I happened upon a set of Coax to Ethernet adapters and I decided to do an analysis of them. The adapters I found, by Commscope, use the G.hn protocol. This protocol is used for many media types, with the general idea that existing or legacy cabling can be repurposed for modern home networking.
I have some existing idle Coax in the walls and ceiling of my house, so I decided to try these adapters with this legacy copper.
Testing
The home coax run I decided to try is a bit more than 10 meters long.
I set up two PC clients on my network, with one PC being attached to one of these adapters, which was then attached to the 10 meter long cable. At the far end I attached the other adapter, which was then attached to my primary Ethernet switch.
The coax cable was in three distinct segments, 1 meter + 10 meters + 0.5 meters, all joined together with F-style couplers.
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| Network tested via iPerf |
Results
I successfully ran four trials of iPerf3 between my two PCs, each running 5 simultaneous threads. I also ran ping for 3 hours, with zero packet loss.
Overall, these were the resulting numbers:
- Average throughput: 651 Mbit/second
- Average Ping......: 1.25 milliseconds, 2.26 peak
- Zero packet loss
In addition, I measured performance with a shorter coax cable, replacing the 10+ meter run with a 0.5 meter length of coax. The results were nearly identical.
Power Consumption
As regular readers of this blog know, power consumption is a focus of mine, particularly when dealing with equipment that is powered on 24x365. I measured the power consumption of one of these devices through my Emporia Vue for four hours. My findings show that a single converter consumes roughly 3.1 watts, so for two devices power use is roughly 54.35 kWh per year.
(3.1 Watts * 8766 hr/yr * 2 units)÷1000 watts/kWh = 54.35 kWh/yr
Conclusion:
I have confidence that most homes with pre-existing coax cabling would find this to be a reliable and affordable solution. These units are fast enough that they won't be a bottleneck for most customers, as today's ISP plans, WiFi, and remote servers are often slower than this technology.
Although using G.hn over coax is not quite as fast as Ethernet, performance and reliability has been excellent. It is faster than my ISP service, and it is rock solid. I would be comfortable using this in my home for years to come.
The other advantage of these is the longer haul potential. Twisted pair Ethernet generally caps out at 100 meters, as does MoCA. If you have existing long coax cabling, these are certainly worth some experimentation.
My units are the first generation G.hn technology, so they aren't as fast as the newer units. Alternatively, the MoCA coax cabling technology is compatible with Docsis cable signaling, and their latest standard also promises faster speed, at a price. So any decision may come down to price and the configuration of your preexisting coax installation.
In the long run, however, it is probably most economically viable to run twisted pair Ethernet and avoid the cost and liabilities of additional powered converters. And for very long new runs, fiber Ethernet is almost always going to be a better option due to its long haul and very high performance capabilities.