Home Internet and local network connections are becoming more stable, thanks to advances in the Wi-Fi protocol and technologies such as Mesh networks. However, there are many people who continue to have problems and, therefore, are often in need of solutions. In many cases, the advice is to wire your house. It can be a bit cumbersome, but over time it pays off.
Other common alternatives are to resort to cheap repeaters that do not usually help excessively or to PLCs, which can work very well, but depend a lot on the quality of the electrical installation.
In the same way that the latter use the electrical network to transmit data, ASUS has presented the ASUS MA-25, an adapter that uses the MoCa standard. This allows you to do what PLCs do, but through the coaxial antenna cables. Yes, those that even very old houses usually have (and that in fact it is more common not to have them anymore in some modern ones)
Up to 2.5 Gbps over the antenna cable
This new ASUS device promises a maximum transfer speed of 2.5 Gbps. As always in these cases, one thing is what the technology allows in the optimal use scenario and another is what the different devices and cables finally provide. It happens with PLCs, but also historically with the different versions of USB, for example.
There is a switch on the adapter that allows you to choose two different frequency bands (Mode 1: 1,275-1,675MHz and Mode 2: 1,125-1,625MHz) to avoid interference with the DOCSIS 3.1 standard.
The idea with being able to switch between them is to choose the fastest one, as there may be interference with other equipment that uses the wiring. And it is necessary to remember that the cable companies in Spain have used the same type of cable with very good performance, although fiber optics have finally won.
As for the installation, it comes with slots that allow it to be integrated into the wall and with a connector that we can use in the event that we want to hang it on the antenna socket so that it takes up little space.
Although this technology is very easy to use a priori, something must be taken into account, and that is that two devices will always be needed to put the different devices on the network to communicate, since one that connects to the router will not be able to communicate with other devices at another end.
In the same way that in WiFi there are WPS buttons to facilitate connection to a router without having to enter passwords, ASUS has incorporated MoCA Protected Setup (MPS) here, a function that allows you to add other devices to your network by pressing a button. As a speed, 2.5 Gbps is more than what category 5 and 5e Ethernet cables offer, and more than what 6 cables offer if they are longer than 50 meters, because in that case they do not exceed 1 Gbps.
There are other MoCA adapters on Amazon like this one from goCoax, and reviews are generally positive on gigabit networks, if you use the right cables and equipment.
"To run a network, you need at least two devices".
