Verizon Fios Fiber-Optic Install at GF Labs

[KE1GF]

Hey Crew, I finally got my Verizon Fios connection installed today. I'm working on getting some pictures up on the web, maybe somebody can offer a temporary site for a while or is it possible to upload them? There's is three photos and they're under 75K each.

-Bill 'GF

[WA3VJB]

Email them to me Bill. Will post soonest.
--WA3VJB-at-yahoo.com--
dleet theanti-spamming  double dashes and standardize

We got the orange hose crews in our neighborhood late last year. No action since then, but now we are getting handbills and two "overnight" mailings touting FIOS. 5MB is $34 and 15MB is $55.

The problem is that they insist on bundling your telephone and cable television into the package at additonal charges.

Pisser on two counts -- we are quite happy with the dish, thank you, and if the power goes out I don't want the lightphone to go out too.

SO, I'm not willing to sign up for it.

[KE1GF]

Email them to me Bill. Will post soonest.
--WA3VJB-at-yahoo.com--
dleet theanti-spamming  double dashes and standardize

We got the orange hose crews in our neighborhood late last year. No action since then, but now we are getting handbills and two "overnight" mailings touting FIOS. 5MB is $34 and 15MB is $55.

The problem is that they insist on bundling your telephone and cable television into the package at additonal charges.

Pisser on two counts -- we are quite happy with the dish, thank you, and if the power goes out I don't want the lightphone to go out too.

SO, I'm not willing to sign up for it.

That's weird Paul, it is true that the copper pair to the CO has been replaced with the fiber terminal and network interface, but there is no additional charge for that. Also, the base Fios system is cheaper than the 3Mb/768Kb DSL (Verison). They do offer a deal for sat TV, but I don't care for it. I don't even have basic cable. My Verizon bill with landline + long distance + internet & wireless is less expensive than Comcast internet + non-HD standard cable, and their cost has been skyrocketing over the past few years; so I gave them a pinch on the scrot. The other cool thing is that the connection is not on a shared collision domain network, you have the full bandwidth until you leave Verizon's backbone. Also if I want to upgrade the service it can be done on the fly. Not worried about the connection going down, there's a 8hr bat backup that keeps the phone going. In the event of some kind of natual disaster ie the poles being destroyed etc, not like you're going to be able to get in touch with the emergency services anyway when the looters come out... Time to take out the 12 gauge

One bad thing is the poor tech that installed the connection is worried that he'll be out of a job once the area is basically swapped over. He was also upset that the CS techs are making more dough than him with being an employee for 9 years, but little does he know that there's probably a think tank of MBA's that are working on outsourcing that soon...

Thanks but no thanks for the offer of hosting the files, another inner circle friend of mine already made the offer, it just slipped my mind.

-Bill 'GF

[WA3VJB]

Well I'm coming at it as the Amish.

We are on a dialup metallic pair 15 miles from the Central Office.
So no DSL option.
Cable won't lay hardon line to the house without a surcharge because we are too far from the street pedestal (400feet).

No, there's no extra charge for the phone service, but I cannot get FIOS without their cable TV package at additional cost.

And there's the problem of power outages at the light amplifier boxes along the way. There goes the phone.

At least now, the generator or UPS powers the dish, and the phone still works when the lights go out.

[KE1GF]

I don't thing I have any repeaters here I'm abt 250yds from the CO.

[KB2WIG]

Well I'm coming at it as the Amish.

We are on a dialup metallic pair 15 miles from the Central Office.
So no DSL option.
Cable won't lay hardon line to the house without a surcharge because we are too far from the street pedestal (400feet).

No, there's no extra charge for the phone service, but I cannot get FIOS without their cable TV package at additional cost.

And there's the problem of power outages at the light amplifier boxes along the way.






                   BPL anyone  ??




At least now, the generator or UPS powers the dish, and the phone still works when the lights go out.

[W3SLK]

Paul said:

Well I'm coming at it as the Amish.

We are on a dialup metallic pair 15 miles from the Central Office.
So no DSL option.
Cable won't lay hardon line to the house without a surcharge because we are too far from the street pedestal (400feet).

No, there's no extra charge for the phone service, but I cannot get FIOS without their cable TV package at additional cost.

