anyone else using an ethernet-over-coax device (like motorola nim100)?

[t4uecker]

(posted a related inquiry in the extenders forum but thought someone in this more general forum might be of help)

hi there -

i have a room in the house that doesn't have an ethernet jack but does have a coax jack. so instead of trying some kind of wireless solution, i bought a pair of motorola nim100 devices which do ethernet over coax. i thought that would be faster and more reliable than wireless.

i've tested the throughput of the connection using a laptop and it registers about 43 Mbps and 3ms response time to the sage server. and yet, i'm having stuttering and delay issues that i don't experience in other rooms that have a straight ethernet connection.

i was wondering if anyone else was using a device like this and/or had any suggestions / tips.

thanks,
tu

[Slipshod]

What kind of content are you trying to play? (bitrate...)

[Mitch G]

I am. I'm using a pair to carry content from my server in the basement up to my HD-100 in the bedroom on the second floor. They have been rock solid.

Note: I did have to do some googling to figure out how to connect them correctly because you have to orient the connections so that the coax ports carrying the ethernet information are "pointed at eachother." I also had to do some googling to figure out how to log into the NIMs and tell them to use DHCP to get their IP addresses because they default to using a 254.x.x.x. (or something like that) and my network is all 192.168.x.x. I really should have written down the details but I didn't. I'm sure it'll come back to haunt me some day.


Mitch

[t4uecker]

Originally Posted by Mitch G

I am. I'm using a pair to carry content from my server in the basement up to my HD-100 in the bedroom on the second floor. They have been rock solid.

Note: I did have to do some googling to figure out how to connect them correctly because you have to orient the connections so that the coax ports carrying the ethernet information are "pointed at eachother." I also had to do some googling to figure out how to log into the NIMs and tell them to use DHCP to get their IP addresses because they default to using a 254.x.x.x. (or something like that) and my network is all 192.168.x.x. I really should have written down the details but I didn't. I'm sure it'll come back to haunt me some day.


Mitch

(tail between legs): well i did some research online and although there wasn't very much explicit reference to it, i sensed that i was supposed to connect the coax to the "coax in" connector on both nim100 units. i had used the "coax out" connector on one nim100 (the sending one) and the "coax in" connector on the other (the receiving one). and although that had worked, there was a blinking "rf" led, which i read should have been steady. so i tried connecting to the "coax in" connector on both nim100 units and voila! everything's working. i'm still surprised that it worked with the wrong connections (albeit erratically) but am happy that it's steady now. thanks for the responses, which encouraged me to research further.

[Mitch G]

Yeah, that coax-in thing is the tricky bit that I was referring to (the nims "facing eachother").
It has to do with how the ethernet stuff is sent on the coax and how the coax out ports are filtered to keep that ethernet stuff off the rest of the coax network.

Glad it works now.


Mitch

[mistergq]

glad its working. how fast does it move. I am in the process of finalizing etherneting my house. Getting it from the basement up to the attic was a pain. There are only two walls we could find that matched up in the house - the sides of the house are firewalls, so that eliminated that path. I still have patch work to do, will get to that someday, probably once the wife starts complaining. But this is definitely an interesting idea.

FWIW, Verizon FIOS is using the coax for networking for STBs. I can see the STBs IP on my router.

[Tej]

Any recommendations on where to buy these online?

Thanks.

[Mitch G]

I got mine on E-Bay.


Mitch

[bcjenkins]

Here's an e-tailer. http://www.etech4sale.com/Motorola_N...id-424059.html

B

FWIW - I had FiOS TV installed Saturday. I didn't want to use the VZ router for my connection to the internet, so the tech put one of these behind my router for the cable boxes to pull ip.

[Mitch G]

For what it's worth, I got mine for about half that on E-Bay - $110 shipped, iirc.
That said, one unit had evidence of being used but the other looked brand new (including the sticky plastic covering for the LEDs).

[fyodor]

I have 4 NIMs that work great together, even in a home setup that has lots of splitters, bidirectional amps, etc. I actually do my TV recording with Tivo S3s these days but I never had any issues streaming HD to an extender. It's hard to tell what the actual transfer rate is because the Tivos, due to Cablecard DRM overhead, top out, even with ethernet, at about 30-35mbit/s (which is what I get). This is one of my favorite products-you plug it in and it works. I actually bought an extra one to connect the home office, where I don't really need high speed access. The convenience of not having to deal with wireless was worth it.

