Internet to garden office via coaxial cable

[PiuzzoSteve]

Hello all. 

I wonder if you can help me?

I have virgin media internet at tv etc in the house. 

I have a garden office  approx 30m away from the main house.  

Currently I use TP Link Powerline adapters / WiFi access point to use the internet in the office.  However, the speed drops from 250mb to around 15mb due to the length of the power cable run and the fact it goes onto another ring main (I think).  

A few years ago I had an engineer install a virgin ‘coax’ cable from the main house to the garden office so I could watch tv in the office.  I no longer use this but the cable is still in situ.  

Recently I noticed a coax to Ethernet adapter on Amazon. Can I use such an adapter - presuamably one at each end of the run - to connect to an access point? Possibly, because this is a direct run cable I can get closer to the speeds I get elsewhere in the house? Would I need to drill through the wall to connect the coax or can I simply connect it to the cable already there which is connected to the outside of the house (from what I can see) - I think this is called the omnibox ?

This is the kind of thing I noticed:  https://amzn.eu/d/2QPY3FF

[Adduxi]

Save your £70 and replace the co-ax run with an external Cat 6 ethernet cable,

[PiuzzoSteve]

Thanks for replying so swiftly.  However, replacing would be quite the job. It would involve digging the existing cable out, re-laying the Ethernet cable and drilling through the walls at both ends. 

Could such a device be used without drilling etc?  Other versions of the device are available, starting as low as £20, so it’d be good to know if it was a case of plugging these in and it working.  

[jpeg1]

To use the coax cable you'd need to convert ethernet to coax at the Hub end, and coax back to ethernet at the office end.  So two devices. 

You can't convert a coax TV feed from the splitter into ethernet. 

[jbrennand]

What "engineer" installed VM coax cable for you - was that a VM person?

If it wasnt then its odds on they installed the "Amazon" special VM guaranteed cable (sic).  If you are using that for any VM connection it will almost certainly be causing noise issues on the network!

For example, a year or two ago, my neighbour was having similar "noise" problems and called the VM investigating tech team - which came out and started by knocking on my door and asked to see our connections.    Long story short... neighbours noise problem was caused by MY daughter (unbeknown to me) moving her V6 box and using some cheap tat co-ax cable she got from Amazon! - they changed the cable in her room for the pukka VM cable...and hey presto... the neighbour was sorted - fortunately they didnt charge me for the cost of the visit - I think they were so relieved to find the source of the noise ingress so quickly 😎

- lesson learned !

[jbrennand]

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@PiuzzoSteve wrote:

However, replacing would be quite the job. It would involve digging the existing cable out, re-laying the Ethernet cable and drilling through the walls at both ends.  

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Would it be possible to securely connect/join the ethernet cable - in the shed - to a run of Ca6a external ethernet cable - and then from the Hub end just pull it all through? 

It certainly would be the coax was installed inside some conduit tubing - which I would expect any competent engineer to do as best practice (and as we on here regularly recommend)

[Tudor]

The only sure way is Ethernet cable. If you use the coax with  adapters you do not know what speed you will get, places like Amazon nearly always inflate their figures. Also most adapters are only for 100m, the ones that do 1G are about £140 and many are designed for PoE to power them for use with vision equipment not broadband.

[PiuzzoSteve]

Thanks for all the advice.  

I have found a local handyman who has quoted to fit the cat6 cable for me.  I can get 60m of direct burial cable for around £40 off amazon currently.   

FYI The previously installed virgin cable to the office was done by an official (now ex) engineer on their day off.  They are married to my best friends sister but nagged no moved away from the area.   

[Adduxi]

You really should run 2 cables in and also use conduit and a pull rope.  You never know if you will need to do maintenance in the future.  However, yes cable is the right choice, only bettered by fibre, but that's a whole different story ...