[SOLVED] Trouble setting up MoCA...

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luis1991

Aug 14, 2021
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Greetings,

My entire house has coax installed into every single room and I am trying to connect to an upstairs computer while my DSL router is downstairs.

I was doing troubleshooting and found that the MoCA light on the adapter only turns on when I connect to one specific rooms upstairs, but when I connect to the room with the computer, the light won't come on. I don't have any other cable service for TV or anything like that.

Does this mean that the the other rooms are disconnected somehow? Would this be resolved inside the box with all the cables that goes outside? I live in a townhouse community so I am not sure if I can get in or if I will be able to tell which connection is mine.
 
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Solution
S
Okay, so let me get this straight.

Cables come in on the second floor into two different rooms and each of these rooms have 2x cables in them. In each of these boxes, one of these cables goes downstairs.

Downstairs only has one cable in each box, and one of them somehow is connected directly to the third floor, which is how the moca is working.

I think a diagram is going to help.

The next step is that we are either going to have to trace all the wires to figure out how to use them to get what you want where you want it. Or we will have to replace the splitter at the 2nd level (wherever it is) with a moca compliant one and connect all the cables and hope there aren't any more splitters.

Pros/cons of option 1:
  • have to buy...
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OK, I may do that later if I have no luck with getting someone over here for a decent price.

One more thing though. I tried removed the coax wall plate in the 2 rooms with no connection and found something interesting.

This is my room. It seems the wall plate wasn't connected to anything for some reason and there are 2 cables connected with a barrel:

https://imgur.com/a/TaNBNEP
View: https://imgur.com/a/TaNBNEP

Here is the room with the computer that needs a connection, it has 2 cables:

https://imgur.com/a/Q0eSVFT
View: https://imgur.com/a/Q0eSVFT


The room with the working connection just had one cable. Does this give you any clues?
 
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Well that is very good reason things don't work if nothing is connected to the wall jack.

The risk here is the horrible mess outside and no way to know if the cable inside your house affect other people....you would hope not.

Maybe first disconnect the barrel connector and see if your internet goes down in the other room. Maybe try each cable separately connected to the moca.

The next thing to try is to buy 2 3 port splitters. I don't think you can buy the old type anymore but be very sure you get ones rated for cabletv and internet. This would allow you to connect all the cable in the wall together and allow also allow a way to connect the wall plate.

Going to be trial and error on this mess and hope you do not hear swearing from your neighbors because their internet went down.
 
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luis1991 said:
OK, I may do that later if I have no luck with getting someone over here for a decent price.

One more thing though. I tried removed the coax wall plate in the 2 rooms with no connection and found something interesting.

This is my room. It seems the wall plate wasn't connected to anything for some reason and there are 2 cables connected with a barrel:

https://imgur.com/a/TaNBNEP
View: https://imgur.com/a/TaNBNEP

Here is the room with the computer that needs a connection, it has 2 cables:

https://imgur.com/a/Q0eSVFT
View: https://imgur.com/a/Q0eSVFT


The room with the working connection just had one cable. Does this give you any clues?
Click to expand...
Oooo...this is interesting. So we have to do some testing.

Make sure your moca is working in the room that it is working in, and then remove the barrel connector in that one room where you found one. I suspect that your moca will stop working, but if it doesn't, that's a clue.

Do you have any other coax plates? If so, post pictures of them too. I think I'm starting to figure this out a bit. (I suspect that each end is a run to another location with an end--point to point runs. Which means if we know which runs go where, we can figure out how to get the signal where we want it.)
 
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OK, this is what I did: there were 2 only other wall plates in the house but they each had only one cable. This includes 1 downstairs room and the upstairs room with the working connection. The downstairs room did not have a connection.

The only other wall plates are the ones pictured that have 2 cables in each, so a total of 4 wall plates in the house.

I disconnected the barrel connector and this had no effect. The room with the connection was still up.

I then tested each of the 4 cables individually with a MoCA adapter and I got no connection from any of them.