WRT to your problem, I've done a bunch of similarly stupid things, myself, though I'm mostly just surprised that it worked at all with the connection that you described.

BTW, I believe that D-Link is now selling a MoCA product too.

Originally Posted by t4uecker

(posted a related inquiry in the extenders forum but thought someone in this more general forum might be of help)

hi there -

i have a room in the house that doesn't have an ethernet jack but does have a coax jack. so instead of trying some kind of wireless solution, i bought a pair of motorola nim100 devices which do ethernet over coax. i thought that would be faster and more reliable than wireless.

i've tested the throughput of the connection using a laptop and it registers about 43 Mbps and 3ms response time to the sage server. and yet, i'm having stuttering and delay issues that i don't experience in other rooms that have a straight ethernet connection.

i was wondering if anyone else was using a device like this and/or had any suggestions / tips.

thanks,
tu

[t4uecker]

Originally Posted by fyodor

WRT to your problem, I've done a bunch of similarly stupid things, myself, though I'm mostly just surprised that it worked at all with the connection that you described..

alright, alright...no need to rub it in.

[flavius]

I bought two NIM100's on ebay, from two different sellers, and tried to get them going without having to make any modifications to their default setup.

I took me like five minutes. Pretty useful those devices. Glad, I found this thread.

[mdnttoker]

I have 3 NIM's i use in my house...but can't stream HD over it (high bit rate mpeg2 HD, haven't tried mpeg4 hd-pvr yet).

[flavius]

I just checked with a few HD recordings - works fine here.

[mwhittaker1024]

I tried using a Avel LinkPlayer2 (network media player) using NIM-100s and it couldn't stream HD MPEG-2 without stuttering.

I would be curious to see if it would work if you used a Sage HD100 or HD200 and change the "media_server/readahead_optimized_file_extensions" property in the sage.properties file as mentioned in this thread: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=33285

[Mitch G]

Mine feeds an LCD HDTV via the HD100 without a problem. And I don't think I did anything special Sage-wise. I wonder if the devices have to throttle down based on the quality of the signal over the coax.
It might be worth mentioning that this is on a gig-e network - although the device is 100baseT.

The only difference between the NIM-based link and my straight ethernet link to the family room I notice is that it takes an extra second or two to get to the main menu on start up. Otherwise, it's solid.

Mitch

[Deacon Crusher]

What about the quality of the coax cable?

I have a detached in-law style building that only has old fairly low quality looking coax going to it. The cable is buried and in a very narrow conduit and then routes through the studs a ways when it hits the in-law so I don't think I can replace it. I've been using wireless bridges which work fine with pvr based HD, but won't handle my blu-ray rips so I'd love to get a wired solution that works.

So, for you guys having complete success with these devices what quality is your coax cable?

Thanks

[flavius]

Originally Posted by mwhittaker1024

I tried using a Avel LinkPlayer2 (network media player) using NIM-100s and it couldn't stream HD MPEG-2 without stuttering.

I would be curious to see if it would work if you used a Sage HD100 or HD200 and change the "media_server/readahead_optimized_file_extensions" property in the sage.properties file as mentioned in this thread: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=33285

My setting for this is at default which is empty. I use my HD200 without problems so far. I have no idea what the quality of the coax in my house is, it's a fairly new house, though (seven years old). Not sure if it matters, but my NIM100 in the office is plugged directly into my main router (and DHCP server), and I have probably only three (unpowered) splitters in between counted from where the cable enters my house.

[MichaelFraser]

I am wondering whether the "coax out" line connected to a NIM100 is capable of being connected to the "coax in" line of another NIM100, providing, through the same coax cable, both RF and ethernet.

The issue is that I have 30 yards of coax cable running between my condo's only cable jack (also the location of my SageTV server and router) and the location of my HD-100 and television. Right now the HD-100 is connected using a wireless-N bridge. I would like to try using the NIM100 over the long coax cable.

Thoughts?