ZyXEL MoCA 2.0 Ethernet to Coax Single Adapter Bonded Up to 1.4Gbps Gigabit Ethernet (HLA4205)

Update: I am raising this to 5 stars. I've had these installed for almost a year now and they work great. I even bought a few more. I'm presently using three of them and I have one spare. There doesn't seem to be any user manual online from ZyXEL, but there is a data sheet. After being completely in the dark about signal levels (I suppose I could have put my scope on the cable), today I made a useful discovery: This thing actually has a web GUI that you can connect to! The GUI offers the signal levels (along with graphs of bandwidth, and Pre-corrected Bit Error Rates), and gives you the ability to select from one of three bandwidth profiles (in case you want to co-exist with satellite/cable/broadcast TV on the same cable). I stumbled across this because I upgraded my primary Internet router, and the new one had issued some DHCP assignments on the wrong subnet before I configured it. While waiting for my client devices to expire their leases, I ran a nmap scan on the default subnet (192.168.1.0/24). I saw a few of my devices still lagging, but they eventually switched. I also saw an unidentified device with a ZyXCEL MAC address sitting on 192.168.1.3 (port 80). I connected to it and was pleasantly surprised by my discovery of this undocumented functionality. The GUI also offers the ability to update the firmware, but no firmware images for this model exist on the ZyXEL support site. Not really any need to update since everything is working well. (Note: there have been some recent CVE announcements about ZyXEL routers being remotely exploitable. I do not know if this device exhibits the same vulnerabilities, but it should be fine if you keep it on your internal LAN only.)I got a few of these because one of the rooms in my new house didn't have network wiring, but did have RG6 CATV wiring. The house has about 12 CATV drops and they are divided between 8-port and 6-port (2GHz) couplers with RG6 cable used throughout. First the good news: Every drop on the 8-port coupler (where one of the bridges was present) could successfully connect to the other bridge and transfer rates were fine. The bad news is there was no connectivity to the ports on the other coupler. Apparently these things cannot deal with more than 10dB of path loss. Not a huge deal because I was able to establish a solid connection so long as I was on the same coupler as the peer.

This device worked perfectly for about a year and kept up with my 1Gb Google Fiber service. Now it only communicates at 100mb which is unacceptable. If I power cycle the units it will temporarily go back to full speed but only for a few minutes. ZyXel offers no information or firmware or any type of user support. Please learn from my mistake and spend your money on another device with better reliability and support.

Works great. Speedtest showed a single pair of these in my house reached 60Mbps, the speed of our internet connection. Perfect. The cable TV kept working without disruption, too. (There were no splitters between the two zyxel boxes, so success was more likely.)Not compatible with 10baseT, evidently. I had an old 10baseT switch from 20 years ago, the ethernet light wouldn't even go on with it. This will only affect dinosaurs (you know who you are). I replaced the 10baseT switch with a wifi router and all was well.

I've been a longtime lurker of MoCA adapters ever since I stumbled upon that Lon.TV video/ad discussing the benefits of MoCA adapters. I was a little apprehensive about the cost of purchasing a pair, seeing as it was still a $100+ commitment and that apprehensiveness saw me miss out on the Motorola bonded 2.0 units when they were $120. I saw that you could buy brandless versions of these adapters from Alibaba (they use the exact same Broadcom chip - the inputs/buttons match up exactly the same) for much cheaper, but it didn't sit well with me that agents only offered offline payment options vs. using the built-in payment system. Luckily, Prime day came about, and hidden away in the seller selection area, I saw that Zyxel offered a 15% discount. Pulled the trigger this time.Setting these up were a relative breeze. Wiring where I live was done over 10 years ago. I assume all cabling is RG6. The splitters (unsure how many, but they split off to 4 other rooms) if I were to guess are standard 5-1000MHz splitters, based on the fact that the ones used in my living room are rated as such. Had to tinker a bit with the cable setup that was already in place; turns out the splitters were setup the opposite way round for the MoCA signal. Once that was sorted, the adapters worked perfectly sending what was effectively full bandwidth to the back rooms of my place. The first picture shows the iPerf3 test without using the RF out port, the second shows the slight reduction in bandwidth when the adapter's splitter is used with a signal going to the TV.All in all, these things are great, and I wholeheartedly recommend these to anyone on the fence about them. I wish I had picked these up sooner, before I had picked up powerline adapters. Not that there is anything wrong with powerline adapters, they have served their purpose for the last 2-3 years, but these MoCA adapters blow them away performance-wise. No question. Obvious condition being that your place is already wired with coaxial cabling. If another good deal pops up, I will definitely consider adding an additional unit. I probably will also try order one of the Alibaba units out of curiosity at some point.Til then, I'm going to upgrade my home WiFi to the Deco M5s and enjoy the new found speed at the back of my place!