And there's the problem of power outages at the light amplifier boxes along the way. There goes the phone.

At least now, the generator or UPS powers the dish, and the phone still works when the lights go out.

I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one in the 'Dark Ages' with respects to the CATV and Fios. I talked to the phone guy a few months ago. He said to keep hitting the request for DSL/Hi-speed internet button at the phone website. Satellite is too much for the layout of equipment.  One of these days, until then, I'll just go Amish

[W1RKW]

I graduated from Amish to DSL last year.   I wanted to go broadband when we moved here 4 years ago but when I kept visiting SBC's website they kept telling me that DSL wasn't available in my area. Yet a neighbor (about 400 feet from me) at the beginning of the street had DSL.  I called SBC and asked why I couldn't have DSL when my neighbor could.  They said I was a tad to far from the CO. So I opted for a second phone line because my wife kept getting annoyed with me being online on our single phone line. 

I called SBC to get a second line. The line tech came out to connect us up to a second phone line and I got talking to the line tech and asked him about DSL in our area. When I asked why we couldn't get DSL out here despite the neighbor up the road he assured me we could have DSL.  He said DSL runs all the way down the main route from your street almost to the next town.

As soon as he finished connecting the second phone line and left I was on the phone to SBC customer service and told them I wanted to cancel the second phone line and wanted to be connected to DSL.  They asked me why I wanted to cancel the second phone line as soon as I had it installed and I told them I wanted DSL. They told me I couldn't have DSL.  I told them I was told by repair service that DSL ran passed my street into the next town and I could have DSL.  The customer service person conferred with a higher up then told me I was right.  So four days later I was hooked up  to DSL.

As it turned out SBC's website was not accurate and I'm glad I made the change.  I've never looked back to Amish mode.  Funny thing is I still use the modem every once in a while to send a fax.  Other than that it's a dead device.

[KE1GF]

Hey Crew, I finally have the pictures on the web. Thanks Blaine! 

Sorry, you guys might have to open the pictures up in seperate browser window, they are being scaled.

[img ]http://www.monkeypuppet.com/ke1gf/GF_Fios_Network_Interface.jpg[/img]

-Bill 'GF

[W1RKW]

Bill,
What's with the dangling wire on the battery in the third picture?

[k3zrf]

That's pretty slick Bill. I am afraid to ask but what sort of bandwidth do you get with this new hookup?

Cable is the only broadband available in Amish country. Winds up to 44/36 bucks cable/internet. It's fast during the day till the neighbors come home. Our privately owned telephine co only has dsl in densely populated sections.

[KE1GF]

Bill,
What's with the dangling wire on the battery in the third picture?

That's the b+ for the backup battery on the OPSU/BBU, at the time of taking the picture the tech hadn't finished all of the connections.

-Bill 'GF

[KE1GF]

That's pretty slick Bill. I am afraid to ask but what sort of bandwidth do you get with this new hookup?

Cable is the only broadband available in Amish country. Winds up to 44/36 bucks cable/internet. It's fast during the day till the neighbors come home. Our privately owned telephine co only has dsl in densely populated sections.

Dave it's the 5Mbps (downlink) / 2Mbps (uplink) package. In my picture post there is a snip from a screen-shot of dslreports.com. The other cool thing that I did last night was trace some routes. I'm hitting the backbone like above.net and Level3.net in about 4 hops either in boston or NYC.

-Bill 'GF

[John Holotko]

Hey Crew, I finally got my Verizon Fios connection installed today. I'm working on getting some pictures up on the web, maybe somebody can offer a temporary site for a while or is it possible to upload them? There's is three photos and they're under 75K each.

-Bill 'GF

Hi Bill,

Just wondering what you have connected to this FIOS service ? A single computer or a network ? In the case of a network does Vz supply you with any  kind of a router ?? Or , do you have to use your own ?

