main reason was lower latency, I get 16ms latency over wifi and 13ms over ethernet. Assuming MoCa will add 2-5ms latency atleast, this negates any benefit I was hoping to gain.

 

I thank you both for the help!

[BillBill]

3 hours ago, ArnoG said:

I thought it over overnight and decided MoCa was not worth it. The cost of approx. 160€ to set it up is not worth it. Specially when the main reason was lower latency, I get 16ms latency over wifi and 13ms over ethernet. Assuming MoCa will add 2-5ms latency atleast, this negates any benefit I was hoping to gain.

 

I thank you both for the help!

MoCA 2.5 should have a lower latency than Wi-Fi. If you shop around and maybe find a sale. You can get something that costs less. But that depends on how many MoCA adapters you are needing. 

[ArnoG]

1 minute ago, BillBill said:

should have a lower latency than Wi-Fi

I tested both ethernet and wifi latencies, and wifi showed an increase of 3ms.

 

So according to a few online sources, wifi is as good as MoCa 2.5 which adds about 2.5-5ms of latency. (In my case*)

 

Yes this might vary due to a lot of external factors. But I think it is because my use case is perfect for wifi quality. There are only a maximum of 6-10 devices using wifi, physical distance is 4 meters with only a floor in between, network congestion is non-existent as I live outside the city, … .

 

I even suspect MoCa to have more latency now than wifi. As the coaxial cables in the house are far from the best quality. And sadly Belgium is not known for MoCa so the best deal (even second hand) currently is 60€ per adapter. Thus summing up to 180€ or about 205USD.

 

[BillBill]

2 minutes ago, ArnoG said:

I tested both ethernet and wifi latencies, and wifi showed an increase of 3ms.

 

So according to a few online sources, wifi is as good as MoCa 2.5 which adds about 2.5-5ms of latency. (In my case*)

 

Yes this might vary due to a lot of external factors. But I think it is because my use case is perfect for wifi quality. There are only a maximum of 6-10 devices using wifi, physical distance is 4 meters with only a floor in between, network congestion is non-existent as I live outside the city, … .

 

I even suspect MoCa to have more latency now than wifi. As the coaxial cables in the house are far from the best quality. And sadly Belgium is not known for MoCa so the best deal (even second hand) currently is 60€ per adapter. Thus summing up to 180€ or about 205USD.

 

MoCA will still have less latency. You can find MoCA adapters that come in a set of 2. That should cost less than buying them individually. But you don't really need them. Unless you are doing some competitive online gaming.       

[ArnoG]

2 minutes ago, BillBill said:

MoCA will still have less latency

I think I have proven that will not be the case here…

 

That’s what I’m trying to say, in theory yes you would often be right. I also thought this before I started doing measurements of my latency.

[BillBill]

14 minutes ago, ArnoG said:

I think I have proven that will not be the case here…

 

That’s what I’m trying to say, in theory yes you would often be right. I also thought this before I started doing measurements of my latency.

It would only be a marginal amount. So that wouldn't make much of a difference. 

[ArnoG]

18 minutes ago, BillBill said:

It would only be a marginal amount. So that wouldn't make much of a difference. 

Indeed, I just went off a reddit message “WiFi adds 20ms latency!!”. Without thinking further I then went, “MoCa is the answer”.

 

Plot of the story, don’t trust everything on reddit and do your own tests/research.

[BillBill]

1 minute ago, ArnoG said:

Indeed, I just went off a reddit message “WiFi adds 20ms latency!!”. Without thinking further I then went, “MoCa is the answer”.

 

Plot of the story, don’t trust everything on reddit and do your own tests/research.

Yes some sites are inaccurate. If you do not have any close neighbors. You can change the Wi-Fi channels. Non-blending channels are used to not interfere with a neighbors Wi-Fi. So something to maybe experiment with.    

[Biohazard777]

On 7/31/2025 at 11:11 PM, ArnoG said:

I need ethernet in some area’s of my house
...
Drilling holes is certainly not an option.
...
I’ve looked for 3 hours today and I’m clueless now.

Those 3 hours would have been better spent drilling holes and running ethernet cables. 
The house is yours, you are not renting it?
So, why drilling holes is not an option?

[ArnoG]

The house is my mother's, and let's just say I won't be alive much longer if I start drilling visible holes... The annoying part is the router is in the living room, so not some mechanical room (would thus be very visible).

 

And I'm moving out either way in 1-2 years, so compromising for a little bit longer is okay I guess.