I’ve placed an order with Ziply Fiber to upgrade to 1GB service. My current setup consists of the ONT in the garage, with coax run upstairs. Coax exits the wall to a router, and from there an ethernet cable to the modem, and finally ethernet cables to our computers.
They’re sending a technician out on Wednesday to set up everything with ethernet cables. I’m wondering how this will all work once it’s set up, but I’m not finding what I’m looking for by Googling.
I understand there will no longer be a modem, but there will still be a router. Does the router live near the ONT, then ethernet cable is run through the walls from there? In other words, can I have ethernet jacks installed upstairs, such that all I have to do is plug one end of an ethernet cable into the wall, and the other end into a computer?
Or will the setup be similar to my current one, where the router is near my computer, and cables have to be run from the router to each device?
If you want fibre-optic Internet, then you need a fibre-optic modem, aka ONT. However, the latter has an Ethernet port that you can use with whatever router you want, which you can put wherever you want, not necessarily near your computer.
I think you might be confusing the modem and router. The modem takes the signal from coax and turns it into a signal that can go into the LAN Ethernet port of a router. (I have Fios and the modem and router are bundled into the same device.)
Ziply uses a piece of equipment that they call a MoCA adapter, which is basically what other folks usually call a modem. Coax in, Ethernet out to the router. Then you can pretty much use any kind of router you want. Here is their installation guide with details. it looks like they also have an option to run Ethernet straight from the ONT to the router without needing a MoCA. I’m not sure how that works.
The bottom line is that you will get an Ethernet cable that goes into your router, then Ethernet out to wherever you want it.
I doubt Ziply will run Ethernet cables through the walls for you although you could get that done by a third party. Running an Ethernet cable through the wall with a port at each end is not a hard job technically; it’s just running a wire. But “just running a wire” can be a devil to do depending on the house construction and where you need to run it (e.g., next room is easy, two floors up is hard).
Anyway, 1000BASE-T Ethernet can be run up to 100 metres over Category 5 or better twisted-pair cable. So, unless your router has to be farther than that from the ONT for some reason, there you go.
MoCA is the technical trade association Multimedia over Coax Alliance.
The actual technology is Multimedia over Coax (MoC) and is designed to distribute network topology over existing coaxial cabling (such as a decommissioned in-house cable TV network) without Wifi or Cat5/Cat6 wired Ethernet.
Which is probably why the MoCA adapter is optional.
My understanding is that Ziply’s 1GB service requires ethernet cable, coax won’t work. The house is currently only wired with coax. So I assumed that one of the reasons a tech is coming out is to run ethernet wires. Unless they’re going to replace the ONT?
No clue. MoCA’s propaganda marketing materials seem to indicate that gigabit network should be carriable over coax in their technology. If there are other factors making the network provider choose another provisioning plan, I can’t picture it.
MOcA 2.5 claims to handle 2.5GB Ethernet. I’m considering trying it since my server and NAS are in the basement with the modem and my office has Cat 5e and Coax which run down next to it. I want to upgrade the server and NAS connection to 10Gb, I can benefit from the upgrade from 1 to 2.5Gb to my desktop.
I can’t confirm, but Wikipedia says that 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T should still work with Cat 5e cables, so still no reason to spring for the weird adapter For 10GBASE-T, you need at least Category 6 or 6A.
I’m having a hard time visualizing your current setup. Are you saying you already have fiber internet, you’re just upgrading the speed? So you already have an ONT in-between the fiber out to the street and whatever it connects to inside? What is that? Coax? Or ethernet to some sort of ethernet/coax converter?
In my 1GB fiber setup I have the ONT plugged directly into my mesh router with an ethernet cable and all of our devices connect to that (through a variety of mesh satellites, WiFi, or a wired switch in my office). There’s no coax involved. I wouldn’t have expected to see coax in an existing fiber installation either, but it sounds like I’m just ignorant of these “network over coax” conversions done for old houses.
Can you trace out the entire sequence of devices and cables from the street to an example upstairs device? That may make it easier for me to understand what’s going on (if that’s important to you ).
