# Can the Bolt/Minis Serve as a Bridge?



## JOSHSKORN (Aug 27, 2015)

I'm on Verizon FiOS.

I'm going to attempt to connect all of my devices via MoCA. I just set up my Bolt, do not have Minis yet. That's next. I hear the Bolt takes 24 hours to set up, so I'm waiting...

At the TVs where I'm setting up a Bolt/Mini, I have a few devices that I want to have hardwired. I'm thinking of buying an 8 port switch or two.

For the rooms that I do NOT have the Verizon router in, can I use the Bolt/Mini's coax connection to the Ethernet port as a bridge to an 8 port switch? Does that make sense? Otherwise, I'll have to buy a couple of coax splitters and routers.


----------



## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

JOSHSKORN said:


> I'm on Verizon FiOS.
> 
> I'm going to attempt to connect all of my devices via MoCA. I just set up my Bolt, do not have Minis yet. That's next. I hear the Bolt takes 24 hours to set up, so I'm waiting...
> 
> ...


Hi,
The minis do not have that capability and will not function as you hope.
You might consider re-purposing a couple old Actiontec W1424WR Rev F-I's and configuring them to act as MoCA bridges but these will only be MoCA 1.1 and have 4 Ethernet ports. https://www.dslreports.com/faq/15984 . You could also do a similar thing with the newer Fios Gateway G1100 to get MoCA 2.0 but again with 4 Ethernet ports and you could enable the wireless giving you a nice dual band AP in the same location. They are less expensive on Ebay.


----------



## razor237 (Feb 1, 2002)

Im not sure that it is possible to setup that way. even if it were i don't think you would want to, that setup might effect the performance of the minis and the bolt is self by over loading it with network traffic of other devices routing through it. You would be better off buying a MoCA bridge and switch. 

I could be totally off, ive never used MoCA on on the TiVo, just seems to me it would put extra load on the Tivo


----------



## snerd (Jun 6, 2008)

razor237 said:


> Im not sure that it is possible to setup that way. even if it were i don't think you would want to, that setup might effect the performance of the minis and the bolt is self by over loading it with network traffic of other devices routing through it. You would be better off buying a MoCA bridge and switch.
> 
> I could be totally off, ive never used MoCA on on the TiVo, just seems to me it would put extra load on the Tivo


The MoCA chips inside the Bolt do all the heavy lifting, so non-TiVo traffic will add very little load to the Bolt CPU.

The only time an external MoCA adapter would be a meaningful benefit would be when using multiple MoCA 2.0 (bonded) adapters to get MAC data rates of 800Mbps.


----------



## razor237 (Feb 1, 2002)

That makes sense, my thinking was regular network traffic added on with the bolt traffic to minis might slow things down 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk


----------



## jimpc (Jan 2, 2016)

How bout something like this. FiOS only allows one per connection.

http://www.shopactiontec.com/produc...xtender-with-gigabit-ethernet-and-bonded-moca

I have the previous version and a Bolt on the same network originating at the G1100 gateway. Going to upgrade to the version I linked shortly.

Or you can just grab these:

http://www.shopactiontec.com/collec...s/moca-2-0-ethernet-to-coax-adapter-twin-pack

Or these:

http://www.shopactiontec.com/collec...d-moca-2-0-ethernet-to-coax-adapter-twin-pack

And coonect them to 1 device or a switch if you don't care about wireless.


----------



## snerd (Jun 6, 2008)

JOSHSKORN said:


> At the TVs where I'm setting up a Bolt/Mini, I have a few devices that I want to have hardwired. I'm thinking of buying an 8 port switch or two.
> 
> For the rooms that I do NOT have the Verizon router in, can I use the Bolt/Mini's coax connection to the Ethernet port as a bridge to an 8 port switch? Does that make sense? Otherwise, I'll have to buy a couple of coax splitters and routers.


Not sure this really got answered...

The Bolt can bridge to the ethernet port. First get the Bolt working over MoCA, by setting the network to "Connect using MoCA". Then all you need to do is connect a switch to the Bolt's ethernet port, and it should start working immediately.

Mini's can't bridge, as mentioned previously.


----------