Verizon is offering FIOS in my area and I'm thinking of getting it installed. Only cache is that my network consists of Linux/Unix boxes and Vz supports only Windows. That shouldn't be a problem as I assume that the FIOS network is likely nothing more than a bridged network running standard network communications protocols. I believe they are using PPPoE as the protocol between the network and/or your computer or router.  Ideally what I'd like to do is use my existing Linux box as a firewall/router that would communicatew with the VZ network via PPPoE. Then on the other side of the connection would run DHCP to connect the rest of the machines n the house. Of course it would have to run NAT (or a proxy)  since network traffic generated by the various client machines would be routed to/from the VZ network via that one machine. Of course I could do the same with a dedicated hardware router instead of a Linux  box or, a Verizon supplied router (if they supply you with one).

Had anyone else been there done this yet ??

[KE1GF]

Hey Crew, I finally got my Verizon Fios connection installed today. I'm working on getting some pictures up on the web, maybe somebody can offer a temporary site for a while or is it possible to upload them? There's is three photos and they're under 75K each.

-Bill 'GF

Hi Bill,

;;Just wondering what you have connected to this FIOS service ?

Right at the moment I have a D-Link router, 100Base-T WAN, 4 Switched 100Base-T ports & 802.11g.
Most likely I'm going to be upgrading that to a real router, I just upgraded to a small buisness package. 5 static IPs, tripled my bandwidth too.

;;A single computer or a network ? In the case of a network does Vz supply you with any  kind of a router ?? Or , do you have to use your own ?

Non-internet routable private network. Verizon supplied the router (at no extra cost), all of my routers only have 10Base-T WAN ports (fine for the 2/5 Mbps) I'm going to 15Mbps.
Make sure you can configure your own... $75 for the tech to install it.

;;Verizon is offering FIOS in my area and I'm thinking of getting it installed. Only cache is that my network consists of Linux/Unix boxes and Vz supports only Windows. That shouldn't be a problem as I assume that the FIOS network is likely nothing more than a bridged network running standard network communications protocols. I believe they are using PPPoE as the protocol between the network and/or your computer or router.  Ideally what I'd like to do is use my existing Linux box as a firewall/router that would communicatew with the VZ network via PPPoE. Then on the other side of the connection would run DHCP to connect the rest of the machines n the house. Of course it would have to run NAT (or a proxy)  since network traffic generated by the various client machines would be routed to/from the VZ network via that one machine. Of course I could do the same with a dedicated hardware router instead of a Linux  box or, a Verizon supplied router (if they supply you with one).

I did that for about 4 years. I switched because if there were problems, other people in the house could easily power-cycle the equipment (ie my dead father). Yes you are correct about the PPPoE. One thing you need a pretty modern windows machine to activate the account, it's done with activeX controls through the web.

;;Had anyone else been there done this yet ??

Sounds like you're on top of things, I don't think you'll have any problems.

[John Holotko]

Hey Crew, I finally got my Verizon Fios connection installed today. I'm working on getting some pictures up on the web, maybe somebody can offer a temporary site for a while or is it possible to upload them? There's is three photos and they're under 75K each.

Hi Bill,

;;Just wondering what you have connected to this FIOS service ?

Right at the moment I have a D-Link router, 100Base-T WAN, 4 Switched 100Base-T ports & 802.11g.
Most likely I'm going to be upgrading that to a real router, I just upgraded to a small buisness package. 5 static IPs, tripled my bandwidth too.

Sounds great. I might want to upgrade to something like that eventually. The static ip's would come in handy.

;;A single computer or a network ? In the case of a network does Vz supply you with any  kind of a router ?? Or , do you have to use your own ?

Non-internet routable private network. Verizon supplied the router (at no extra cost), all of my routers only have 10Base-T WAN ports (fine for the 2/5 Mbps) I'm going to 15Mbps.
Make sure you can configure your own... $75 for the tech to install it.

Ah, good. If they can supply me with a router that would be fine.  Thanks for the heads  up on the installation fee.  I can configure it myself for less   I currently use a Linux box configured as a network router, firewall, etc. n The most seamless installation scenario which would involve minimal network reconfiguration on my end would be if I could use that existing box with FIOS. The only difference would be the network interface running PPPoE to the outside world. Internally everything else would remain the same.

