Powerline vs MoCA?

[OFaceSIG]

Anyone have solid experience of testing Powerline vs Moca? I don't have any personal experience with powerline, but I have a buddy that tried it years ago and hated it. I have well over a decade using the various versions of MoCA, various vendors, with great success and really enjoy using it where ethernet isn't available. Which is most homes built prior to the 2010s.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I used powerline once years ago. The experience was pretty bad.

I don't have experience with the most recent versions of the protocol, but from what I read performance is pretty abysmal.

It will do in a pinch, but even the ones labeled gigabit or 2 gigabit will likely top out at about 200Mbps if connected right next to eachother other on the same circuit. If you instead use them in a way that is actually useful (opposite side of house, or in the garage or out in your shed) you can probably expect a tenth of that.

Essentially the powerline industry lies through their teeth when it comes to performance often quoting the max speed of the local port (2 gigabit ports = 2 gigabit powerline!) and completely ignoring the remote performance between units which is the part that really matters.

MoCa is MUCH more reliable and performant if you have the cables already, but if you don't, I'd run real Ethernet instead of running coax.

 

[Kardonxt]

Powerline is always hit or miss for me. It doesn't work at all in my current home and even if it did it would probably be slower than modern wireless solutions.

MoCA has always worked well for me. If the coax is available already I would definitely go that route.

 

[SamirD]

I used powerline once years ago. The experience was pretty bad.

I don't have experience with the most recent versions of the protocol, but from what I read performance is pretty abysmal.

It will do in a pinch, but even the ones labeled gigabit or 2 gigabit will likely top out at about 200Mbps if connected right next to eachother other on the same circuit. If you instead use them in a way that is actually useful (opposite side of house, or in the garage or out in your shed) you can probably expect a tenth of that.

Essentially the powerline industry lies through their teeth when it comes to performance often quoting the max speed of the local port (2 gigabit ports = 2 gigabit powerline!) and completely ignoring the remote performance between units which is the part that really matters.

MoCa is MUCH more reliable and performant if you have the cables already, but if you don't, I'd run real Ethernet instead of running coax.

They're not lying any more than the wireless guys with their AC6000 or whatever numbers they're touting. The newest units are better, but yeah the highest I've ever read them hitting is 300Mbs.

Moca is pretty much full gigabit and just as easy as a powerline install if the wiring is already perfect.

 

[SamirD]

Powerline is always hit or miss for me. It doesn't work at all in my current home and even if it did it would probably be slower than modern wireless solutions.

MoCA has always worked well for me. If the coax is available already I would definitely go that route.

Powerlines definitely depend on the wiring of the place. My parents house from 1995--av500 runs 40Mbps (peak). My apartment in Illinois when were there in a brand new unit wouldn't get 15Mbs on the other sides of the same wall. So the house wiring makes a huge difference.

But the bandwidth is only part of the story because in general powerline latency is much, much better than wireless, so for latency sensitive applications, powerline can still be better than wireless.

 

[SamirD]

Anyone have solid experience of testing Powerline vs Moca? I don't have any personal experience with powerline, but I have a buddy that tried it years ago and hated it. I have well over a decade using the various versions of MoCA, various vendors, with great success and really enjoy using it where ethernet isn't available. Which is most homes built prior to the 2010s.

Yep, I do! I've used both in various generations. Moca still stomps powerline, but powerline can work well in a pinch when you can't mess with the coax wiring.

 

[Icecold]

I have both in use currently. Moca is far superior in terms of speed, but powerline works fine for getting network to my garage where there wasn't any coax ran. The powerline adapters are not a fast connection by any means but it has been reliable. It's definitely situation dependent on wiring, etc. though - I had one outlet it wouldn't even pick up the other adapters through. Moca is really impressive to me though.

 

[OFaceSIG]

I have both in use currently. Moca is far superior in terms of speed, but powerline works fine for getting network to my garage where there wasn't any coax ran. The powerline adapters are not a fast connection by any means but it has been reliable. It's definitely situation dependent on wiring, etc. though - I had one outlet it wouldn't even pick up the other adapters through. Moca is really impressive to me though.

I too had thoughts about how to get ethernet into the garage for an access point. Hadn't even occurred to me to use powerline!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I too had thoughts about how to get ethernet into the garage for an access point. Hadn't even occurred to me to use powerline!

Personally I would just break out the drill and use either Cat 6A or fiber.

Powerline is just a sham and mostly useless for anything by the very lightest use, in which case Wifi is probably better.

 

[SamirD]

Personally I would just break out the drill and use either Cat 6A or fiber.

