[SOLVED] Drop Amp

[werds]

So I recently moved into a rental, my previous home was smaller and I was able to wire cat 6 to every room. In this location the landlord does not want me to wire any cat 6 as I am not a pro lol. So what does this have to do with a drop amp?

It appears that every room had coax run through to it with multiple splitters all over the place. this caused the signal in our living room to be less than desirable for the Ceton InfiniTV4 tuner in the living room, requiring Comcast to install a drop amp at the tap and to replace all the splitters they could locate with couplers. Now the signal is reasonable but I run into my next problem.

Apparently the drop amp strips my ability to run a Moca Network adapter from the living room to the router on the other side of the house due to the frequencies... since I can't run new cable I can't bypass and get a useable signal for the moca... So either I keep using Powerline ethernet adapter to connect the HTPC to the network or find an amplifier that operates at the frequencies that would allow Moca to work.

So a quick google and search on amazon came up empty when I ran across this item on EBAY an http://www.ebay.com/itm/0-1-2500MHz-25d ... 5d285e7559

an LNA-2500 - unfortunately the info on it is sparse - but I assume this would be the item I would want as it appears to amplify the proper frequency range to allow operation of Moca ethernet adapter.

[VikingCrown]

Werds,

I just moved into a new place and also couldn't run cat6. I got Moca and looked into this exact issue.

The way i see it, you can use the diplexer method to bypass around the amp described in this post: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showt ... t=diplexer

Or you can purchase some products from this company which offer a moca gateway amp thing: http://wi3inc.com/Products/GateWay.aspx

Whatever you do, make sure you get a POE filter for your main line into your house this will prevent the moca frequencies from back feeding into the rest of the neighborhood.

[bmblank]

If it were me I'd just run the cat 6 and not tell the landlord. When you move out take all your cabling with you. If you're not affecting his property (the house) in any way he can't really tell you what to do.

[werds]

Werds,

I just moved into a new place and also couldn't run cat6. I got Moca and looked into this exact issue.

The way i see it, you can use the diplexer method to bypass around the amp described in this post: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showt ... t=diplexer

Or you can purchase some products from this company which offer a moca gateway amp thing: http://wi3inc.com/Products/GateWay.aspx

Whatever you do, make sure you get a POE filter for your main line into your house this will prevent the moca frequencies from back feeding into the rest of the neighborhood.

Yea, I keep looking at the Diplexer post you linked (as I have seen it before) It seems as if it would be the cheap route IF coming into the house I had to deal with only 1 coax. Unfortunately I have 2 lines feeding in from the tap - 1 that runs from the tap through all the rooms for cable and then a separate line that runs directly from the tap to the cable modem above the garage (a bonus room). In my head it diagrams out to needing more splitters than I want to deal with. But maybe I am not visualizing correctly.

I like the second link you provided - have you happened to use that amp before or know anyone that has? I see Home Depot sells it online so I wonder how easy it would be to return it if it doesn't work well for my purposes...

Great link though and I feel my wallet burning a hole in my pocket as I type this out...lol

[VikingCrown]

I have not used the wi3 products but i believe there is a user on the smallnetbuilder forums who has.

I am surprised that there are 2 lines coming into the tap, does the tap run to a 2 way splitter that then branches off to the garage area and then the other does the rest of the house? If that is the case, you could use the diplexers to bypass the amp before the split and then recombining the signal, i think that would serve to amplify the CATV frequencies without messing up the moca ones. Someone else can chime in if they know better, without diagramming it out on paper it can get confusing real quick!!

[barnabas1969]

@werds: The amplifier you linked in your first post is NOT for cable TV. Do NOT use it.

@all: The solution is actually pretty simple. Your problem is that the cable guy installed an amplifier with multiple outputs. Each output is separately amplified, so this prevents your MoCa signal from making it to the rest of your house.

The solution is to buy a bi-directional amplifier that has only one output. Then, connect that output to a POE filter as mentioned above. Finally, connect the output of the POE filter to a high-quality, normal, non-amplified splitter. Problem solved.

I would not recommend messing with diplexers and such. My solution is guaranteed to work and it won't harm any of your equipment.

[VikingCrown]

@barnabas that is brilliant! Much easier!

[barnabas1969]

@barnabas that is brilliant! Much easier!

There is one potential problem, depending on how your amp is wired for power. You see, there's a power injector somewhere in your house that is connected so that it feeds power to the power input on the amplifier. You can't pass the power through a normal splitter nor through the POE filter. So, you need to figure out how to get the power from the power injector (which could possibly be moved to a different room) to the amplifier.

[werds]

@werds: The amplifier you linked in your first post is NOT for cable TV. Do NOT use it.

@all: The solution is actually pretty simple. Your problem is that the cable guy installed an amplifier with multiple outputs. Each output is separately amplified, so this prevents your MoCa signal from making it to the rest of your house.

