Slow internet at home? This adapter is the key to faster wired connectivity

It’s no secret that most cable and satellite TV services are losing customers to cable cutting as people switch to streaming services. Because of this, there’s a good chance your home has hundreds of feet of coax cable that used to be needed for television and is now doing nothing but collecting dust.

It’s that “dark” coax that the NexusLink G.HN Wave 2 Ethernet over Coax Adapter uses to quickly and inexpensively expand your wired home networking options.

If you live in a home that’s already wired for ethernet, or have spent thousands of dollars adding it, you probably don’t need this product. But if you’re in the situation that the vast majority of us find ourselves in, these adapters can save you time and money by turning that obscure coaxial cable into a valuable networking asset.

This is especially true if you live in a house where some rooms seem to crush even the strongest Wi-Fi signals.

Likewise: The Best Live TV Streaming Services

specifications

Maximum rated transfer rate	2,000 Mbps
ports	2X coaxial (male), 1X Gigabit Ethernet
perfomance	Including wall adapter
Maximum number of nodes per network	16
Built-in security	AES 128-bit encryption
use cases	Streaming (up to 8K), home networking, gaming
Included accessories	2 x plug-in power supply, 2 x Ethernet cable
Maximum coaxial distance between adapters	800 meters
Dimensions (single device)	3.90 x 2.67 x 0.96 inches or 99 x 67.7 x 24.5 mm

configuration

The setup process is extremely easy. The hardest part might be checking which coax terminals in your house are connected to which. If everyone is labeled, great. If not, you may need to look into crawlspaces with a flashlight.

Which run you choose depends on what you want to do with the new connection.

For example, if you want a connection from the router in your bedroom to a home theater in the basement, and you already have coax cable in the wall between those locations, place one adapter in the bedroom and the other in your basement.

The Ethernet cable at the basement end can then either be connected directly to a home theater PC or streaming device, or used to connect an Ethernet switch or secondary Wi-Fi access point for added flexibility.

Rather than suggesting thousands of similar scenarios, I’m simply saying that almost anything that could be accomplished with a set of Ethernet cables can be done just as easily with a set of coax cables, as long as you have one of these adapters on both ends.

Testing

Simple setups like this are a delightful rarity in home networking. However, this does not matter if the connection provided by the product is not stable or does not meet the specifications stated by the company. I’ve tried to be as scientific as possible in the testing process for the adapters to verify their performance.

More: Top 5 Internet Speed ​​Tests: Test Your Broadband Connection

I explain briefly:

• I replaced a 40ft ethernet cable (gigabit network switch > gigabit ethernet port on a desktop PC) with the two adapters connected by a 30ft coax cable between them.
• I ran two tests: one with the original 40 foot run of Ethernet cable and a second series with the adapter setup.
• I tested two scenarios: download/upload rates and latency values ​​when connecting to the public internet, and transfer rates for large files transferred between networked PCs.
• For each scenario, I ran five speed tests at three test locations. For each transfer rate test, I used four files of different sizes, each transferred five times. The average transmission rate and the time are displayed here.

Internet Speed ​​Tests

Download (DL) and upload (UL) numbers are in megabits per second (Mbps), while latency (Lat.) is in milliseconds (ms). The test was conducted over 100Mbps broadband.

Uninterrupted Ethernet (40 feet)

Offerer	Speedtest.net	Fast.com	Google speed test
DL/UL | Latin	99.97 / 103.33 | 16	100 / 110 | fifteen	94.3 / 102.0 | 8th
DL/UL | Latin	97.33 / 103.76 | 18	95 / 107 | 14	93.9 / 102.0 | 12
DL/UL | Latin	100.86 / 103.50 | 18	98 / 110 | 13	96.2 / 102 | 10
DL/UL | Latin	100.62 / 103..83 | 17	96 / 100 | 13	95.7 / 97.5 | 10
DL/UL | Latin	99.00 / 103.79 | 18	99 / 110 | 14	95.5 / 97.2 | 8th
Average DL / UL | Latin	99.56 / 103.64 | 17.4	97.6 / 107.4 | 13.8	95.12 / 100.14 | 9.6

