Wireless Joey?
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It was 3 and it does work but Dish changed the requirement to 2 per WAP
The Wireless Joey Access Point will provide up to three Wireless Joeys access to the MoCA connection to the Hopper. There is a limit of two Wireless Joey Access Points with a limit of 6 Wireless Joeys per account.
I presently have 1 wireless joey with 2 hws
I am thinking about adding a joey to a tv in a sum room, but the wireless signal would have to travel through
and outside brick wall.
Is it possible to run a cat 6 cable from the WAP to the joey in the sun room?
If not, what would be my options?
I am thinking about adding a joey to a tv in a sum room, but the wireless signal would have to travel through
and outside brick wall.
Is it possible to run a cat 6 cable from the WAP to the joey in the sun room?
If not, what would be my options?
I don't know anything about that WAP, but if you intend to get a wired J3 for example, I know you can use that on a wired network w/o MoCA connection. I did that for years when my wife surprised me by moving it into a guest bedroom w/o any coax. Now, it was originally set up via MoCA... I do not know for certain that you could get it set up and authorized to use on your account via the network alone. But I'll bet you can.
Joeys (Both wired and wireless) can be connected to the same network via Ethernet and work, as long as the Ethernet network is the same as one that the Hopper is on (or, if you don’t have internet/Ethernet wiring at home, a direct connection from one of the Hopper ports would work too). This is because all a Joey does is search for a paired Hopper in whatever network it’s connected too and doesn’t care if you are on MoCA.
There is a few caveats to this:
Its obviously not supported. Most techs and CSR’s will not even touch/mention or help you with an install like that and only do MoCA/WiFi. Its not because they don’t think it works, but because the ones working directly for Dish (or at least the ones I have talked too) have mentioned that doing something like that can get them in trouble if someone from QA comes and evaluates the installation. Also some just don’t understand the system.
Dish can be weird. This ties in to the first point, and has to do with software. Originally, the wifi Joey could connect to a regular WiFi network (firmware U3xx or something like that?) and you could use it that way, bypassing the need of a AP while remaining wireless. This was latter patched so that you could only connect to the AP (connection via Ethernet still works). I don’t have one to test, but before the WiFi Joey you could add a Dish wireless adapter to a Joey 1/2 and get wireless working, I don’t know if this still works but what I do know is that the Joey 3/4K had this patched out (again, Ethernet still works). What I’m trying to say is that what works today may not work tomorrow, so you can’t complain/be pissed at Dish if they decide to disable the Ethernet ports on all Joeys tomorrow (which would not affect anyone but us with customized installs and certain commercial installs)
Lastly, you have to know a little of what you are doing and have a network up to par. The Joeys are not real bandwidth hogs (all Joeys are only 10/100 equipped anyway, my 4K one can do 4K just fine over 100mbit) but they are very sensitive to latency. If you let’s say connect your Hopper via WiFi to the internet, or connect one of the Joeys via Ethernet but on a wireless repeater/mesh adapter, you may introduce so much latency that everything is unusable. So I would only recommend this to someone with the ability to connect everything with cat5 up to a switch or just run a cat5 from Hopper to Joey directly.
TLDR
There is a few caveats to this:
Its obviously not supported. Most techs and CSR’s will not even touch/mention or help you with an install like that and only do MoCA/WiFi. Its not because they don’t think it works, but because the ones working directly for Dish (or at least the ones I have talked too) have mentioned that doing something like that can get them in trouble if someone from QA comes and evaluates the installation. Also some just don’t understand the system.
Dish can be weird. This ties in to the first point, and has to do with software. Originally, the wifi Joey could connect to a regular WiFi network (firmware U3xx or something like that?) and you could use it that way, bypassing the need of a AP while remaining wireless. This was latter patched so that you could only connect to the AP (connection via Ethernet still works). I don’t have one to test, but before the WiFi Joey you could add a Dish wireless adapter to a Joey 1/2 and get wireless working, I don’t know if this still works but what I do know is that the Joey 3/4K had this patched out (again, Ethernet still works). What I’m trying to say is that what works today may not work tomorrow, so you can’t complain/be pissed at Dish if they decide to disable the Ethernet ports on all Joeys tomorrow (which would not affect anyone but us with customized installs and certain commercial installs)
Lastly, you have to know a little of what you are doing and have a network up to par. The Joeys are not real bandwidth hogs (all Joeys are only 10/100 equipped anyway, my 4K one can do 4K just fine over 100mbit) but they are very sensitive to latency. If you let’s say connect your Hopper via WiFi to the internet, or connect one of the Joeys via Ethernet but on a wireless repeater/mesh adapter, you may introduce so much latency that everything is unusable. So I would only recommend this to someone with the ability to connect everything with cat5 up to a switch or just run a cat5 from Hopper to Joey directly.
TLDR
Yes, but you want to run it from Hopper to Joey OR you could also extend the current cable going from Hopper to AP to try to get the AP closer.
Yes. Bridging on the Hopper needs to be on, but that should already be done by default. You can check (Settings > Internet > Advanced Tab) to make sure.
I recently did and install replacing Cass Cable's Fiber system in which they had cut out all the coax when they changed the customer over to Fiber, mind-bogglingly.
