Hello and good evening self hosters! so i recently new to self hosting, i just installed my CM3588 DIY NAS with a bunch of services which is very addicting!
but i digress, so i recently found out today that we pay $11 a month to rent our router for our house. Which i personally think is ridiculous! So i am looking into buying to own, not renting to burn money. However the router seems to get internet from the ISP through moCA which looking at router that support moCA are rather limiting in speeds and very expensive. So my query for this fine, fine community is if i were to buy a coax/moCA adapter that then coverts it to Ethernet and then plug it into my router and and then by proxy my access points. would it work, wifi 6E looks super nice and there are very few options that are very pricey for modem/router combos that support moCA.
I am open to alternatives and ideas, and please correct me if i made any mistakes on terminally or my diagram
thanks folks!
Edit— my current router is a ARRIS Surfboard TG3452 DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Voice Gateway Modem Router with 802.11ac Wi-Fi & MoCA 2.0
So
Just to make absolutely sure: you are POSITIVE that the device you’ve been renting is a MoCA-WAN router, and NOT a cable modem?
In the US at least, most of the single-unit devices that receive a coax input are DOCSIS 3.x, not MoCA. They are combining two pieces of hardware in a single physical unit: a docsis modem and a router.
Prior to having fiber internet, when my provider was Comcast, I owned two separate devices instead of renting the single device from my ISP: a DOCSIS 3.1 modem from Arris, and a standard Ethernet router
Just want to make sure you are absolutely confident about what your ISP is actually providing before you spend money on new hardware :)
Yeah, 100% , had Mediacom years ago and they were migrating to docsis 3. I’d be very surprised if the lumbering slow Mediacom suddenly switched off.
You can also just look and the model number of your rental and buy that.
Something is odd here, who is your ISP? I’ve only seen MoCA used to create a network for cable/satellite STBs through the coax in the building, or for a phone company connection creating a MoCA bridge to provide broadband from a demarcation point in an apartment building where only a phone line is available in lieu of DSL. What is the make of your existing router?
I know Google Fiber generation 1 setups were Fiber to the home (to a “Fiber Jack”) with a provided router that had 1 gigabit Ethernet port and a coax/MoCA output. Then each TV receiver box got its connectivity via MoCA from the router (most of the customer homes were already set up for cable to any area there was a TV) and put out 100mb ethernet from each of those endpoints (these also doubled as Wifi APs).
What I’ve never heard of is an ISP offering a MoCA coax to your house and you having only a MoCA receiver. Supposedly the max distance between MoCA devices is about 300 feet.
Seems more likely the person asking the question actually just has a cable modem and could put their own router downstream of it if they wanted?
Depends on your ISP, some only allow their product, some don’t care. If they only allow their equipment you can often pay less rent per month by going to bridge mode, or they supply a bridge, and ypu use your own wifi router. I think ours was $5 month for modem, $10 if you used their wifi router
My old ISP just let me us their device that did this and no routing when I asked for it. I didn’t have to buy a MOCA device, I just had to ask to use my own router.
This of course is not true for my new ISP, but it’s worth the effort to avoid the hassle of accidentally getting the wrong device to put between your router and the wall.
Here in Aus, this is how the NBN is provided in some areas, there is a NBN coax-to-ethernet box, and then you can plug in your own router.
There is always a chance that your ISP is doing something weird that prevents that working, but I think it should be fine.
Yeah can confirm this will work. Similar setup great way to get wifi extended without running wires.
Before spending any time or money on this, I’d ask my ISP if you are allowed to bring your own hardware and what type of support is available in that scenario.
Before you make that call, another thing to consider is that $11 per month is paying for two things, not just the hardware, but the associated support which allows you to say: “Sorry, the internet is down and it’s your hardware.”
Finally, most network hardware costs in the order of $500 or more. It regularly fails around the three year mark, when it’s out of warranty. In your situation, that’s not your problem, since it’s their hardware.
So, for me, it seems like a no-brainer to stay where you are, but I’m not you and you might have different requirements.
I for one work from home and I need my network to be reliable.
Nah, a cable modem costs anywhere from $60-$300 depending on if you want one with a built in router/wifi. That’s a pretty good return on investment. Mine has been running just fine for over a decade, and I’ve replaced the wifi router behind it 3 times to get improvements in WiFI speed that I wouldn’t have gotten from my ISP. $11/mo would have cost me an extra $1,300+ of fees by now.
I have mediacom, and they’re pretty good about support in my area, even if they are pretty shitty about other things. They can and do send signals to be able to manage a self-owned cable modem, and they’ll send a tech to your house and diagnose issues, even if you roll your own network.
The US has some decent laws around protecting you from getting shafted by ISPs for this specific situation.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/router-and-modem-rental-fees-still-a-major-annoyance-despite-new-us-law/That’s very interesting. Nothing like that exists in Australia as far as I know.
You can bring your own hardware and take your chances with support, or you can get a modem from the ISP when you sign up.
Depending on the situation, I’ve done both.