From the street, it’s fiber (or so Ziply says). The current speed is 100MB. We bought this condo almost five years ago, and this is the way everything was set up. All we did was subscribe (it was Frontier then, Ziply has since bought them out).
The ONT is situated on the wall next to the garage door. Part of it is outside, part of it is inside. Frontier was the one who called it an ONT, so maybe they were pulling my leg and that’s not really what it is.
A coax cable comes out of the bottom of the ONT, and runs up the wall through the ceiling to a coax jack upstairs. A router is connected to the wall jack via coax, and a single ethernet cable connects the router to the modem. Two ethernet cables run from the modem, one to my computer and one to my wife’s.
I’ve never thought much of it, but yeah, this seems really convoluted. The modem has a coax connection, not sure why Frontier set it up this way. But it’s worked, so I never gave it any thought.
What would be cool is, like I described earlier, I could just have ethernet wall jacks near each computer. But I’m not sure if that means, if the router is in the garage, that two separate lines would have to be run - one for each wall jack.
I do not understand the purpose of this extra modem either, but it may not be important. (Maybe now you can get rid of it?) Point is, you want two female Ethernet wall jacks. Those two lines have to go to some sort of box, like an Ethernet switch, which could be hidden away somewhere but I would put it somewhere I could physically access it, just in case. There do not need to be cables visibly crisscrossing your floor. Of course it can be done, you (or your technician) just need to install the wall jacks; they were obviously able to do it with that coax cable.
This still sounds backwards to me. I can’t picture a modem converting from ethernet to ethernet. It’s kind of the interface from whatever external source you have (fiber optic cable, called an ONT in that case, or a cable modem if you have cable internet) to a computer network (i.e. ethernet cables). What you’re describing only makes sense to me if it’s a router connecting the two ethernet cables going to your computers to the ethernet cable going to a “modem” that connects to the coax. Are you sure that what I’m calling the “modem” and you’re calling the router isn’t the MoCA adaptor in this link: Quick Setup Guide?
If I squint real hard that sort of makes sense to me: they’ve sold you an ONT that takes external optical fiber and instead of directly providing you an ethernet access point to connect to the rest of your home network (like I have) provides you an “ethernet over coax” output that you’ll need to convert to regular ethernet with some sort of MoCA adaptor. That’s why I think your “coax->ethernet” device is a MoCA adaptor and what you’re calling a modem is actually your router.
It’s hard to know what they’re going to do. I have to admit my mind is a little shot by reading up on all this MoCA stuff. Sounds super convoluted. I’m guessing it’s only done that way because they know there’s already old coax cables gathering dust in people’s walls and you may as well use them to get from (e.g.) garages to upstairs instead of trying to run new cable?
I’f you’re not afraid of running new cable then I’d think that the cleanest solution would be an OTN where it is now and an ethernet cable directly connecting it to your router. With the router being somewhere sensible where you want your wired devices (i.e. in your office so that you can plug both computers into it) or if it’s a WiFi router wherever gives you the best whole house coverage.
That’s basically what we’ve done (eliding some irrelevant details about the router being mesh and how all the devices connect through that). I’m fortunate in the the fiber optic cable comes into the house through a hole in the wall in my office, so my collection of wired computers, etc. are right by it and the router.
As I mentioned earlier I think you have these reversed. The modem would take coax as input and provide Ethernet as output. The router takes Ethernet as input and Ethernet as output.
Ok, I did an image search. These aren’t the greatest images, but… here is the router:
And what I’ve been calling the modem:
The coax connects from the wall to the router in the first image, then an ethernet cable connects the router in the first image to the modem in the second image. From the modem, ethernet cables go out to the computers.
I think the modem is actually an all-in-one device. I’m wondering now if it’s only being used as a router, and I’ve got two routers bridged together for no reason.
Yeah, like some people suggested, you have it backwards. The white box doesn’t look like a router, but like some kind of modem/adapter box. The second picture definitely shows a (wi-fi/ethernet)-router.
For 10GBASE-T, you need at least Category 6 or 6A.
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