What I did find out is that the cable in the first picture (green room) that feeds toward the bottom connects into the pink room (second picture) and comes out from the bottom as well. The second cables in both rooms seem to be coming from the top.

I asked the person that oversaw the installation of the cables years back and apparently the cables come into the 2nd floor as they enter the home instead of coming in from the 1st floor.
 
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Okay, so let me get this straight.

Cables come in on the second floor into two different rooms and each of these rooms have 2x cables in them. In each of these boxes, one of these cables goes downstairs.

Downstairs only has one cable in each box, and one of them somehow is connected directly to the third floor, which is how the moca is working.

I think a diagram is going to help.

The next step is that we are either going to have to trace all the wires to figure out how to use them to get what you want where you want it. Or we will have to replace the splitter at the 2nd level (wherever it is) with a moca compliant one and connect all the cables and hope there aren't any more splitters.

Pros/cons of option 1:
  • have to buy toning tool (con)
  • may not have to buy anything else (pro)

Pros/cons of option 2:
  • will have moca capability in all rooms when done
  • have to get on the second floor and change that splitter to a moca one.
  • may have more splitters to replace also before being done

Which route would you like to take?
 
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Solution
OK, I will post the diagram after this post but I think I found the problem. I overlooked a wall plate on the 1st floor and this explains why nothing works. There are two cables, one white and one black that have been cut. I disconnected the 2 cables connected by the barrel connector (this barrel connection is different from an earlier picture in a different room) and the working connection on the 2nd floor went down.


https://imgur.com/a/gMo8SxG
View: https://imgur.com/a/gMo8SxG



I'm guessing if I get the white cable fixed and put a splitter here, it will send the connection to the other room upstairs with the other barrel connection (pictured in a previous post), which would then send it to the room with the computer (diagram in next post).

I'm just not sure what the black cable is. I will need to repair the white cable which I think is the best bet.
 
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luis1991 said:
OK, I will post the diagram after this post but I think I found the problem. I overlooked a wall plate on the 1st floor and this explains why nothing works. There are two cables, one white and one black that have been cut. I disconnected the 2 cables connected by the barrel connector (this barrel connection is different from an earlier picture in a different room) and the working connection on the 2nd floor went down.


https://imgur.com/a/gMo8SxG
View: https://imgur.com/a/gMo8SxG



I'm guessing if I get the white cable fixed and put a splitter here, it will send the connection to the other room upstairs with the other barrel connection (pictured in a previous post), which would then send it to the room with the computer (diagram in next post).

I'm just not sure what the black cable is. Will I need to call someone to completely replace the white cable or can it be fixed?
Click to expand...
Great work! I think this makes sense now.

The other cut white cable must also be going upstairs and the black is from outside..

Your fix may be even easier--all you need to do is put an 'end' on that white cable and then connect this new cable to the barrel connector. You don't seem to have too much slack cable so you need to make sure you do it right, but if you can find a kit like this that has everything you need, you should be set to do it yourself:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Southwire-Cable-TV-Tool-Kit/50238783

You shouldn't have to spend more than $50 to pick up a kit locally and usually the ones that are near $50 will also do ethernet wires so you have a tool for the future. :)

And don't be intimidated by coax wire termination--I was terminating rg58 when I was about 8 or 9 and the newer stuff is even easier to do. Once you've done it a few times, you could probably do one in under a minute. But just take your time on your first one and it doesn't matter if it even takes an hour.

Now, if you want to enable moca everywhere, pick up a moca splitter too while you're getting your tools and you can connect a splitter like you mentioned and you should have moca everywhere (assuming that the unterminated cable goes upstairs.
 
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luis1991 said:
Here is a network diagram I made to the best of my ability based on how I deduced everything works:

https://imgur.com/a/NNE0E1v
View: https://imgur.com/a/NNE0E1v

Would a MoCA splitter replace both barrel connections?
Click to expand...
I think this is what I'm guessing is going on, but it doesn't actually trace the wires and where they are since there are 5 boxes and some have 1 wire, some have 2 and a barrel connector and 1 box as 4 wires and one barrel connector. I need to know which boxes are where with how many wires.
 
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