The solution is to buy a bi-directional amplifier that has only one output. Then, connect that output to a POE filter as mentioned above. Finally, connect the output of the POE filter to a high-quality, normal, non-amplified splitter. Problem solved.

I would not recommend messing with diplexers and such. My solution is guaranteed to work and it won't harm any of your equipment.

Actually my cable guy did something different because of the way the house was wired. At the tap there is a 2 way splitter > From the splitter one line has a drop amp added to it, that line is the longest run and apparently whoever wired the house ran the wire to upstairs rooms and used splitters in each room in order to leave one output in each room and to move further signal down to the next room and so on until it reached the living room.

The other line from the original split was run directly up the side of the garage into a bonus room. This run is not only shorter than the other line, but also separate and does not connect to the other run at all except at the tap and original 2 way splitter.

So if I understand you correctly, if I purchase a high quality 2 way splitter that does pass the frequencies above 1000mhz and I put this on the OTHER side of the amp then both the garage and living room runs would essentially be on the same network then? I ask because our computer room is in that bonus room above the garage and this is where they modem and router are connected.

Ugly sketch of what it looks like attached

@bmblank - my previous house was single story so running wire was easy enough to do and hide. This house is a 2400 sq foot 2 story house and the location I need to get to for the living room is an exterior wall so it is harder to get at especially since I have to go through so much insulation and the peculiar layout of some of the wiring for the coax makes it an adventure to route cat 6 from one end to another (although I am looking at the possibility of running some cat 6 underneath the siding on the outside... but still trying to figure out how difficult that may or may not be atm)

Note in the sketch - the wire leading to the living room at one point before going out to the living room is running underneath in the crawl space under the house!

[werds]

@barnabas that is brilliant! Much easier!

There is one potential problem, depending on how your amp is wired for power. You see, there's a power injector somewhere in your house that is connected so that it feeds power to the power input on the amplifier. You can't pass the power through a normal splitter nor through the POE filter. So, you need to figure out how to get the power from the power injector (which could possibly be moved to a different room) to the amplifier.

Another master stroke from Barnabas! I decided to go rooting through my old boxes from my previous home to check out my stash of Splitters and out of all the ones I have collected in the past 15 years (yes I keep them for some stupid reason...) I found ONE (and only one) 4 way splitter (obviously more than I need so will give extra signal loss but for experiment was perfect) that passed through frequencies above 1000mhz! So I went to the tap, removed the old splitters, plugged the amp direct then on the outgoing part of the amp plugged the splitter. Signal although not as strong is within proper range, the MoCa adapters now are working, and my HTPC has appeared to double it's network speed (even though the powerline config software claimed over 100mb/s I was seeing usually closer to 40mb/s when doing large file transfers) Informally I am seeing closer to 98mb/s when doing large file transfers (dvd rips) according to the windows tool so I can say I am happy this worked out!

Now I can spend less money by only getting a 2 way splitter and use the rest on better things Off to amazon.com I go!

[erkotz]

Actually my cable guy did something different because of the way the house was wired. At the tap there is a 2 way splitter > From the splitter one line has a drop amp added to it, that line is the longest run and apparently whoever wired the house ran the wire to upstairs rooms and used splitters in each room in order to leave one output in each room and to move further signal down to the next room and so on until it reached the living room.

Did they use splitters or taps? If they use taps, the wiring "loop" is sane and makes sense - think of a tap as as splitter where one side (the pass-through) get the majority of the signal, and the tap only gets a little bit.

[werds]

I was probably muddling terminology, they were using splitters - at least they looked like splitters and the labeling all appeared to be standard off the shelf splitters. My misuse of tap was just to say the incoming line =)

[erkotz]

Taps look pretty similar to splitters - I'm not saying that what you had wasn't wired wrong, but it's possible it was wired sanely.

[barnabas1969]

Well, truthfully, the best thing would be to re-wire the house so that every room has its own run from the first splitter in the line. Or... if some of those rooms are not used, you could replace the splitters with couplers to improve the signal for the rooms that are further down the line.

However, if what you have now works for you, then you should be OK.

[werds]

Well, truthfully, the best thing would be to re-wire the house so that every room has its own run from the first splitter in the line. Or... if some of those rooms are not used, you could replace the splitters with couplers to improve the signal for the rooms that are further down the line.

However, if what you have now works for you, then you should be OK.

I agree and if it was a house I owned I would do it. But convincing the landlord it is necessary or to reduce rent to some degree if I did such myself is a nonstarter. Currently it is functional but I am scratching my head at some things, as did the Comcast guy when they came in and placed the drop amp. Atm I am trying to figure out where the second coax in the living room is coming from or going to, and where the 3rd coax line at point of entry is going to as well ( I have attempted plugging them in to items but have managed to get no working channels from any combination of connections on those)

So for now I am just happy I have an improved lan connection to the living room and reminding myself to request all home runs when we build our next house...

[barnabas1969]

I've never seen coax wiring done any way other than to run each line all the way out to the point of entry.