I work from home and sometimes my WIFI gets a little spotty. Maybe it's the fridge or the microwave running. Maybe it's the kids playing video games or streaming movies. Maybe it's because I have a LOT of wireless devices in my house from Sonos speakers to Nest smoke detectors. Whatever the reason, I don't always have a great internet connection and when you're trying to video conference, that can cause issues.
My solution, of course, would be to run ethernet cables directly from my router to my office. With a wired connection, WIFI instability would be a thing of the past. The problem is that my router is on the other side of the house and it's not reasonable to run an ethernet cable through the whole house. Some people have basements or crawlspaces that they can use to run cables under their floor. I don't. Some people can run the cables through their attic. I have a 2 story home and my router and office are both on the first floor. It really doesn't work without drilling a lot of holes or tearing up walls and ceilings. That's not going to happen.
I had basically given up when I ran across an thing called MoCA - Multimedia over Coax Alliance. Coax cables are used for cable TV and most houses, including mine, has coax running to each room. After all, it's important to be able to watch cable TV from anywhere in the house - or it was 20 years ago when my house was built. MoCA allows you to use the coax cables in your home and run the internet over them. So, I don't have to run ethernet cable all over my house, I've already got it built in!
The next question is, how do I set it up?
Obviously I can't just plug my coax line into my computer - there's no port for that. I need an adapter. After a little research, I decided to go with a pair made by Hitron. I got a pair because you need at least 2 adapters to get started. The first adapter plugs into your router (or in my case, an ethernet switch connected to my router). That starts the network going through your coax cable. The next adapter goes in the room you want a wired connection to. In my case, my office. The last thing I needed (or so I thought) was a POE filter. You put this on your incoming coax line (before it splits into the cables going to each room) so that your network doesn't accidentally extend to everybody in your neighborhood who has cable.
So, my Hitron adapters arrived first and I wired them up. Nothing. They have a nice little light to show if they're on a MoCA network. It was off. My network wasn't working.
Well, by the time I got the time to hook everything up, my POE filter had come as well so I went outside to my cable box to install it. I opened up the box and immediately knew why it wasn't working. I had a bunch of coax cables coming out of the wall but only 1 was hooked up to the incoming cable line. The rest were unhooked. Well that's why it didn't work - the connection between the cables was physically broken! All that was there was a 2 to 1 splitter with the second line capped off with a cap that I couldn't get to come off. OK, that's fixable. I ordered a 4 to 1 splitter.
While I waited for the splitter to come, I installed the POE filter and ran some internet speed tests. Everything looked good.
When the splitter arrived, I went out and hooked it up. I removed the old splitter and put in the new one - hooking up 4 of the coax lines to it.
BOOM! Everything worked! I now have wired internet straight to my office - no drilling holes or running wire required.
So this is how it's wired:
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