If I remember right, I asked them about getting a static IP over VPN over
my verizon fios when they took fios away from ace, and they said they didn't
have it yet, but they did in fact get back to me when they had a product in
the works.
But I never got it because I was happy enough with my dynamic but never changing fios IP.
But I never got it because I was happy enough with my dynamic but never changing fios IP.
After spending 45 minutes on the phone, with an annoying cheerful tech person, my new cable modem is hooked up and running. 20 Mbps baby, up from 20 Kbps. I didn't even try to explain to them that the modem they gave me was bad.
I talked to two verizon sales people today about moving my fios from my old
place to my new place, and I got a confirmation email after I placed my order.
Good news is they can do it. Bad news is that I'm moving on the 12th and the earliest they can get somebody out there is the 19th. I guess I should have planned sooner, but I had no idea when we would be moving.
The other bad news is verizon being their old selves.
I got a confirmation email and talked to two people and I got three numbers of the final price I would be paying.
So whatever magic dust they sprinkled on everybody when they rolled out fios making them do good and be right and courteous seems to be wearing off.
The second lady I talked to started getting snarky with me before I even intimated that something was wrong.
Good news is they can do it. Bad news is that I'm moving on the 12th and the earliest they can get somebody out there is the 19th. I guess I should have planned sooner, but I had no idea when we would be moving.
The other bad news is verizon being their old selves.
I got a confirmation email and talked to two people and I got three numbers of the final price I would be paying.
So whatever magic dust they sprinkled on everybody when they rolled out fios making them do good and be right and courteous seems to be wearing off.
The second lady I talked to started getting snarky with me before I even intimated that something was wrong.
After spending 45 minutes on the phone, with an annoying cheerful
tech person, my new cable modem is hooked up and running. 20 Mbps
baby, up from 20 Kbps. I didn't even try to explain to them that
the modem they gave me was bad.
I've never had a cable modem, so this is just based on casual observance ...
But it seems that bandwidth on a cable modem really is a crapshoot every time, isn't it?
and the earliest they can get somebody out there is the 19th. I guess I
should have planned sooner, but I had no idea when we would be moving.
At least you're still going to be living somewhere that has the service available.
Suggestion: ask for an indoor ONT. If you provide them with a good place near your service entrance to mount it, they will be happy to do so. Then the outside of your house will be almost completely free of messy wires.
And if you think you may ever want to use something other than their router, ask for the Internet connection to be delivered over Ethernet instead of MoCA.
The only thing you'll need to provide is a cat5 cable from the router to the ONT.
I've never had a cable modem, so this is just based on casual
observance ...
But it seems that bandwidth on a cable modem really is a crapshoot
every time, isn't it?
Being a former cable modem customer, I can relate my experiences.
Cable modem is like the early days of Ethernet, in a way, in that your "link" is shared amongst other customers in your local area. Just like Ethernet, then, as overall network load increases, the contention for bandwidth gets higher, meaning more latency and less throughput. Practically speaking, I usually only noticed this happening when the local schools let out; after 2-3p weekdays when school was in session, or on-and-off all day when school was out.
The only other time I remember having bandwidth issues was when my provider, Time Warner, upgraded their head-end equipment. I was one of the very early subscribers to their cable modem service, so I got a "first-gen" cable modem. It was designed to work within a specific frequency band over the coax. When Time Warner upgraded their head-end equipment, they also switched to using a different frequency band. My cable modem was left with intermittent connectivity, and when it could train onto a carrier frequency, bandwidth was severely limited.
However, Time Warner swapped out the modem for a new one at no charge and then all was well.
I eventually left Time Warner and switched to DSL, though, and now I'm using AT&T's U-Verse service, which is VDSL under the hood. In some markets, though U-Verse is FTTH.
Cable Binder
messy wires outside my house? I'd rather have them outside than in, but alas
there's already lots of wires I can't explain running all over the outside
of my house. Somebody ran a foglamp type extension from a light fixture outside
the house and made no attempt to hide it or even make it not look ugly.
What I can see being a problem is the pole wires enter the house on the wrong
side of the house from where I want the box to end up, and there's no crawlspace
or attic access between where the wire will be and where I want it to go,
so I think I'm kinda screwed.
Their normal installation workflow involves attaching the ONT to the side
of the house where the existing telephone and cable television lines are,
and then they reterminate your existing copper and coax plant inside the ONT.
Then they just drop the router anywhere you'd normally put a cable modem.
If you care about how it ends up, even a little bit, I'd love to stop by and help plan your wiring plant, after all you're going to be living with it for decades. I don't mind pulling cable either :)
Then they just drop the router anywhere you'd normally put a cable modem.