Powerline is just a sham and mostly useless for anything by the very lightest use, in which case Wifi is probably better.

lol! 10Gb FTW!

I've found wifi to suck more than powerline. Wireless was just so inconsistent on ping times and would mess up our network scanners. One we put in some powerlines for them, solid as a rock. I wanted to run moca there since there was a coax, but I found out that the idiot installers left the coax unconnected in the crawl space--probably right beside the 2x cat5 runs that I know where ran to that room. I hate MF installers....

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

lol! 10Gb FTW!

I've found wifi to suck more than powerline. Wireless was just so inconsistent on ping times and would mess up our network scanners. One we put in some powerlines for them, solid as a rock. I wanted to run moca there since there was a coax, but I found out that the idiot installers left the coax unconnected in the crawl space--probably right beside the 2x cat5 runs that I know where ran to that room. I hate MF installers....

I guess it really depends on how dense or wifi resistant your walls are, and what kind of interference there is in the area.

And yes. 10Gbit fiber is very usable (and affordable if you go eBay hunting) at home. I've run it from my main switch, as uplinks to smaller switches around the house to make them non-blocking.

It's still a bit messy and underutilized, but it is a work in progress,

The main switch is a Mikrotik 16 port 10gig SFP+.

It links via direct attach copper to the NAS/VM Server, the pfSense router and the 24 port gigabit copper (with two SFP+ 10gig uplinks) switch below it.

Then I have 10gig fiber going off to a switch in my office (same type as the lower switch here) as well as a switch upstairs, and a link to my desktop. (of course the desktop gets dedicated 10gig )

The desktop also gets a direct fiber link to the NAS server, because the adapters I got were dual port, so why not? Fiber is relatively cheap, and now I can transfer files two and from the NAS at a dedicated 1.2GB/s

 

[SamirD]

Love it!

If I had anything that was even saturating 1Gb I'd be considering 10Gb, but nothing yet--lol.

 

[uberjon]

I liked my direct tv moca setup. (The direct tv branded stuff is cheaper)

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Love it!

If I had anything that was even saturating 1Gb I'd be considering 10Gb, but nothing yet--lol.

I feel like there is always need for more bandwidth, especially when dealing with networked storage.

When I am preparing for a major upgrade or sometrhing like that, I usually just send a raw image of my drives directly to the NAS, and this saves A TON of time.

Looks like the drives were loaded down with something else server side, as they can normally saturate the 10gig Ethernet using NFS, but you get the point

The 10 gig line from the main switch to the router was probably wasted, but I had a spare 10 gig server adapter kicking around, so I figured why not, it can't hurt

Maybe some day I want to do some routing between internal VLAN's and then it might come in handy.

 

[SamirD]

I liked my direct tv moca setup. (The direct tv branded stuff is cheaper)

It is, but technically it's DECA which is dtv's own version of moca. The DECA units won't work with MOCA units.

 

[SamirD]

I feel like there is always need for more bandwidth, especially when dealing with networked storage.

When I am preparing for a major upgrade or sometrhing like that, I usually just send a raw image of my drives directly to the NAS, and this saves A TON of time.

View attachment 389309

Looks like the drives were loaded down with something else server side, as they can normally saturate the 10gig Ethernet using NFS, but you get the point

The 10 gig line from the main switch to the router was probably wasted, but I had a spare 10 gig server adapter kicking around, so I figured why not, it can't hurt

Maybe some day I want to do some routing between internal VLAN's and then it might come in handy.

I do that too--but my images are small.

Geez...I don't even see local speeds at those rates. Of course, I don't need to for the limited amount of data I transfer around. It's amazing how much you can store when your file sizes are small.

 

[OFaceSIG]

Zarathustra[H] WiFi currently doesn't reach my garage very well even though I have two Unifi APs in my house. I would use the powerline to get an AP into my garage. Even if the bandwidth is 200-300 mbps that's fine. I just need a low latency uplink. All other corners of my house are fed via MoCA so bandwidth is GTG.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Zarathustra[H] WiFi currently doesn't reach my garage very well even though I have two Unifi APs in my house. I would use the powerline to get an AP into my garage. Even if the bandwidth is 200-300 mbps that's fine. I just need a low latency uplink. All other corners of my house are fed via MoCA so bandwidth is GTG.

Just keep in mind, 200-300Mbps is a BEST case.

Most longer runs seem to average about 20.

It all depends on whether or not they are on the same circuit (in which case why would you need it? Who has circuits that span several rooms that are not close?). Or at least on nearby circuits.

 

[SamirD]

Zarathustra[H] WiFi currently doesn't reach my garage very well even though I have two Unifi APs in my house. I would use the powerline to get an AP into my garage. Even if the bandwidth is 200-300 mbps that's fine. I just need a low latency uplink. All other corners of my house are fed via MoCA so bandwidth is GTG.

