Jesus. Put it all back the way it was, then buy another wifi router, put it in an optimal location at an ethernet drop, set it’s IP to something the first router won’t give out, and disable DHCP on it. Problem solved: you have Wifi in a good location in your home and your old network back.
Update: got the tools, coax cable tester, and the Cat 6 cables yesterday, replaced all Cat 5 cables throughout the house and remade a couple of F connectors. I didn’t find any problems or see any improvements. This is what I expected, and although none of it may have been strictly necessary, I’ve eliminated potential problems and I’m pleased to now have updated and consistent ethernet cables everywhere. They are now future-proofed, which may be useful soon (see below).
Not sure why you needed the expletive. 
The only ethernet drops in my house are via the MoCa adapters, and my current ones only have a 100 Mbps ethernet output, as The Librarian so kindly pointed out. So I don’t think your suggestion will work. Jesus. 
In any case, for some reason, the idea of connecting my three desktop computers via wifi just bugs me. It may be an unreasonable prejudice, but there it is. And since I’m paying Comcast for 150 Mbps, I’d like to see that speed at the desktops. I realize there’s probably little or no practical advantage, but it will make me feel better.
Vonespy, thanks for pointing out those 2.5 adapters. I have been searching Amazon for MoCa products for the past several weeks, but for some reason they never showed me those, even though they carry them (back ordered at the moment). I guess Actiontec is paying Amazon more than Gocoax.
Since my current MoCa adapters are 1.0, these would be a nice leap over 2.0, and for significantly less than the Actiontec 2.0 devices, which are about $100 apiece. I will almost certainly buy them.
Update: I bought two of the Gocoax MoCa 2.5 adapters, and installed them this morning to link the incoming cable with my office computer. Total plug and play, and an immediate jump to 240 Mbps! Fantastic!
I didn’t bother getting a third Gocoax for the basement computer, since I don’t do anything critical there, and just left the old Actiontec MoCa 1.0 unit in place. The Gocoax connected to it with no problems and boosted its wired speed from an average of around 30-40 Mbps to 75-80. So a great improvement there at no cost!
The only minor downside with these units is that, unlike the Actiontec 1.0 units, they don’t put all the connections on the same side. The coax jacks are on one of short ends, and the power and Ethernet are on the other. This makes it a little harder to arrange the wires neatly.
Thanks again, vonespy for recommending them.
Important note - you can have multiple AP’s or routers with the same SSID/password, and the unit will connect to whichever one is loudest/answers first.
Important note caveat - WiFi devices generally are not programmed to drop the old Access Point (AP) and connect to the hearer (louder) one automatically. As long as they can still make contact with the one they first connected to, they will stay connected. Fancier managed multiple AP wifi systems solve this problem by having a controller that monitors connections and received signals, and when it senses that a device is closer to a different AP, it will control the AP’s to drop the signal on the remote (stop answering) so the device will connect with the closer one (handoff). unless you are going to buy a fancy wifi management system in the hundreds of dollars, your best bet is to have two different wifi points and manually select the correct one when the service signal sucks.
Thanks, but with the router now in a more central location within the house, the only slightly dead spot is in the master bed/bath area, and the biggest issue there was the Echo in the bathroom. I solved that with a strategically placed $20 wifi extender, so everything’s fine in the house with respect to both wifi and wired connections.
Now, here’s the last related annoyance that I haven’t brought up before because it’s a potential problem only. Within the house, there are *seven *locations with coax jacks on the wall. But out at the junction box, there are only six cables coming out of the house. I’ve traced and confirmed *five *of the six cables.
But the sixth is not connected to either of the two wall jacks that haven’t been identified. One of them is in the family room where I have the router plugged into a second jack on the opposite wall. So I don’t give a damn about that jack.
But the other non-working jack is in the master bedroom. Which doesn’t matter at the moment, because we don’t have a TV in the room and don’t plan to. But obviously, the master bedroom is one of the places where a cable drop would be most desirable. I have taken the plate off the wall and checked that there actually is a cable connected to the jack. Its connector seems fine.
I used this wire tracer to track down all the working cables, and it doesn’t show anything coming from or going to the missing jacks or cable.
Any suggestions for how to figure out these last mysteries?
They could be old telephone sockets. Look at the cable to see if they were cabled at the same time: check around where the old telephone cable goes to see if there are any cut off wires.
Not wanting to use wifi is a perfectly reasonable bias. The first rule of networking is that you don’t discuss networking. The second rule of networking is to only use wireless if you have no other reasonable options. There are way, way more variables that can ruin your day with anything radio-based than with a plain old copper cable (or that fancy fiber stuff). Quick story: one of my customers has problems with wifi in their building and they absolutely won’t spend money to install an actual wired network. I’m sure their issues have nothing to do with the fact that the building is about 50 feet away from high power FM radio towers. :smack:
You’re welcome! The GoCoax adapters seem to be on backorder at Amazon a lot but are more generally available directly from the gocoax.com website. I’m betting that they’re just really popular at the moment (better everything for less money than the Actiontecs).
I don’t work with coax too much but as far as I know, there are no magic boxes that allow you to trace cables through walls. You might look for a seventh cable in the wall where the other 6 are coming out. I have worked on two separate networks that mysteriously stopped working right at about the time that other construction was happening in the building / house. In both instances it was because someone ran a reciprocating saw (or similar) right through the cable that stopped working. I wonder if maybe the bedroom coax didn’t get sliced into pieces during the original construction or during a remodel. Did you give the coax a tug when you took the plate off in the bedroom?
