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Asheridge echoBox Ethernet over Coax adapter reviewed
Wednesday 26 September 2012 10:18:28 by Andrew Ferguson

Our latest review is now online, where we look at the Asheridge echoBox. The units piggyback onto the many metres of coax aerial leads that many people have around their home, and provide stable network connections for Internet enabled televisions, games consoles and all the other devices we want to connect to our broadband connections.

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While many devices include built-in wireless connectivity, far too often wireless network congestion or interference from other devices in the same spectrum can mean that gaming and video streaming is a patchy affair, or simple things like a brick wall get in the way. The echoBox's can run on the same aerial network as the FreeView signal, but are not compatible with satellite TV signals.

[ Topic: Hardware | 9 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by YaZiN 9 months ago
'things like a brick wall get in the wall' typo by chance :)

Posted by timmay 9 months ago
What is a maximum cable length?

Posted by andrew ( staff member) 9 months ago
No idea on maximum length, did test with 20m, might have a dig to see if I can find some more.

Posted by vfast_tim 9 months ago
I had looked at this type of thing (or DoCSIS) for getting broadband into flats over existing Sky IRS cables.

It's a shame this doesn't (currently) work for this type of set-up.

If it goes more than 100 meters over satellite grade cable then this might be useful for people with cable runs too long for Ethernet.

Posted by zyborg47 9 months ago
What Goes Around Comes Around, well kind of. i remember a few years back I had a co-ax network going around the house, but using BNC connectors. So we go back to co-ax.

Flipping expensive.

Posted by andrew ( staff member) 9 months ago
Was playing around with the kit and thought the same, remember BNC networks, just they were a lot slower back then

Posted by c_j_ 9 months ago
And the office variant of the BNC stuff had to be orange or yellow or it wasn't the real thing.

'course back in those days, late 80s early 90s, some transceivers had a time domain reflectometer built in to aid in the location of open and short circuit faults.

Now move on twenty years to high volume DSL modem/routers with massively powerful DSP chips and what built-in faultfinding and manageability do they have to avoid a series of chargeable service visit?

Where did it all go wrong?

Posted by prlzx 9 months ago
Yes would be worth checking distance.

Have used a pair of something similar that can do over 1km. They can also connect 3 or more endpoints using a passive coax splitter. There was a datasheet with a matrix of speed vs distance vs cable type.

Have come in useful for some outdoor events too as field repairing a break with a connector is trivial.

Posted by rickymk 9 months ago
Expensive. I use homeplug AV 500 powerline adaptors which seem fine. what's the benefit of these, just range or are they faster perhaps?