Our 'new' house is fully cabled in every room for old style TV (non satellite), including a booster box I just found in the loft.
Seems such a waste.

Can this be used to hard wire my internet?

 

From a practical standpoint, no. Early ethernet worked over coax but not any more. Even the later 'cable' TV boxes use ethernet CAT-5/6 instead of coaxial cable to pipe the signal to the set top boxes then HDMI to the TV. No coax in sight.
It does seem like a waste but that's progress.
Good luck!

FWIW I'm using a 3 point 50-series ORBI 'mesh' wireless system in the new house. I have scorching WiFi through 3600 sq.ft. all on the same SSID. Despite the fact that every room is wired with CAT-6 and coax, we don't need any of it. Even the 4K HDTV runs seamlessly on a wireless link along with a bunch of IoT stuff that came with the house.

 

Our 'new' house is fully cabled in every room for old style TV (non satellite), including a booster box I just found in the loft.
Seems such a waste.

Can this be used to hard wire my internet?

Yes you can, but it will be limited to 10 megabits per second, which today is quite slow.

If you wanted to do that anyway, you could use media converter, like this one: http://www.l-com.com/ethernet-converters-media-converter-10base-t-rj45-to-10base-2-thinnet-coax-bnc for each station or to switches that feed the stations.

It is a bus topology, requiring 50Ω terminators on the ends and t-connectors at each station.

The biggest problem is the low data rate, probably not so helpful for today.

 

It seems that "newer" homes are going through what homes did in the early 20th century with the advent of "electrification". My home is now over 30 years old and was wired for a telephone in each room but for data has gone wireless after adding a wall outlet with cable for the cable modem. Luckily telephone wiring had a redundant pair so I could add another telephone line for dial-up and later FAX access years ago. Before WiFi, there were cables all over the floors. In the days of computer rooms, there was a good reason for having elevated and accessible floors to contain the snakepit of wiring. I did at least one job of rewiring the plant's computer room after we went from Mainframe to data racks.

 

As JohnInTX suggested, just use WiFi for your internet.
My house has Cat5 wiring and I don't use it.

 

It seems that "newer" homes are going through what homes did in the early 20th century with the advent of "electrification".

The first house I bought (1980 ish) still had the gas pipes for the lighting in the walls and loft.

 

My grandparent's house still had some of the knobs from knob and tube wiring that was installed long after it was built. Out in the countryside so no gas pipes. I still have some of their oil lamps. What we refer to now as "Hurricane Lamps".

 

Our 'new' house is fully cabled in every room for old style TV (non satellite), including a booster box I just found in the loft.
Seems such a waste.

Can this be used to hard wire my internet?

Hi

Yes you can. The technology is called MOCA...Multimedia over Coax (Alliance). It allows you to run high speed multimedia protocols (including an ethernet data network) over standard coax cable.

Here's a link for some info:

http://www.mocainyourhouse.com/
eT

 

standard coax cable

I assume you mean RG-6? Even RG-6 has multiple specifications... You need to know the exact cable specification as a start to see if the protocol supports it.

 

Our 'new' house is fully cabled in every room for old style TV (non satellite), including a booster box I just found in the loft.
Seems such a waste.

Can this be used to hard wire my internet?

I missed that this was 75Ω coax, silly me. You can still do it, but you have to use baluns, which makes it pretty useless.

Sorry for the oversight.

 

Thanks for all the interesting replies.

I will cogitate over the weekend before I decide what course of action to pursue (if any )

 

For starters, we do not have any information as to what sort of network hardware you are considering, or that you may have on hand. So instead of saying that you are poorly advised to do anything except rush out and buy today's bleeding edge technology, what kind of hardware do you presently have? Some internal wireless boards that use a back-of-the-box antenna could certainly communicate very well over a coaxial cable network. And if you are getting your internet access from a cable company you will have at least one coaxial connection needed. And multiple cable modems are an other interesting option nobody mentioned.

The big advantage of wireless is all of the other signals that are also present in the same frequency band, and that your wifi receiver will pick up. And also, everybody else can pick up your signal. Form inside my house I get several signals that register "good", and another dozen that range from fair to poor. And when a nearby microwave oven is in use nothing works over my wireless link. So interference can be an interesting issue, and privacy over the air is not always as private as you would like.