;;Verizon is offering FIOS in my area and I'm thinking of getting it installed. Only cache is that my network consists of Linux/Unix boxes and Vz supports only Windows. That shouldn't be a problem as I assume that the FIOS network is likely nothing more than a bridged network running standard network communications protocols. I believe they are using PPPoE as the protocol between the network and/or your computer or router.  Ideally what I'd like to do is use my existing Linux box as a firewall/router that would communicatew with the VZ network via PPPoE. Then on the other side of the connection would run DHCP to connect the rest of the machines n the house. Of course it would have to run NAT (or a proxy)  since network traffic generated by the various client machines would be routed to/from the VZ network via that one machine. Of course I could do the same with a dedicated hardware router instead of a Linux  box or, a Verizon supplied router (if they supply you with one).

I did that for about 4 years. I switched because if there were problems, other people in the house could easily power-cycle the equipment (ie my dead father). Yes you are correct about the PPPoE. One thing you need a pretty modern windows machine to activate the account, it's done with activeX controls through the web.

Okay, I'm starting to see  how this works. In other words the requirement for a high end Windows box is mainly so they can install the software packages they use to sign you on to the network which apparently only runs on Windows.  But once the sign on part is done it shouldn't matter what I am running. As long as it can communicate via normal standard network protocols.

;;Had anyone else been there done this yet ??

Sounds like you're on top of things, I don't think you'll have any problems.

Yeah, I should manage okay. I've solved some pretty nasty networking problems at work and at home so this shouldn't  be too bad.  As long as I have access to the bridges, routers, hubs, switches that I need I have managed to get things going.

It's too bad that hardly any ISP's support Linux and Unix. Of course it's in part the Microsoft near  monopoly on most home desktop machines but also the lack of enforced standards in the Linux world also adds significantly to the problem. In Windows there is more or less one way to set  up networking using one standard set of tools and one set of communication packages.  In Linux there are dozens of different distros, dozens of different desktops, loads of different configuration tools ranging from the old fashioned text editor to fancy GUI tools. From the stand point of training your techs it's a nightmare. The overhead in training your techs to use all the different Linux distro's, tools, etc. is a headache. Besides I guess they figure if the customer is smart enough to figure out how to run Linux he'll be smart enough to figure out how to interface the Linux to the network himself.

Oh, by the way the pictures look nice. Looks like an impressive setup.



 

[KE1GF]

It's too bad that hardly any ISP's support Linux and Unix. Of course it's in part the Microsoft near  monopoly on most home desktop machines but also the lack of enforced standards in the Linux world also adds significantly to the problem. In Windows there is more or less one way to set  up networking using one standard set of tools and one set of communication packages.  In Linux there are dozens of different distros, dozens of different desktops, loads of different configuration tools ranging from the old fashioned text editor to fancy GUI tools. From the stand point of training your techs it's a nightmare. The overhead in training your techs to use all the different Linux distro's, tools, etc. is a headache. Besides I guess they figure if the customer is smart enough to figure out how to run Linux he'll be smart enough to figure out how to interface the Linux to the network himself.

Oh, by the way the pictures look nice. Looks like an impressive setup.

John, not to mention how much it COSTS for a highly skilled, trained and experienced prof. At my first unix/ip network admin job the CS Engineers made abt 60K/year. ie Oracle, multiple unix scripting languages, abt a dosen different flavours of unix, security clearances, etc...


 

[KE1GF]

Here's the latest speed test from the recent upgrade.




-Bill 'GF

[W3SLK]

I can only dream of that speed, (clip, clop, clip, clop)

[John Holotko]

I can only dream of that speed, (clip, clop, clip, clop)

Verizon is offering fibre optic service where my parents live. Since I set them up with a network (complete with firewall, router, switches, etc.) However right now it's all run over ther net  via automated (dialup, i.e. dial  on demand. Not too bad if one person is on surfing the web but if more than one person is accessing the web or doing a large download it gewts slow. I keep suggesting the upgrade for Fibre Optic but my Mom doesn;t want to let the VZ techs into the house to install it until the basement is cleaned out. So, in the interim they remain on dialup, To speed things up I recently installed a caching web proxy server on the Linux box that serves as a internet gateway/router/firewall. The proxy speeds things up dramatically, particularly for web pages that are visited often. It keeps a local cache (on the local network) of various static elements so they don;t have to be re-downloaded over the net every time the page is downloaded. Thatmeans less bandwidth is used and stuff locadsmuch faster.Only dynamic elements need to be downloaded and/or stuff that expires from the cache. It tool about 10 minutes to set up and configure and helps out a lot at least until they get broadband installed.
.

