Review: Coaxifi WiFi over coax for better coverage: 5/5 stars

The Problem

I have cable outlets in a few rooms without TVs, and figure they could be put to use. The latest crop of MoCA adapters (for Ethernet over coax) work reasonably well at supporting up to 1 Gbps, but each pair tends to cost upward of $150 at the moment. I've already converted several phone jacks to Ethernet, so MoCA might be a waste of money in my situation.

What I do need is better WiFi coverage, especially in the rooms that are farthest from my router. Occasionally, my WiFi doorbell won't connect due to low signal strength, and more frequently, it won't stream footage. I also have trouble loading webpages in my kids' bedroom. Improving WiFi coverage would help make the formal 'study' room useful as a home office.

There are some MoCA WiFi kits, but these require their own SSID separate from that of the router. Messing with different subnets and multiple LANs isn't ideal for file transfers. And these can get expensive fast. Using Actiontec's kits to cover 5 rooms would cost around $150 for the first adapter & extender, then 4x$60=$240 for five more extenders, plus a MoCA splitter and point of entry filter.

Actiontec MoCA adapter & WiFi extender: over my budget and kludgy

The Solution

I did find one option that lets me stay on the same SSID and improve WiFi signal strength (and data rates), using a WiFi over coax kit from Coaxifi for around $10.

The idea and setup are pretty simple. A router with detachable antennas can be connected to the house's coax lines, similar to MoCA. But rather than parking a powered adapter and mess of cables at the outlet, this approach puts an antenna on the outlet instead, fitting on the wall plate.

I have a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 with 3 antennas, so starting out small, I ordered a kit for two outlets. The router is already in my basement along with a desktop and some UPS batteries, so connecting the router to the right cable took just a minute. (Mounting networking gear on a peg board always saves time down the road.)

Adding the Y splitter cable to the router, and on to a coaxial cable feeding my study

Then I threaded the kit's antenna on the outlet wall plate in my study. (It's a special antenna connector made for cable outlets, unlike stock antennas on routers.)

The Results

As a before-and-after, you can see why the doorbell struggled to stay connected without Coaxifi. At a relative signal strength indicator of -67 dBm, this part of the house had lower data rates and higher packet retries. Coaxifi improved the RSSI to as high as -26 dBm, boosting the link rate from 520 Mbps to 866 Mbps (reflecting an increase from 64-QAM 2/3 to 256-QAM 5/6). That means 12,589 times more WiFi power is reaching this part of the house than before.

Without Coaxifi: -67 dBm @ 520 Mbps link rate; with Coaxifi: -26 dBm @ 866 Mbps link rate

So far, this setup is working well. The doorbell streams footage 100% of the time now, and my smartphone loads pages much faster in that part of the house. I'm planning to connect the other half of the Coaxifi splitter cable to an upstairs bedroom with a smart TV that doesn't stream reliably.