MoCA hits 100 benchmark

The Multimedia Over Coax Alliance (MoCA) today announced that it has finished a series of successful field trials that proved the technology can consistently deliver 100 Mb/s of usable throughput over existing in-home coax cable.

The trials, conducted by eight cable and satellite operators that are part of the alliance, were done in employees' homes using equipment all eight typically are deploying. MoCA is one of several technologies that telcos are looking at to transmit IP-based video and other traffic around customer's homes. For the purposes of the trials, the companies used Ethernet-to-coax bridges, said Ladd Wardani, President of MoCA. However, the companies believe they would have gotten the same results if the technology were integrated in residential gateways or set-top boxes.

"It wouldn't matter if it was in the device or not," Wardani said.

During the trials, each company received kits that included four MOCA nodes and two laptops. Volunteers, mostly from non-technical positions, from each company brought the kits home and hooked up the nodes to existing cable outlets. Laptops then sent data streams across the nodes.

"It gathered up quality-of-service parameters, but by far the most important thing it measured was data throughput," Wardani said. "The key requirement was that we wanted to see 100 Mb of net usable data rate between outlets."