The Answer Was Already in the Walls

2026-09-09T00:00:00Z

Earlier this year, I spent about $300 on a Google mesh system because I wanted better internet in my office.

My house has three levels. The internet comes into the basement. My office is on the bedroom level, two floors above it. I already had a Verizon extender, and I wasn’t happy with how it performed in the office, so I bought the Google system. There was a point in the basement, one on the middle level, and one in my office. My PC was plugged into the office point with an Ethernet cable.

I thought that meant my computer had a wired connection. Technically, it did—for the few feet between the computer and the Google point. The rest of the trip to the basement was still happening over Wi-Fi. I didn’t fully understand how much that distinction mattered when I bought the system.

The internet had been adequate for ordinary use. I’ve lived here eight years. I wasn’t spending every day of those eight years trying to solve a crisis. But I’m doing more livestreams now, and an internet connection that is merely adequate until it suddenly isn’t becomes harder to live with.

That morning, I opened Codex and typed, “Something is wrong with my internet? Can you check my PC”

That was the entire starting point. I didn’t ask it about coax wiring. I didn’t know that was a possibility.

It checked the computer first. The Ethernet connection reported 1 Gbps, which sounded reassuring, but there were delays reaching the router. Some responses took far longer than you’d expect inside the house. Looking up a website was slow too. So the computer was connected, but something about the path between my office and the internet wasn’t right.

Codex asked where the Ethernet cable went. I explained the layout: basement, middle level, office upstairs. I told it about the Google points. The office point was connected to the PC by cable, but the points talked to each other wirelessly. That made the connection between floors a suspect.

I opened the Google Home app and ran its mesh test. It rated the connections “Great.” A new check from the PC showed better response times. For a moment, it looked as if the problem might have gone away.

Then I sent an actual speed test from the office: about 22 Mbps down and 15 up.

The basement was getting roughly 977 down and 973 up. “Great connection” was not the whole story.

From there, the conversation became a series of tests and screenshots. I tested my phone in the office. I had to stop and ask how to turn off cellular data so we’d know the phone was really using the house Wi-Fi. The phone was faster than the PC on download, but its upload was still around 15. I unplugged the PC’s Ethernet cable and tested it on Wi-Fi. Download improved. Upload barely moved.

At that point, I could have blamed the PC’s cable or its Ethernet port. We considered that. But I also tried the Verizon Wi-Fi on the same computer, and it got around 338 down and 147 up. So the PC clearly could do better.

I went downstairs with my phone and tested the Google network near the basement router. Much better. Then I tested on the middle level. The upload speed had fallen back to about 15 before I even reached the office.

I was moving through the house taking screenshots, changing networks, checking which device I was connected to, and sending the results back. There wasn’t one dramatic test that explained everything. Each test ruled out a little of what the problem could be.

We restarted the upstairs Google points, one after the other. That helped a lot. The middle level’s upload went from about 15 to about 106. Back in the office, the PC’s wired connection through the Google point reached roughly 213–219 down and 106–107 up.

If I’d stopped there, I would have called it fixed. It was a huge improvement over 22/15.

But what had we really done? Restarted the equipment. I still had a wireless connection traveling between floors, and I was planning to do more livestreams. I wanted to know what a permanent wired connection would take.

So I asked whether I should have Ethernet run to the office. Codex said yes, that would remove the wireless part of the route. I sent a drawing of the house. From the basement to my office meant crossing part of the house and climbing two floors.

“That’s going to be expensive. How much do you think it’ll cost?”

Codex gave me a planning range, with the possibility of more if someone had to open and repair finished walls. I had reached the point where I was willing to spend up to $2,000 to make the problem go away. I hadn’t received a contractor’s quote. That was simply the number I had in my head for what I would pay to be done with it.

Then we started looking at what was already in the office.

I sent a picture of the wall outlets. Among them were the round, screw-on connections I thought of as cable TV outlets. I had looked at those outlets for years without considering them part of my internet setup.

Codex said the existing coax wiring might carry a network connection. We needed to see what was connected downstairs. I went back to the basement and sent a picture of the Verizon router. Its coax port was already connected.

The proposed route changed. Instead of paying to run a new cable through the house, maybe the house already had a usable route inside the walls. The question was whether the coax outlet in my office connected to the same network as the router downstairs.

At first, Codex thought I might need to buy an adapter for the office. Then we looked at the Verizon extender I already owned—the one whose performance had disappointed me enough that I went out and bought the Google mesh system. It had a coax port and Ethernet ports. Until then, I’d been using it wirelessly.

I wanted to test it. There was a stretch of back-and-forth about exactly how to prove that a better signal would be coming through the coax rather than through the air. I asked whether plugging the extender into the coax and comparing the result would tell us. Codex acknowledged it had made the first step more complicated than necessary.

So I tried the equipment I had.

I connected the office wall outlet to the Verizon extender. On the back of the extender, a light came on green. I sent a picture and asked, “The light is green on the back? Is that a positive sign?”

It was. The light indicated a network link over the coax. The office outlet was connected to working wiring downstairs.

That felt promising, but I still wanted the speed test. I plugged the PC into one of the extender’s Ethernet ports, turned off the PC’s Wi-Fi, and ran it. Then I ran it again.

740–813 Mbps down. 639–661 up.

I went back to the first result: 22 down, 15 up.

“You son of a bitch. You did it.”

The connection was now going from the Verizon router in the basement, through the coax already in the walls, to the Verizon extender in my office, and then by Ethernet to my PC. I had not bought an adapter. I had not scheduled anyone to run cable. I had walked around the house, sent pictures, plugged in equipment I already owned, and tested whether it worked.

The whole discovery took about 77 minutes.

I kept thinking about the Google system. I’d bought it in March as my attempt to solve this, and now it was outside the return window. I felt silly about the $300. Later, I looked into whether there was any legitimate return or store credit option. None was guaranteed. The part I knew for certain was that I didn’t need to spend more money to get a wired connection in my office.

I also kept thinking about how unlikely I was to have found this by myself. I didn’t know the term MoCA. I didn’t know that the coax outlets could do anything useful for my PC. I wouldn’t have known to search for “Verizon G3100 E3200 coax backhaul,” because those words meant nothing to me at the start of the morning.

I knew only that my internet was wrong.

For 77 minutes, I asked questions, climbed stairs, took pictures, tried connections, misunderstood a few things, pushed back when a step seemed needlessly complicated, and watched the numbers change. That’s what I want to remember about it. Not just the final speed test, though I definitely want to remember that too. I want to remember how we got from “Can you check my PC?” to a green light on the back of an extender I already owned.

The answer had been in the walls the whole time.

Abraham Walker

The Answer Was Already in the Walls