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Besides ethernet cables providing more stability to your network connection than WiFi, it isn't mentioned in the article. Not many people know about this: most

by relyks 1y ago

Besides ethernet cables providing more stability to your network connection than WiFi, it isn't mentioned in the article. Not many people know about this: most houses have coaxial cable lined throughout. If your router is located in a different location in the house, you can use the coaxial cable to help create a network. You need two MoCA adapters (coaxial to ethernet) on both sides (one at the router/switch/gateway and another at your computer). Connect it all up… bingo, bango, bongo, and you got stable and fast internet! This is how I have the most stable connection in my house :)

bognition 1y ago
If you do this doing forget to add a moca filter where your cable enters your house, otherwise you will leak your Ethernet signal to anyone who is on the same cable.
exmadscientist 1y ago
Also remember that even if you can't or don't want to connect your device via Ethernet, you might be able to use MoCA to easily move your WiFi router to a better location, or add a second router/mesh node with a reliable wired backhaul instead of a crappy radio backhaul, and that might make all the difference.
robin_reala 1y ago
I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a house with pre-existing coax, apart from possibly an antenna connection. Is this a US thing?
- bombcar 1y ago
  Lots of US houses have coax to all the main rooms (family, bedrooms) because that was how you got cable TV. (I still see it in new construction, though if I was having a build done I'd say run multiple Ethernet instead of any coax)
  - tkuraku 1y ago
    I'm just building a new house this year and Ethernet to every room is standard in this area. In a different state in the US coax is standard in new construction. (We just moved) It varies by location.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      Around here it's coax + Ethernet to any "TV" room, Ethernet to all rooms (think - phone line).
- clan 1y ago
  Nope. As you say yourself: Possibly an antenna connection. Exactly that. When we redid the floors i our apartment we renewed the electrical wiring and added ethernet and coax. The coax was intended for radio/tv. There is however an overlap of people who have the foresight to add coax cabling also add ethernet a well. If I was was re-doing today I would add more empty pipes and fiber. Cabling ahead has a very high WAF (Wife Approval Factor) when adding new gear :-)
- cjs_ac 1y ago
  I've lived in both Australia and the UK, and the only coaxial cables in any home I had/have have been direct point-to-point connections from the roof-mounted TV antenna to the corner of the sitting room where the TV was intended to be placed. Not terribly useful for computer networking.
  - clan 1y ago
    In DK I would say it became common with the kitchen and maybe bedroom TV around 1990 and TVs in the kids rooms around 1995. Cable TV became common in the 1980s (around here). So distribution is just a question about point of entry. Are the aussies and UKensians that different? Source: I worked at a TV/electronics shop in the early 90s.
    - Symbiote 1y ago
      Cable TV (from cables under the road) is much more common in Denmark than in the UK. Digital, broadcast TV in the UK is mostly received by radio broadcast or satellite broadcast, so the house would only have the appropriate cables from certain rooms up to the roof. Thinking of the houses I lived in, it wouldn't have been practical to put a router of any kind up there. From recent UK statistics: - 95% of households have at least one television - 30% receive TV over satellite - 13% by cable - 80% by IPTV - 48% by terrestrial radio broadcast - 96% have broadband internet That's 13% of houses using their cables for a TV subscription, so more than that number have the cables available, but some big chunk probably had it installed to a single room in the 1980s and have never expanded it — the kitchen and the kids' room use terrestrial broadcast.
zabzonk 1y ago
Most unreliable network I ever had the misfortune to use (not to install) was coax thin ethernet when I worked at the BBC - termination problems were terrible. Twisted pair for the win as far as I'm concerned or better, WiFi. I don't think I have any coax in my fairly modern UK house.
- Symbiote 1y ago
  They don't mean 10Base2 "Thinnet", common in the late 1980s and in cheap installations in the early 1990s. They mean a modern (ish) device which uses existing TV cabling, to avoid rewiring in houses.
- superjan 1y ago
  Coax ethernet was often deployed as a bus: 20something computers that must be directly connected to a single cable going from room to room. If one of the plugs was unplugged or not tightened correctly, everyone on that line suffered. This happened a lot, people moved computers around. And the tech looks simple. That is a different situation than installing a fixed, point to point connection.
- tialaramex 1y ago
  Depending on how modern it is, you might well have "telephone extensions". In principle this is Cat 3 cable strung in a tree shape, but in practice the electrician is probably buying wholesale cable - carrying one reel of Cat 5 for all jobs is easier than owning a Cat 3 reel and a Cat 5 reel and bringing the right one for each job, the price is usually either identical or within pennies. So there's an excellent chance it's Cat 5 cable anyway†. Now, Cat 5 cable is a perfectly good telephone cable, but it's also Gigabit Ethernet (over reasonable distances, you don't live in a mansion). The tree shape won't work for networking, but the individual cables buried in walls or elsewhere are basically just right there already. You just hook the existing cables to new Ethernet shaped faceplates. I am literally writing this from a wired connection in a bedroom, nobody built this to have Ethernet, they built it to put a phone in the main bedroom, but it's 2025, nobody owns a wired phone, everybody needs Internet. † Also the network cards can't tell, they will try to achieve 1000 Mbit/s and chances are they succeed even if the cable isn't actually rated Category 5. I have retro-fitted modern switches to an ancient building (the old Mountbatten chip fab at the University of Southampton, before it burned down) and in 90+% of cases this "upgrades" the connection to Gigabit because the Cat 3 cable pulled a decade or more earlier was good enough.

