Actiontec ECB2500C Product Details
Designed for Cable High-Speed Internet subscribers, the Actiontec ECB2500C MoCA Network Adapter makes it easy and affordable to add the reliability of a wired Internet connection through the home’s existing coaxial cables. Based on the highly popular MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) standard, the adapter delivers speeds up to 270 Mbps wherever there’s a coaxial port. The ECB2500C is an ideal solution for connecting the gaming console, HDTV, or other home theater device that requires a fast, reliable, ‘always on’ Internet connection. It’s also a great way to relieve bandwidth pressure on your home wireless network.
Actiontec ECB2500C Speeds & Coverage
The ECB2500C MoCA Network Adapter delivers strong and stable connections up to 270 Mbps. Speeds like that allow you to experience silky-smooth streaming HD video without the lags and buffering associated with lower performance connections. The product supports QoS to manage your bandwidth, ensuring critical applications, like video streaming, get allocated the priority bandwidth.
MoCA Enabled for the Whole Home
MoCA technology turns your home’s existing coaxial wires into a high-speed, whole-home network. Wherever you have a coaxial port, you can get high-speed Internet access. perfect for online gaming or streaming an HD movie. As a result, you can connect a device in the home theater, even bring an awesome gaming experience to the basement, without having to run any extra cables all over the house or work around any wireless dead zones. Consistently awesome connectivity, throughout your whole home.
Actiontec ECB2500C – Cable TV’s Best Friend
The Actiontec ECB2500C is designed specifically for homes with Cable TV and is compatible with virtually any device that has an Ethernet port, including Blu-ray, Xbox 360, PS3, streaming media devices, computers and more. It does not support homes with satellite TV. Please call your cable provider before ordering to ensure that you are able to activate this model with your service plan and in your area.
What’s Included:
- Actiontec ECB2500C Coax Network Adapter
- Ethernet Cable
- Power Supply Cable
- Online Installation Manual
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tones44 –
Quadrupled my network Speeds (see picture) from using Ethernet over power-line adapters. Possibly one of the easiest things I have ever installed on my network. Works exactly as advertised. Works with existing coax cable in wired in my house. Rather than wiring Ethernet to all the rooms, i bought 3 of these adapters and extended the network to the main points of the house and connected switches from there.
AllNaturalFoodsGuy –
Works great, plug n play! I’m using Comcast cable service with 88 Mbps download speed when connected directly to modem with Ethernet cable. Connected the two Actiontecs using a dead (unused) additional coax line from an old home installation that runs outside house about 200 ft of distance and back thru bedroom upstairs wall with coax. So my total routing is:Cable service coax > Arris SB6141 modem > Ethernet cable > Netgear 900 wireless router > Ethernet cable > Actiontec #1 > coax > old wall coax (not service coax) > 200′ to other room wall coax > coax > Actiontec #2 > Ethernet cable > Netgear WNR2000 wireless router > Ethernet cable > laptop computer.Believe it or not all this daisy chain works so that I have two wireless routers running with the Actiontecs between them. Service test at laptop at end of chain still at maximum speed 88 Mbps download, 6 MBps upload (same speed as direct connect to modem). Tested speed at modem and end of Actiontec chain downstream of two routers and there are no detectable speed losses in system using direct wired Ethernet at end (no wireless). Wireless is maxed out at the router capabilities.Update 12-15-2015 still works great. Updated my speed report from 58 to 88 after replacing some old cable connections outside. If I have to restart my modem or routers, I can leave the Actiontec pair on and no problems. I have also reversed the order of two routers daisy chained(described above) and Actiontec works either way, including directly plugged into modem Ethernet. The cable tech said he was going to get himself a pair (did not know these existed).
Aeonix01 –
I will amend this review should the replacement I’ve had to order for this item have better results. I ordered this item Saturday, got it on Monday. I plugged it in, and there was no power. I contacted Support from Actiontec who were helpful on another product, and they told me what I expected to hear. “I’m sorry, it’s broken, you could go through warranty, but it might be easier to just return it to the vendor for a replacement.” That isn’t to say that wasn’t being helpful. I just expect that when I buy a product, and plug it in, at the very least, it gets power.I’d read these things fry pretty easily in other reviews, but I didn’t expect to have one come defective before use. I hope that is not a sign of what to expect when paying $80+ on a device.I will be holding on to the Netgear PoE device I bought prior to this which worked instantly. It may not be as fast, but it works flawlessly.Update: I got a replacement device. The set up was easy. I connected it to my router and coax at the wall in one room. I the connected it to a different MoCA device from Actiontec which had wifi in another room establishing a MoCA network between the two devices. My 50Mbps service level connection speedtest on my iPhone showed a 59Mbps connection for download. Awesome set up.
Joe G. –
I am an IT student, and can say that I am very impressed at these adapters. Sure, the interface to configure them (if you choose, the config is optional) is not that pretty, but there was no problem using it. Another point to make is to be aware if you have a powered amplifier/splitter combo in your coax somewhere. The signal used by these adapters (over 1Ghz) will not pass through these kind of amps. Since I have one in my house, I had to bypass the amp using diplexers. This allowed me to leave the cable tv lines amplified, while separating the ethernet over coax lines off of the amplifier. I’ve included a diagram of my setup in case others may be in this situation. Hopefully it can help some of you before you leave a bad review on this product.
Lon J. Seidman –
My HDHomerun Prime setup required that I connect all of my Windows Media Center Extenders and Xboxes to ethernet vs. wireless. Wireless just can’t provide enough reliable bandwidth and I needed something wired. I tried powerline ethernet adapters, which generally work well, but they can’t provide the bandwidth that my specific application required.Some viewers pointed me towards MoCA devices, which bridge traditional ethernet over coax cables used for cable television. The nice thing about the MoCA standard is that it allows for cable services to also co-exist on the same wire. Note that it will not work with satellite television.Once connected the devices work as advertised. In a ‘real world’ test I was seeing consistent 89 megabit speeds from one device to the other. My HDHomerun / Windows Media Center content played flawlessly and as nicely as it does over a traditional gigabit ethernet connection. Everything configures quickly out of the box without any need to do anything other than plugging it all in.The downside? The device is not configured to encrypt traffic between devices by default. Because the MoCA standard allows for multiple devices to run on the same network, it’s possible somebody could plug one in on the same coax segment and gain access to the network without permission. Coax segments sometimes can go beyond the individual dwelling, so there are some concerns there.Actiontec does have a configuration option for adding passwords and encryption, but they discourage users from doing that – threatening a voided warranty if something is done incorrectly. And although the control panel is web based, it requires a windows application to access it.One other thing to note is that the backplane speed of the network over coax is 270 megabits across all devices. So it’s possible to max out the Coax network with a lot of simultaneous video streaming/file transfers. If using multiple devices I’d suggest setting them up to operate on different frequencies to allow for more bandwidth.Beyond the security issues (that are addressable with a little effort) this is a very solid performing device that does work as advertised.