[Tom WA3KLR]

We are supposed to get switched to fiber optic here in the country in the next year.  The phone man told me this when he was here last time fixing the noisy phone line.

A few months afterward, I started to get telephone solicitations from Verizon Fios.  I never answered their phone calls as I could see “Verizon Fios” on the caller i.d. display.  I figured they didn’t know that I knew that we would be getting fiber in the near future, and that they wanted to entice me to volunteer now for Fios and high-speed internet service. They don’t call anymore.  They never got a human to answer the phone here, nor did they ever leave a message on my answering machine.

So I presume that I will get fiber optic phone service here someday soon anyway and that it may be a little cheaper getting the high-speed internet service AFTER they have the basic Fios phone service in here.

The strange thing about their marketing is that we have always received mailings for DSL service, about every 3 weeks for a couple years, and they have never called on the phone.  (I don’t think I can have DSL at my home, actually.)  The Fios pitch was only by phone and I have NEVER received a mailing on the possibility of Fios service here.  It’s like Verizon’s left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, from my point of view anyway.

[KE1GF]

Well I'll keep you guys posted about the problems that I run into.

The major issue that I see right now is that Verizon's CS infrastructure isn't up to snuff. The telephone robot's logic doesn't seem to work correctly. But once you get on the phone with an operator you get directed to the correct people.

One of the things that caused me the most hassle was that I have the residential phone service but the small business internet.

Really I've only had it since the 15th so it's too early to make any conclusions.

-Bill 'GF

[John Holotko]

One thing that I am definately going to regret (and miss)  when I switch over to Verizon FIOS is giving up the small local ISP. Currently our service is (and has been) provided for the past 5+ years by a small, local ISP.  The service has been quite good, there is minimal restrictions, no port blocking and, if and when I do have a problem (which is rare) I get a real live human being (sometimes the CEO himself) on the phone.  Although Verizon will be giving me much faster service it's going to have to come at the price of giving up the personalized service that only a small business can offer. And I really hate to do that.  I know once I switch to verizon it's goping to be talking to robots, selecting from menu's, more restrictive terms, and extremely impersonal.

One afternoon I called my ISP to report a small problem I was having. he fixed the problem while I was on the phone with him. Then we would up just talking about netowrking and stuff for about 45 minutes just shooting the bull. Imagine trying that with a Verizon rep !!

[Tom WA3KLR]

Yes John, I have been with just one local ISP also, the whole time I have been on the Internet from home and with dial-up service.  I've had good service also and can get ahold of a service rep. right away.  The one good&bad thing about changing to Verizond will be that my e-mail address has to change.  I do get some spam now so it will be good to get rid of the spammers when my address changes.  I think they got my address when I first joined e-bay years ago and had my e-mail address as my user name, to start with.

Any other down sides of switching to Verizon Fios high-speed internet remains to be seen.

* Bill *, 8 hours of back-up time is o.k. for most normal scenarios.  But it still leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable for some extended scenarios compared to the present phone system.  The phone company gets to save on all of that local loop power under the new system and puts that burden on the customer.

Maybe if you kept a spare 12V 7 AH battery on trickle, this would be a good emergency system.   I wonder if you know, say if the battery completely ran down for days and then you came along and swapped in your emergency battery, that the network box would work o.k. and not need some stupid initialization by another external device.  I sure hope it's engineered for full functional re-start-up from no power.

[KE1GF]

It's not as bad as it seems.

There are very skilled people at Verizon you just have to get to them, I was in a 3 way call with two techs very impressive.  My absolute worst experiences were with at&t. I remeber sitting on hold for several hours back when I needed to change my MAC address. Speaking of spam, a vast majority of the people that I speak with abt comcast have complained about constant spamming, including myself. I used to get at least 10+ emails a day for fake xanax and viagra on all of my accounts. The spam filters just didn't work. I'd hate to resort to using <call>1@ get spam switch to <call>2@ like we used to do at work for external mail.

I plan to get another UPS here, I will put the telcom equipment on it. They only guarantee 8 hrs though.

-Bill 'GF