by relyks 1y ago

bognition 1y ago

If you do this doing forget to add a moca filter where your cable enters your house, otherwise you will leak your Ethernet signal to anyone who is on the same cable.

exmadscientist 1y ago

Also remember that even if you can't or don't want to connect your device via Ethernet, you might be able to use MoCA to easily move your WiFi router to a better location, or add a second router/mesh node with a reliable wired backhaul instead of a crappy radio backhaul, and that might make all the difference.

robin_reala 1y ago

I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a house with pre-existing coax, apart from possibly an antenna connection. Is this a US thing?

bombcar 1y ago
Lots of US houses have coax to all the main rooms (family, bedrooms) because that was how you got cable TV. (I still see it in new construction, though if I was having a build done I'd say run multiple Ethernet instead of any coax)
- tkuraku 1y ago
  I'm just building a new house this year and Ethernet to every room is standard in this area. In a different state in the US coax is standard in new construction. (We just moved) It varies by location.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    Around here it's coax + Ethernet to any "TV" room, Ethernet to all rooms (think - phone line).
clan 1y ago
Nope. As you say yourself: Possibly an antenna connection. Exactly that. When we redid the floors i our apartment we renewed the electrical wiring and added ethernet and coax. The coax was intended for radio/tv. There is however an overlap of people who have the foresight to add coax cabling also add ethernet a well. If I was was re-doing today I would add more empty pipes and fiber. Cabling ahead has a very high WAF (Wife Approval Factor) when adding new gear :-)
cjs_ac 1y ago
I've lived in both Australia and the UK, and the only coaxial cables in any home I had/have have been direct point-to-point connections from the roof-mounted TV antenna to the corner of the sitting room where the TV was intended to be placed. Not terribly useful for computer networking.
- clan 1y ago
  In DK I would say it became common with the kitchen and maybe bedroom TV around 1990 and TVs in the kids rooms around 1995. Cable TV became common in the 1980s (around here). So distribution is just a question about point of entry. Are the aussies and UKensians that different? Source: I worked at a TV/electronics shop in the early 90s.
  - Symbiote 1y ago
    Cable TV (from cables under the road) is much more common in Denmark than in the UK. Digital, broadcast TV in the UK is mostly received by radio broadcast or satellite broadcast, so the house would only have the appropriate cables from certain rooms up to the roof. Thinking of the houses I lived in, it wouldn't have been practical to put a router of any kind up there. From recent UK statistics: - 95% of households have at least one television - 30% receive TV over satellite - 13% by cable - 80% by IPTV - 48% by terrestrial radio broadcast - 96% have broadband internet That's 13% of houses using their cables for a TV subscription, so more than that number have the cables available, but some big chunk probably had it installed to a single room in the 1980s and have never expanded it — the kitchen and the kids' room use terrestrial broadcast.

zabzonk 1y ago

Most unreliable network I ever had the misfortune to use (not to install) was coax thin ethernet when I worked at the BBC - termination problems were terrible. Twisted pair for the win as far as I'm concerned or better, WiFi. I don't think I have any coax in my fairly modern UK house.

Symbiote 1y ago
They don't mean 10Base2 "Thinnet", common in the late 1980s and in cheap installations in the early 1990s. They mean a modern (ish) device which uses existing TV cabling, to avoid rewiring in houses.
superjan 1y ago
Coax ethernet was often deployed as a bus: 20something computers that must be directly connected to a single cable going from room to room. If one of the plugs was unplugged or not tightened correctly, everyone on that line suffered. This happened a lot, people moved computers around. And the tech looks simple. That is a different situation than installing a fixed, point to point connection.
tialaramex 1y ago
Depending on how modern it is, you might well have "telephone extensions". In principle this is Cat 3 cable strung in a tree shape, but in practice the electrician is probably buying wholesale cable - carrying one reel of Cat 5 for all jobs is easier than owning a Cat 3 reel and a Cat 5 reel and bringing the right one for each job, the price is usually either identical or within pennies. So there's an excellent chance it's Cat 5 cable anyway†. Now, Cat 5 cable is a perfectly good telephone cable, but it's also Gigabit Ethernet (over reasonable distances, you don't live in a mansion). The tree shape won't work for networking, but the individual cables buried in walls or elsewhere are basically just right there already. You just hook the existing cables to new Ethernet shaped faceplates. I am literally writing this from a wired connection in a bedroom, nobody built this to have Ethernet, they built it to put a phone in the main bedroom, but it's 2025, nobody owns a wired phone, everybody needs Internet. † Also the network cards can't tell, they will try to achieve 1000 Mbit/s and chances are they succeed even if the cable isn't actually rated Category 5. I have retro-fitted modern switches to an ancient building (the old Mountbatten chip fab at the University of Southampton, before it burned down) and in 90+% of cases this "upgrades" the connection to Gigabit because the Cat 3 cable pulled a decade or more earlier was good enough.