Suggestion: MoCA instead of WiFi

[stevech]

I moved from WiFi to MoCA to bring my home LAN to places where I cannot get cat5 easily. I did use a WiFi bridge at the TV for a long time. But every month or so, it or the WiFi router would stop passing traffic on just that client and a power cycle is needed. Not good for the WAF. Zero such issues since going to MoCA.

MoCA is much better than WiFi for streaming video, etc. It's a layer 2 system with no wireless, no interference issues, etc. More than enough capacity for several HD streams and generic IP traffic.

D-Link and Netgear and others sell MoCA. A pair costs about $175.
I generally avoid D-Link for WiFi, but their MoCA was plug and play and has run for months now. Zero issues. It's just like wire. No admin, no WiFi struggles.

At my TV, the MoCA there connects to the existing cable TV cable, passes it through, and produces an ethernet connection. That goes to a small ethernet switch. The switch has Sage's media video device and a serial RS232 to IP bridge, this being used to get IR signals as IP data to a server. Spare switch ports for other items.

I considered ethernet over power line, but I think MoCA is faster/better and isn't subject to noise on the power line. I see MoCA devices on eBay now and then. Just be sure to get like-kind units; not sure MoCA devices are truly interoperable, though there's a standard.

People that send satellite dish through the CATV coax in the home: I don't, but I've been told that MoCA can co-exist on the cable. Mine scans to find unused RF spectrum areas to use. Or you can manually define what frequencies to use on the cable.

The MoCA I have are rated to 70Mbps *net* yield at the IP layer.