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Review on goCoax MoCA 2.5 Adapter (2 Pack), Ethernet Over Coax with 2.5Gbps Bandwidth for Existing Coaxial Cables. Ideal Home Mesh Wi-Fi Companion, White (WF-803M) by Tony Chandler

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Has more features than ActionTec ECB6200 or Motorola NM-1000 but not faster

Ok so I like the fact that this MoCA adapter is affordable. I had my ActionTec ECB6200 refurbished in a $130 "value pack"! Now they cost about $40 because they only cost $65. Also, GoCoax adapters are more customizable and have many more features in their web interfaces. In comparison, they are much more interesting for people who like detailed settings. However, I mainly wanted to upgrade for a speed boost and to be honest I was a little disappointed. *Technically* the MoCA 2.5 standard should be faster than 2.0, but that's a bit disingenuous given that the adapters are limited to their 1Gb/s RJ45 interface. My iperf3 offers host-to-host speed when I only had two of them connected to the MoCA network were the same as 2x ECB6200 and 1x Motorola NM-1000 - I tested two GoCoax 2.5 adapters separately because I Was concerned the devices limited the network speed so this shouldn't be a problem. The speed between hosts on my LAN for all MoCA devices was consistently around 850 Mbps, while my ethernet line speed was 1 Gbps with Cat. 6 are 940 Mbps. It's still definitely close enough for me to be happy! As such, I wouldn't recommend upgrading for speed until GoCoax starts using a faster Ethernet standard (e.g. 10GBase-T, 4GBase-T, 2.5GBase-T, or SFP+). But I would recommend it if you're manipulative or paranoid about someone hacking into your MoCA network because it has some great encryption options and configurable operation on different frequency bands etc. You can connect to them if you want (!), maybe even SSH is an option (probably some hacking required). I wouldn't be surprised if third party open source firmware like OpenWRT was developed for them. Also, they are good at releasing updates for their firmware! Something neither Motorola nor ActionTec are famous for.

Pros
  • Weight
Cons
  • Long time