# To MoCA or Ethernet... That is the question



## mpfeifer (Sep 15, 2007)

I am finally back to the Tivo family and picked up the Roamio Plus. For complicity sake, I set everything up with MoCA and everything is working fine. However, I notice the slow download speed when transferring shows to my iPad. I see that other people are mentioning the same thing, but I was wondering if I made the right choice with MoCA.

Would setting the Roamio to use the gigabit ethernet versus MoCA help with the transfer speed? I suspect that it is just the way the app and roamio work given that MoCA should still be able to handle speeds better than my transfer rate, but wanted to check with the experts. 

TIA
Mark


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

MoCA connection between your Roamio and Mini does not have any role in the transfer (stream or download) speeds to your iPad. What is a factor is how the Roamio is connected to your home network, as well as what kind of wireless network your iPad is connecting to.
Is the Roamio connected to your network via MoCA or ethernet?


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## mpfeifer (Sep 15, 2007)

Sorry - I guess it wasn't clear. My question was regarding connecting the Roamio to MoCA or the gigabit ethernet. Which is the preferred approach. Thanks, Mark


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

If you have no problem running physical ethernet cable, it will almost certainly always be faster than MoCA, but MoCA is a lot more convenient when you don't have a good way to run ethernet.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

mpfeifer said:


> Sorry - I guess it wasn't clear. My question was regarding connecting the Roamio to MoCA or the gigabit ethernet. Which is the preferred approach. Thanks, Mark


I am using MoCA and getting xfer speeds of over 90Mb/s, I don't know or care if direct gigabit Ethernet would faster as it could not be that much faster and why do you need more speed, I don't xfer much anymore as streaming between Roamios works great and uses much less bandwidth than my MoCA system has available. 
Direct RJ45 connections will always be the best but if you never need the best and MoCA is a setup that is easy for you, just use MoCA. If I already had RJ45 jacks at each TiVo and Mini I would have used that, but I would not spend any time or money to get the RJ45 over MoCA.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

tomhorsley said:


> If you have no problem running physical ethernet cable, it will almost certainly always be faster than MoCA, but MoCA is a lot more convenient when you don't have a good way to run ethernet.


I don't think MoCA is his problem. I don't think the Tivo takes full advantage of the 1 Gbps Ethernet speed and low latency, so I'd argue that Ethernet might not be any faster than MoCA in this case. Does anyone know what the fastest Roamio transfer speed is?

The Roamio supports MoCA 1.1 which gives speeds up to 175 Mbps. A typical 100 Mbps router might be the limiting factor. Not to mention is the router connecting to the iPad using Wireless N or just G? Because Wireless G (802.11g) has a limit of 54 Mbps and it would be the limiting factor.

So the OP needs to provide the kind of router he is using and we can go from there.


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## tatergator1 (Mar 27, 2008)

Another user indicated transfer speeds up to 170 Mbps with a Roamio Pro to computer over Gigabit Ethernet, which is also near the theoretical max of MoCA. MoCA certainly has more ways to generate interference/signal loss than Ethernet, but given the Roamio is the limiting factor for Gigabit speeds, real world difference in performance of Ethernet versus MoCA would only be noticed if you were transferring significant volumes of data. Day to day multi-room streaming and Mini use should be perfect with either option.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

What kinds of slow speed are you seeing, exactly... How long do transfers take?

Even if everything is running smoothly, transfers to an iDevice are bottlenecked by the transcoding process (converting the video from mpeg2 to h.264). It can take roughly half an hour or a little longer to transfer a 1 hour HD show. That's normal.


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## shrike4242 (Dec 1, 2006)

I know that with all of my Tivos on MoCA and my router being a 802.11N 3x3 model (Asus RT-N66U, fantastic router), I've not had any issues with streaming or copying between Tivo units nor with any streaming/copying to my iPad Mini Retina. 

I think the router may be the issue, either with the wired-to-wireless handoff or from wireless speeds. 

I know I did see a speed increase when I installed the MoCA privacy POE filter at the input from the house feed before it hit my amplified splitter, since it was keeping the MoCA traffic from leaking out to the cable feed upstream. IMO, you should always have a privacy filter between your MoCA network and the cable feed into your apartment/house. You can get one from Tivo.com's online store. 

At this point, 300Mbps 2x2 routers are so inexpensive, no one should be using anything slower, as the CPU in the router is also going to handle more work than an older 802.11G or 150MBps 802.11N router. 

Not everyone needs a router at the level of a high-performance router, though you'd be surprised what a difference spending some money on the router might do to help smooth out your home network.


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## mpfeifer (Sep 15, 2007)

Thanks everyone - 

just right now with a the ethernet connection, I transferred 334 MB (medium quality 30 min HD show) in about 12 mins. Is that good? I will put it back to MoCA and see if there is any difference. 

Thanks
Mark


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

That's pretty normal. If you get the same results with moca (most likely will), you're definitely fine. The bottleneck is the transcoding process.


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## mpfeifer (Sep 15, 2007)

Yup - that is what it appears. Thanks. I just wanted to confirm.


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

mpfeifer said:


> Sorry - I guess it wasn't clear. My question was regarding connecting the Roamio to MoCA or the gigabit ethernet. Which is the preferred approach. Thanks, Mark


simple answer....ethernet


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

ltxi said:


> simple answer....ethernet


Only if it is easy to do, MoCA will do almost the same job and I don't think you would see any difference if the MoCA system is connected correctly.


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