NexusLink Ethernet over Coax Adapter (30ft coax, 12ft ethernet total)

Offerer	Speedest.net	Fast.com	Google speed test
DL/UL | Latin	100.54 / 103.46 | 18	96 / 110 | 14	94.7 / 99.8 | 9
DL/UL | Latin	99.27 / 103.91 | 18	95 / 110 | 12	95.5 / 97.6 | 11
DL/UL | Latin	98.54 / 103.75 | fifteen	98 / 110 | 14	101.6 / 98.0 | 9
DL/UL | Latin	98.26 / 103.16 | 18	110 / 100 | 14	101.1 / 97.7 | 11
DL/UL | Latin	98.15 / 103.83 | 17	100 / 100 | 14	101.2 / 97.6 | 9
Average DL / UL | Latin	98.95 / 103.62 | 17.2	99.8 / 106 | 13.6	98.82 / 98.14 | 9.8
% difference compared to Ethernet	-0.613% / -0.019% | -1.15%	+2.25% / -1.3% | -1.45%	+3.89% / -1.99% | +2.08%

Results: The download, upload, and latency results are all within just a few percentage points, plus or minus, between the two setups. This means that the performance of the adapters for gaming and online video and audio streaming is functionally identical when using a similarly long Ethernet link instead.

Test file transfer over home network

While the test above showed that the adapters could more than handle the 100 Mbps my broadband connection is capable of, the much faster 1 gigabits per second (Gbps) theoretical speed of my home network proved more of a challenge.

ethernet

File size: Average transfer speed in megabytes per second (MBps) | Total transmission time in minutes and seconds

• 10.14GB file: 47.5MB/s | 3:28
• 1GB file: 46.5MB/s | 0:21
• 780MB File: 46.5MB/s | 0:17
• 376MB File: 45.5MB/s | 0:07

Ethernet over coax adapter

• 10.14GB file: 34.5MB/s | 4:54 (29% slower)
• 1GB file: 35MB/s | 0:29 (28% slower)
• 780MB file: 33.75MB/s | 0:23 (26% slower)
• 376MB File: 34.5MB/s | 0:10 (30% slower)

As you can see, the adapters hit about 35 Mbps while the ethernet run hit almost 48 Mbps. This resulted in transfer rates being about a third slower on average when moving large files over my wired network.

bottom line

As you can see from my testing, the adapters seem to be busy at around 35 Mbps (roughly 280 Mbps) in this scenario at least. That’s more than any 100Mbps broadband plan could ever hope to match, but not quite as much as the 300Mbps of many commonly offered home Internet plans.

However, it is very unlikely that you will maximize this transfer rate unless you plan to run many devices through these adapters. Demanding scenarios such as 8K video streaming should also not be a problem.

The only time you’ll notice the roughly 30% reduction in speed I’ve recorded compared to running just Ethernet is when you’re transferring large files between PCs on your home network. If you do this often, it’s worth considering.

However, given the difficulties, time, and expense associated with Ethernet installation, infrequent slowdowns seem like a far better compromise than spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to replace existing coaxial cabling with Ethernet.

To be clear, you need the existing coaxial cable for this to be a worthwhile option. But if you’ve already got it working somewhere convenient in your home, these adapters open up a whole new world of possibilities for times when you need a stable, wired connection that even the best Wi-Fi hardware can’t provide in every part of every home.

to examine alternatives

A slightly cheaper option (if you use the commonly available Amazon coupon) that skips the built-in encryption but still offers theoretical speeds of 1Gbps.

Another option that also skips the extra security but includes extra coax cables for connections that require them.

The predecessor of the adapters we looked at in this review. They offer a very similar feature set, but hit a maximum theoretical speed of 1,200Mbps, about 40% slower than the Wave 2 models we tested.