Actiontec MI424WR - a cheap MoCA bridge for all! - Page 6

Actiontec routers are known to have power adapters that fail.

I believe that the whole-system bandwidth is greater than the individual point to point connections, though I have not personally tested it. See the review below (different product but same technology).

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30743/51/

Xnappo,
Huge thank you for this, you are my personal JC. I have tried (unsuccessfully) a number of expensive solutions to stream media to my living room and now it works like a champ for $60.

Problem solved. Nothing a reboot or 6 couldn't fix.

No problem. I am able to connect to one of them intermittently. Hopefully, I do not have to connect to this device that frequently once it is setup and is good to go. What I have noticed is that everytime, I cannot connect to the device, if I use a regular ethernet cable from my router to my computer and connect to some internet pages and then come back and try to connect to the actiontec device, it works. Since the 2nd unit looks to be bad, I have started looking for more on e-bay and hopefully should have something next week to start my testing.

Thanks xnappo for the great idea and instructions. I recently bought 2 off ebay, they arrived tonight and I used the instructions in the first post to set them up.

My goal was to use this to network my PC with the xbox 360 to reliably stream movies. The xbox 360 is connected downstairs to the tv where there is a cable connection. I have dsl, and the phone jack & dsl modem, existing d-link wireliess router and pc are upstairs. Using the instructions I configured the two new actiontec routers upstairs, tested coax connection between the two actiontec routers and then moved the other one downstairs. Upstairs I have:

phone jack->dsl modem->dlink router->actiontec router1->pc
(plus the actiontec router is connected to the coax on the wall)

Downstairs I have:
cable jack->actiontec router2->xbox 360

Doing this, my xbox 360 successfully shares the internet connection, which looking back on the instruction in the 1st post it seems like this was the stated goal. However, the xbox 360 is unable to connect to the PC to stream files. Its like I set up internet connection sharing but no lan.

Back when I had cable internet, I was able to successfully network the PC and xbox 360 together because my cable modem and dlink wireless router was downstairs behind the tv and the xbox 360 was wired into the router, and the PC was upstairs but connected to the router using the wireless connection. This allowed the xbox 360 to stream files (not very well on the high quality videos due to the wireless aspect). I'd like to get the xbox 360 to see the PC using MoCa so the streaming is reliable.

Suggestions?

Nevermind the problem/questions from my last post.

If all else fails, power everything off and then back on. That's about the extent of my networking expertise and it did the trick this time. I'm streaming videos from pc -> xbox 360 as we speak.

Thanks for the great thread!

Does anyone have this working with direct TV or dish by changing the frequency on the devices? I am thinking about moving over from cable to satellite but do not want to break my *priceless* moca configuration.


Not sure if this works or not but found this posting on another board:

First of all, when I first hooked it up trying to use their diagrams, it kept disconnecting the modem from the ISP and I could never get the setup to work. Perhaps I misunderstand or misinterpreted their diagrams, but perhaps they just were too vague. Getting through to their support team is difficult at best. It is not supported at the lower levels, you have to be routed to a Senior Product Manager who specializes in this device! I never did get any support.

Here is what I finally ended up doing and it works spectacularly and reliably.

1. If you have satellite, you need to buy a Tru Spec T-3 triplexer (or equivalent). It separates out satellite, FM, and CATV frequencies. Connect the triplexer to your wall. Connect the CATV port of your triplexer to your Coax IN port on the DXN 220. If you only have a cable TV and not satellite, just hook up the DXN 220 IN to the wall using a standard CATV cable (they supply two).

2. Connect the TV OUT (ignore the TV part, it is just an out from the diplexer contained within the DXN 220) to the input of a Channel Vision C-0314 1 In 4 Out Amplified Splitter (or equivalent).

3. Connect your Cable Modem Coax connection to one of the 4 output ports on the Channel Vision.

4. Connect an Ethernet cable from the DXN 220 to one of the LAN ports on your router.

5. Connect your WAN port on the router to your Cable Modem.

6. In the other room, connect the Coax IN to the Coax connection in the wall (you can insert a splitter first if you also watch TV in the room).

7. Connect an Ethernet cable from the DXN 220 to the computer.

If the Power, LAN, Coax and 100 Mbps LED lights are on, you have a connection and there is really no need to worry about installing the software and configuring anything; it just works. If the Coax LED in front of the DXN does not glow, you do not have a good Coax connection. The only things you configure are some passwords, the frequencey (or SCAN) and Pass All if you do not need to watch TV. The defaults were fine for me.

The Channel Vision not only amplifies the signal in order to prevent yourself from being disconnected from the ISP as I was, it also allows you some flexibility in how you add devices to your network. The Channel Vision also has an internal filter to eliminate noise.

Good luck with this. I would recommend this to my clients who have problems using wireless and I know that it would work just fine.