If you care about how it ends up, even a little bit, I'd love to stop by and help plan your wiring plant, after all you're going to be living with it for decades. I don't mind pulling cable either :)
The second lady I talked to started getting snarky with me before I
even intimated that something was wrong.
They've started hiring precogs to make the snark process more efficient.
Hey, they're still The Phone Company but for all practical purposes, the bigbadco
these days is usually The Cable Company. Lily Tomlin would be proud of Comcast.
Just like the rumor that the phone company got broken up, right? :)
Maybe.
She'll be in Salt Lake City on the 16th, unless she dies before then.
Of course, if she still showed up for her act after she dies, it might not quite have the same effect.
Well I got my broadband everything.
When the guy showed up he sighed and said this will probably take 2 days, seeing as I live kinda far from the pole.
By noon he was saying probably the end of the day.
By 2pm it was working.
What they did, I dunno, I have so many other things to deal with I didn't even look at it yet, but it works.
The only downside is that I had to cancel and resign up which means I lose the good rate I had and now am on a 1 yr teaser rate and will get the big screw a year from now.
One of the things that made it better was that there was a coax wire running from the basement to the room I wanted the router in, and it was snaked all over the house so he just reused that coax and saved himself a few hours of wiring.
When the guy showed up he sighed and said this will probably take 2 days, seeing as I live kinda far from the pole.
By noon he was saying probably the end of the day.
By 2pm it was working.
What they did, I dunno, I have so many other things to deal with I didn't even look at it yet, but it works.
The only downside is that I had to cancel and resign up which means I lose the good rate I had and now am on a 1 yr teaser rate and will get the big screw a year from now.
One of the things that made it better was that there was a coax wire running from the basement to the room I wanted the router in, and it was snaked all over the house so he just reused that coax and saved himself a few hours of wiring.
Do you know if he ran any signal integrity tests on your coax? AT&T's U-Verse
TV receiver boxes can use either Cat5 cabling or coax. Since I already had
an existing coax plant, they reused that, but they ran a signal integrity
test first and they replaced a number of connectors with pressure-fit connectors
wherever they suspected something might be loose or leaking EM energy.
Coax Binder
Coax Binder
No sense getting picky about that. I got into a bit of a heated discussion
with some moron on DSLreports who insisted that I needed to change my coax
splitter because it is a bargain basement piece of crap from Home Depot.
He was certain that if I put a meter on it and took readings, it would show
that it is insufficient and needs to be replaced.
Meanwhile, I've been getting perfect digital video on every screen, and the MoCA feed from the LAN back to the set top boxes has been running at super high speed, for all of the nearly two years I've had the service. So -- who really cares if the splitter doesn't explode unicorns and rainbows every time you apply a signal to it?
Oh, and since Ford just got FiOS installed (again), may I be among the first to extend that silly greeting that they tend to bandy about: Enjoy the Light!
Meanwhile, I've been getting perfect digital video on every screen, and the MoCA feed from the LAN back to the set top boxes has been running at super high speed, for all of the nearly two years I've had the service. So -- who really cares if the splitter doesn't explode unicorns and rainbows every time you apply a signal to it?
Oh, and since Ford just got FiOS installed (again), may I be among the first to extend that silly greeting that they tend to bandy about: Enjoy the Light!
You do make a very good (indirect) point, IG. From what you've described
before about how FiOS is deployed--which sounds very similar to U-Verse--the
signal on the coax is being terminated locally at both ends. With most homes,
that means the distance between transmitter and receiver is (relatively) short,
so signal integrity isn't as much of an issue as it would be in a typical
cable TV installation. With standard CATV, the signal has to travel a much
longer distance; from the head-end unit to the subscribers.
To be nitpicky, though, I'll bet if yif the set-top boxes let you look at the error counts for received packets, it's probably a higher rate than you'd get if you used a higher-quality splitter. Admittedly, this might be the difference between a 10^-10 and a 10^-11 bit error rates, which you'll probably never notice unless you were looking for it. :P
Error Binder
To be nitpicky, though, I'll bet if yif the set-top boxes let you look at the error counts for received packets, it's probably a higher rate than you'd get if you used a higher-quality splitter. Admittedly, this might be the difference between a 10^-10 and a 10^-11 bit error rates, which you'll probably never notice unless you were looking for it. :P
Error Binder
In the case of FiOS it also means that I was able to remove the ridiculous
ground wire they ran to my electric meter, which was ironically the only copper
portion of the plant outside the walls of the house -- not to mention the
meter itself is grounded to a cold water pipe inside the house.
I realize they have regulations and consistency to deal with but I rewired for common sense.
I realize they have regulations and consistency to deal with but I rewired for common sense.