Keep in mind that 200-300 is truly best case--pretty much both in the same outlet best case. But the latency will be low. I think with any powerline set you will hit 100Mbs that will truly feel like a wired connection.

 

[Verge]

Zarathustra[H] WiFi currently doesn't reach my garage very well even though I have two Unifi APs in my house. I would use the powerline to get an AP into my garage. Even if the bandwidth is 200-300 mbps that's fine. I just need a low latency uplink. All other corners of my house are fed via MoCA so bandwidth is GTG.

300mbit is like, wiring the terminals together in a lab and doing multiple file transfers. 200 in the same outlet, 120 in the same room. You go more than 30 or 40 feet of wire, and you'll be 50 and 60mbit for a single file transfer. The stuff just hasn't had any investment in making it better.

 

[philb2]

Keep in mind that 200-300 is truly best case--pretty much both in the same outlet best case. But the latency will be low. I think with any powerline set you will hit 100Mbs that will truly feel like a wired connection.

So I had these two powerline connectors left over when Xfinity changed their dedicated router (to their server) setup. So I plugged in my HP 400 Dn printer to the upstairs connector. I plugged in the downstairs connector to my main router, as a wired connection. When I do a print, even more than a few pages, it seems just as snappy as when I had that printer connected to my upstairs box via USB 3. Just saying.

Now if I want to add a third powerline connector to my garage, are there any special considerations, like not mixing vendors?

 

[SamirD]

So I had these two powerline connectors left over when Xfinity changed their dedicated router (to their server) setup. So I plugged in my HP 400 Dn printer to the upstairs connector. I plugged in the downstairs connector to my main router, as a wired connection. When I do a print, even more than a few pages, it seems just as snappy as when I had that printer connected to my upstairs box via USB 3. Just saying.

Now if I want to add a third powerline connector to my garage, are there any special considerations, like not mixing vendors?

Yep, that's my experience as well. After a while I completely forget it's on powerline.

Typically, I try to stay with the exact same model. But I've had a set of actiontec av500 units work perfectly with my netgear av500 nano units for better part of a decade now.

 

[ChosenUno]

Powerline depends heavily on your house's wiring, and CB layout. If you're trying to use sockets across a CB then forget about any kind of decent signal integrity. Very hit or miss, and I feel like more often than not it's miss.

I have not had Powerline work well in any apartment I've tried, so there's that. It's relatively cheap to try, though.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Powerline depends heavily on your house's wiring, and CB layout. If you're trying to use sockets across a CB then forget about any kind of decent signal integrity. Very hit or miss, and I feel like more often than not it's miss.

I have not had Powerline work well in any apartment I've tried, so there's that. It's relatively cheap to try, though.

Which means it is essentially useless, because the use case is to get wired networking to another room without running Ethernet cables. If it only works well on the same circuit that means this will never work well, because who the hell has the same circuit cover outlets in multiple nonadjacent rooms?

 

[philb2]

Which means it is essentially useless, because the use case is to get wired networking to another room without running Ethernet cables. If it only works well on the same circuit that means this will never work well, because who the hell has the same circuit cover outlets in multiple nonadjacent rooms?

That's probaby not allowed in modern building codes.

 

[SamirD]

Powerline depends heavily on your house's wiring, and CB layout. If you're trying to use sockets across a CB then forget about any kind of decent signal integrity. Very hit or miss, and I feel like more often than not it's miss.

I have not had Powerline work well in any apartment I've tried, so there's that. It's relatively cheap to try, though.

You'd be surprised what modern ones can do. At one point I had a set of powerline 200s (where did I put those things?) that were running in a commercial environment across two panels and would hit 40Mbs no problem. The previous generation I had tried failed even to get a connection across a chaseway on the same circuit. The tech has definitely gotten much better.

Apartments are weird. I had them work great in 4/5 apartments (all brand new where we were the first tenant). Just one place had an issue and it was the shortest run ever--on both sides of the same wall. I had to get a 600 set to get that to run faster.

I just realized I probably have a set of 200, 500, 600, 1200, and 2000 powerlines.

 

[SamirD]

Which means it is essentially useless, because the use case is to get wired networking to another room without running Ethernet cables. If it only works well on the same circuit that means this will never work well, because who the hell has the same circuit cover outlets in multiple nonadjacent rooms?

I think the newer ones will work better at crossing breaker boxes. I know at my parents house where there's 3x breaker boxes--no issues across boxes (and I didn't even think about it until you mentioned it, lol).