By the way, I am using Windows 7, Build 7100 on two built-to-spec computers, one built by me and one built by AVA-Direct. (AVA's build is neater and nicer than mine.)

Hello everyone,

First I want to thank the OP who has enlightened me with this great deal! I have been looking into Ethernet over Power and now I stumbled across this and I think I might get it. I just wanted to check with you experts to see if my setup would work with it.

Downstairs I have the cable line coming in from the wall going right to a splitter. Then one cable goes to the tv and another goes to my modem > wireless router.

Upstairs I have an Xbox 360, PS3 and a laptop. Wireless is not too great in that room, and the PS3 drops the connection a lot. I also don't want to buy the wireless adapter for the Xbox. The tv upstairs that the Xbox and PS3 are connected to is also connected to a cable from the wall.

So to my understanding, I can use these 2 routers and hook 1 up downstairs and 1 up in the bedroom and hook everything up there?

Thanks everyone, I just want to make sure everything works before I spring for it.

This is outstanding. I worked my way through the process and when connected together, everything was solid. when I put them in a live environment with about 300 ft separation, the "Coax LAN" light flashes constantly. I decided to try anyway and it did work, but I am curious if that indicates it's a marginal or weak signal over the coax because of the distance or possible splittlers and splices in the attic?

Additionally, one note, once I got it working OK, I went back to the remote unit and figured since we are basically using these as Access Points, I re-enabled the wireless and Voila!, I had a good strong wif-fi signal in the room too.

In New Orleans, they call that a Lagniappe.

Thanks for the tip and I'm curious about the flashing Coax LAN light.

Thanks, I think I'm gonna order them today.

Does it make any difference that my house is new and all of the comcast stuff hooks up to a box in the garage? Not sure what the technical name for that is, I can take a picture of it if necessary. Just trying to eliminate any problems before I buy them off eBay.

Thanks again!

Oh alright. Great!

Thanks for your help and quick replies!

I would like to know whether the actiontec is completely silent, or does it produces any audible buzzing noise while on? This is very important for me as these noise really bugs me.

Also, what's the difference between these different revisions? A-E? How is the device function as a router with wireless capability? How exactly does the small NAT table affect its use? (I have 2 computers, and possibly 3 extra device that needs network access, definitely less than 10 total in the foreseeable future.)

Does the router needs to be rebooted periodically? (my netgear wired router can run for months without problem, but the wireless one needs to be rebooted every few days or performance will just slowly degrade)

Thanks!

I have two questions about the NAT table issues.

1) Does the relatively recent advent of IPv6/Toredo in torrent programs (like uTorrent for example) effectively bypass this problem for P2P?

I believe the most commonly cited problems are gaming and P2P. I almost never use P2P but I fired up the latest uTorrent the other day and got very satisfactory results over my FiOS connection (ONT via MoCA to MI424WR as the primary router). It was a robust torrent and I know I was talking to at least 13 seeds plus a number of peers during the transfer. Is this because uTorrent's IPv6 avoids the NAT table issue entirely?


2) How do I properly set up a different router to avoid the small-NAT table issue?


I do have a Linksys WRT54GS which I had been using (with Tomato firmware) as a Wireless Bridge for my music player upstairs. I just ordered a second MI424WR to replace it so I can replace my flaky wireless bridge with a hardwired/stable MoCA bridge. This will free up the WRT54GS.

I imagine my new setup will be:

ONT --MoCA--> ActionTec(1) --Eth--> WRT54GS

Upstairs it will be:

Wall --MoCA--> ActionTec(2) --Eth--> Music player

So downstairs there are a server and 1 client near the routers with a second client and several other devices (TiVo, Wii, etc) served by wireless.

Biggest question is, of course:

- Which services should be set up on ActionTec(1) and WRT54GS to make sure the NAT table in the WRT54GS is used while still bridging the LAN back to Coax/MoCA?

but also:

- Should the nearby devices be connected via ethernet to the WRT54GS because it is the "Main" router or to ActionTec(1) because it is "nearer" to the ONT?

- Should wireless be provided from ActionTec(1) or WRT54GS? (or both on different channels?)

I already plan on serving wireless from ActionTec(2) with same SSID different channel to increase WiFi signal to all parts of the house. Say I set that up on Channel 6, does it make any sense then to set up the co-located WRT54GS on 11 and the ActionTec(1) on 1 for maximum chance at a good signal?

Thanks (and thanks for creating a great thread)
Owen

Once again, a big thanks to Xnappo for sharing this information and helping us out. I finally got 2 of these and got them connected and I was amazed at the clarity with which my XBOX 360 could view and play high def content from my office upstairs. I simply did not think I could do this before trying this out.