They had the main box in the living room and from there, ethernet ran to each room. This customer was only getting a Hopper and 1 Joey so I ran the cable to the Hopper and used an existing Ethernet cable from the back of the Hopper to the back of the Joey. Worked perfectly (After I replaced the RG 45 connectors because the "tech" from Cass had switched to of the wires at one end.)
Wait what? Was completely unaware this was a thing at all, so you're saying a straight Ethernet feed from Hopper to a wired Joey will provide it with the capability to watch TV?
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Yep, either a straight feed or with a network switch (Hopper > (MoCA) > HIC > (Eth) > Switch > (Eth) > WJ is my setup). As long as the network is the same for the client and host, it works.
Just verifying so I'm sure I understand what you're saying, because I'm a technician and have never heard of this (likely because they don't want us doing it, but I'd still like to know).
If I had a Hopper 3, I could connect a Joey 3 through just an Ethernet cable directly to it from the Hopper 3 to provide connectivity, rather than through RG6? Or do you mean hook up both the Hopper 3 and Joey 3 to the same internet through Ethernet and have them connect together like that?
Sorry if the question is repetitive or I'm missing what you're saying, just something a bit mind blowing to me now that I hear it.
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Both are valid. Let me give you a few examples:
Lets say you are installing a H3 and J3 as you say, and this person has Cat5e throughout the home like in HipKat's comment (who is also a Tech like you, but afaik does not work for Dish directly). When you connect the Hopper to the internet it will grab an IP address from the Modem/Router, lets assign it X.X.1.101 for example, and its working as expected. Ok, now lets install the Joey. On startup, it will attempt to connect to the internet/network by any means it has, for Wired Joeys that's either ethernet or the MoCA network, and for WJ its Ethernet or a paired WAP. If you plug in your coax, a MoCA connection gets established to the Hopper, and if the Hopper has bridging then the internet Modem/Router assigns it an address as well, lets call it X.X.1.102. Keep in mind that until now there has been no actual Hopper-Joey linking going on, its all computer networking. Ok, so the Joey has an address, now what? Well, it will start looking for Hoppers to pair too on the same subnet (in basic terms, the network the Joey is currently in) which in this case is X.X.1.X, and what do you know, there is a Hopper on the same network, address 101. And the rest is how you know, it pairs, downloads software, authorizes, etc etc.
Now, lets change the MoCA for a standard Ethernet cable. Doesn't matter if its on the Hopper or a switch, or even the Modem/Router directly, the Joey will get an address on the X.X.1.X network and look for Hoppers. If one is connected, done.
Second example, same situation as above, but the person you are installing for does not have internet. What happens here is that the Hopper takes a Host role, and starts providing IP addresses to any devices that request them like a Modem/Router would, be it via MoCA for wired Joeys or Ethernet for a WJ via the WAP. This is the reason you can install the Hopper system despite having no internet. So now the Hopper is hosting network X.X.2.101. You can probably tell what happens next, lets connect via MoCA first. The Joey will connect and ask for an address, and the Hopper will assign it X.X.2.102, then the Joey will look on network X.X.2.X, find the Hopper, and done. Now, lets replace the MoCA for Ethernet, and pretty much the same happens. Joey gets an address, connects and done.
Now, a few problems with this, like I mentioned above. Instead of using a medium isolated from your internet network, you will have Joeys communicating over the same cables your computers/smart tv's/etc, and if your network is not up to par then you can have issues. Also, if you try to connect a wired Joey via Ethernet and the Hopper is on Wifi, you may experience latency issues because one part of the path between the two devices is wireless and that can introduce problems. Lastly, Bridging is really important if you do Hopper to Joey directly, because, as the name implies, it bridges the Ethernet and MoCA networks so that there can be communication between the two. If bridging is off, and the Hopper is on network X.X.2.X while the Joey is on X.X.1.X, then no communication. All these are probably reasons Dish doesn't recommend/allow it, because troubleshooting these kind of issues would be a whole new level of crap-tastic to the average tech.
Thanks for the good explanation to this, I appreciate it.
I don't work directly for dish either, I'm a contractor but would still not be permitted in any way to hook up a system like this, but still interesting and potentially useful to know for troubleshooting or a last resort if a new cable run isn't possible.
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You don't need the internet for this to work. Just run an ethernet cord from the Hopper to the Joey. Or you can run one to a Switch and connect each Joey to the Switch via Ethernet. Haven't you ever downloaded a Wireless Joey by connecting it straight to the Hopper via Ethernet? It's the trick when the WAP is too far to download software onto the Joey
You can also do this Wirelessly by using a WiFi adapter on each Joey (1, 2, 3, 4K) and going into the network settings and connecting the Joeys to the Internet but the Hopper must also be connected to the same Internet
I work for an RSP. There's no WAY I'd ever be an in-house tech
Oh? What's a RSP? Is that what the partnered company's are called?
Regional Service Provider, still a sub-contractor, but we cover an entire region, in my case all of Illinois (Minus into Chicago) and the border states Iowa, Missouri, and the Central Ohio area, plus were' really pushed to uphold Dish standards in almost all ways, including metrics (Different than their Pi) and of course, sales
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