Since then, I have run into a couple of small issues though. Yesterday night there wa s power failure for a couple of hours. Today, my wireless connection was not working i.e. I was able to connect to my wireless network on my regular router, but could not connect to the internet. I tried everything from resetting my cable modem, router, upgrading the firmware on my router, but nothing worked. Finally, I gave up and just disconnected the ethernet cable that goes from my router to the actiontec and all of a sudden, my laptops are now able to connect wirelessly to the internet. So, it looks like this has something to do with adding the actiontec routers in the mix (though this problem only started today and was not there for the last day or so). So, I have started to troubleshoot the actiontec now. Since this is the primary actiontec or the one that sends the signals out, I tried to see if the connection on this was working. Right now, the connection on this is not working. That is when I have a network cable connected from my main router to a lan port on the actiontec and from another lan port on actiontec to my laptop, I am able to detect a connection, but cannot connect to the internet. On my Vista laptop, when I go to the network and sharing center to see the network map, it is stuck in Identifying status and is not able to identify this as part of my home network. I tried resetting the (power off and on) the actiontec a couple of times, but nothing has changed. I am able to go to the IP address that I assigned to this actiontec and look at the settings, but for some reason, I cannot connect to the internet.

I know this is a lot of information, but hopefully someone else may have run into this and can help me figure this out.

Thanks to Xnappo's very detailed instructions, I am able to enjoy HD (1080p) movie streaming to my wdtv. Playon, Netflix, etc. all stream perfectly to my wdtv and Wii. I got 3 of these beauties from ebay and setup was a breeze. Might pick up a few more as insurance.Thanks again Xnappo!

FYI, flashing coax LED is okay...snippet from an online post on setting up the ActionTec.

>>> Now let's check the WAN and LAN Coax light. Both lights should be either solid or flashing Green. This may take a couple of minutes. Note: If you are using Ethernet instead, make sure that the WAN Ethernet light is solid or flashing Green.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will take a look when I get back in this weekend. Disabling the wireless was the 1st thing that I did on both the devices, but I will check again. About duplicate IP address, the actiontec's are the only ones that I have a fixed IP assigned to. All other devices dynamically get the IP address. I have the IP address of 25 & 50 (192.168.1.25) assigned to these actiontecs. I do not have 24 other devices and so was not expecting any of my other machines to get the same IP address.

Do you have any thoughts on why I cannot connect to the internet from this actiontec when I have it connected directly to the router using the ethernet cable? I was able to connect to it earlier, but now I cannot. Sometimes I get a feeling that this actiontec might not be in such a good condition and hence it is causing so many problems.

Looks like my luck is not very good with these. This is the 2nd bad one that I have encountered. The 1st one never connected. This one connected, but has been finicky like this from the beginning. Let me hope that the 3rd one would be a good one. But I must say that when it works, it works like a charm.

I did get another actiontec router and configured this in my main office (next to my regular router). It took me a while to get everything setup as I was missing the 2nd part on step 9. But I finally got everything to work and then my wireless from my laptop (on the regular router) was not working. I finally ran a windows update on it and everything was working. I was so happy to get everything working the way I wanted. But my happiness was short lived when I found out this morning that my wife's laptop was having connectivity issues with her wireless. The issue was again the same thing. She could connect to the regular wireless network, get an IP address, but could not connect to the internet. She has an XP Professional OS and I tried everything from repairing the wireless network connection to restarting it, but it simply would not work. My laptop was still working fine and was able to connect wirelessly to the internet. I finally gave up as I was getting late for work and disconnected the main actiontec from my home router. I then restarted my wife's laptop and it connects to the internet wirelessly without any problems. After having seen what this MOCA solution can do for my home network, I simply do not want to give up. But I think there is something that is different on my home router (I am just using the out of the box settings) or I might be missing something and hence this stops working for me after a little while. The 2 actiontec's that I am using now are in good condition and I can connect to them without any problems.

I have another question. When we assign the actiontec's an IP Address in step 7, does that IP address have to be something that is inside the range of the Starting and Ending IP Address of my main router's DHCP server?

Here is my setup.



When I have everything on, the xbox upstairs does not connect. It says that it can not find the DNS. I also plugged in the xbox's ethernet cable to my laptop to try and see if it was just the xbox, how ever it did not connect there either.

Another weird thing happens when I have the upstairs actiontec on, the whole network goes down, like the wireless from the downstairs router too. But once I turn off the upstairs actiontec, and everything else including the wireless works.

Hopefully we can figure this out.

Thanks!

EDIT: I kept messing around and the thing that crashes my whole network is when the Coax LAN on the upstairs actiontec is activated. Whether that be when you turn the actiontec on, or if you have it on and then plug the coax cable in. Once the router is off everything works again. However when I have it on and connected to my laptop, I am still able to access the downstairs actiontec settings, so it is obviously reaching the other router somehow. But it just messes up the internet connection.

Hopefully I can get this figured out, its frustrating getting something new and not being able to play with it yet!