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The Fiber to the Premises Install Process 240

Posted by Zonk from the wtb-fiber-pst dept.
SkinnyGuy writes "Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) or Fiber-based broadband is still in a very few areas, but PCMag's Lance Ulanoff has it and he seems to really, really like all 15MBPS of it. There's also an extensive slideshow on the whole installation process." From the article: "The power out is connected to the box, and the fiber ends in the box and comes out as Cat 5e, which runs back through the hole all the way to a new D-Link router. That's right: In addition to the box on the outside and the UPS inside, Verizon also gave me a new wireless G router, which includes four wired ports. This is a lot of free equipment (though I might incur some charges if I were to quit FiOS before the year had gone by). All this--not including the through-the-tree cable run--took another 2 hours or so."
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The Fiber to the Premises Install Process More

The Fiber to the Premises Install Process

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  • Get that fiber! (Score:4, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:18PM (#15491022)
    Doctor told me to get more fiber in my diet but I don't think this is it.

  • Availability (Score:5, Informative)

    by Yaksha42 ( 856623 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:21PM (#15491031)
    It's too bad that it's not very common, it's cheaper than my 5mbps cable connection.

    You can check availability here [wikipedia.org].
    • The availability is very odd with Verizon in Massachusetts. My friend has the FiOS service in Tewksbury, a town of about 28,000, about 40 minutes north of boston. However, in Lowell, which adjoins Tewksbury and is the third or fourth largest city in the state with about 80,000+ residents, my other friend does not have service available.

      I thought the way they rolled these out was to cities and densely populated areas first

      • Re:Availability (Score:3, Interesting)

        by thc69 ( 98798 )
        I think they're rolling it out first in rural areas where DSL is costing them a lot to run. They've got some sort of repeaters that allow them to run DSL way longer distances than normal. I'd guess that the reduced cost spread between DSL and fiber makes them want to offer fiber to customers who would otherwise buy cheap DSL plans.

        My parents just bought a house in Exeter, RI, which is a tiny rural town. It's so small that it only has one police officer; when his shift is over, the state cops have jurisdicti
        • I forgot -- it's not quite plain old ethernet coming out of the box into the wireless router. It's PPPoE.

          I ran some speed tests and got results all within a few percent of 5000Kbps / 1500 Kbps. I hope that's what they subscribed for.
      • I thought the way they rolled these out was to cities and densely populated areas first

        It makes some sense to do the first rollout in relatively unknown places where initial rollout problems are less likely to give it a bad reputation to an entire major city... Another good place to do an initial rollout would be someplace where there are problems with DSL.. (there are various things that work well for POTS phones that just kill adsl delivery).

        Fiber is really good in places that are just too widesprea

      • The FiOS rollouts have been mostly in suburbs of larger cities. You don't want to tackle NY, DC, or Dallas as your first city implemented, but you also don't want to do do some town with a population of 3. My town and surrounding communities (Fort Wayne/New Haven, Indiana) was one of the first dozen or so locations for FiOS deployment. We I beleive were the smallest metroplex, but we also were one of the paths of least resistance. Originally we were not likely to be deployed early on, but we actively lo

  • 1.7 gigabytes in 12 minutes (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:23PM (#15491041)
    In darkened coners all over the land, *aa execs are quietly sobbing.

    Oh heck, I'm quietly sobbing.

  • Competing technologies marching on as well. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:23PM (#15491042)
    Fiber-based broadband is still in a very few areas, but PCMag's Lance Ulanoff has it and he seems to really, really like all 15MBPS of it.

    Gee, I'm strangely not that impressed. I can get 10Mbps cable modem service right now ($44.95/mo), and I'm in Kansas. I just checked AT&T/SBC's site and it looks like their top of the line service in my area is only 3-6mbps.
    • That's megabits, not megabytes.

      15MBps = 120mbps, about 12 times faster than your 10mbps connection, and about 20 times faster than AT&T's 6mbps service. ;-)
      • Verizon FIOS is only 15 Mbps, not 15 MBps. The /. summary is incorrect (shocking I know).
        • Verizon FIOS is only 15 Mbps, not 15 MBps. The /. summary is incorrect (shocking I know).

          That's still better than what SBC&T is going to offer (as near as I can tell) from Project Lightspeed. They're apparently going to cap you at 6Mbits down and 1Mbit or so up, no matter how close you are to the box. (at 500-1000 feet, VDSL2+ gives 50-100 Mbps bi-directional)

      • Try RTFA:
        "What did you order?"

        "15 megabits,

        So whether MBPS or mbps is the correct abbreviation, the article does clearly state 15 megabits. In other words, about 2.5 times what Comcast cable offers in my area.
      • That's megabits, not megabytes.

        No, it's not.
        Go read the article. The summary here has the label in all caps, but it is Mbps. Bits.

        "...When I told her that I was going for the $44.95-a-month 15-Mbps option (Verizon recently announced plans to up this to 20 Mbps), she got even cheerier..."

      • TFA states that he got 15mbps service.

        First, I downloaded the 1.7GB The Natural through Optimum. It took 45 minutes. Next, I unhooked the cable and plugged in FiOS. Downloading the 1.7GB As Good As It Gets movie took . . . wait for it . . . 12 minutes. Twelve minutes!!
      • 15MBps = 120mbps, about 12 times faster than your 10mbps connection, and about 20 times faster than AT&T's 6mbps service. ;-)

        Did you bother to RTA? The author transferred 1700 MB in 12 minutes which is roughly 2.36 MB/sec or about 18 Mb/s. Still pretty damn good compared to my 6Mbps/768Kbps ADSL service of which I realistically see 4 Mbps down and 600 Kbps up. What I want to see is an ISP with a clue start offering high speed connectivity. If I see another god damn cable provider or telco offer some

        • What I want is what you can get at most dedicated server providers: a 10 Mbps full duplex port in and out with a 1500 GB monthly bandwidth cap, no blocked ports, and a /29 subnet allocation. If they can offer that for $85-$150 a month including a server rental then surely a telco or cable provider can provide that level of bandwidth too. Give the Internet back to the people with affordable bandwidth and symmetric connectivity.

          I'd love that too (and I'd absolutely pay $150/mo for it), but the dedicated/c

        • Damn. That's pretty sweet compared to my connection. I'm so far out in the boonies that I have to rely upon Ye-Old-Tin-Can-Onna-String DSL for service. The squirrels keep jumping on the lines, and that holds me back to about 400kbps down and about half that up. To put that into terms we all can work with, it took me about 6 hrs to download the 800mb update that was Dapper Drake.

          The good news is that it beats my mom's 31kbps dialup connection....that must be why it costs 5x as much...humm....doing the mat
        • Other than widespread piracy of copyrighted material there is absolutely no purpose to such lopsided connectivity (Yes, I'm sure there are those of you out there downloading Fedora DVDs every day.. riiiiight).
          or just random surfing of the internet, as nearly all web browser traffic is essentially that lopsided. bittorrent is probably one of the largest mainstream sources of traffic that's not 10:1 lopsided, so your piracy argument is probably backwards.
        • 1500GB/month would be very.... small. My video chatroom server alone chews up 2TB of data a month, and needs at least a 10 Mbit full-duplex connection to sustain 30 users near-flawlessly. Let's add in 12KBytes/s for anytime I want to do internet FPS gaming under Enemy Territory, which is a daily occurence that lasts for several hours, and of course, general web-browsing and having to dig thru all these "Media-enriched" sites littered with useless Flash ads and other stuff. Oh, and email from friends and fam

        • What I want is what you can get at most dedicated server providers: a 10 Mbps full duplex port in and out with a 1500 GB monthly bandwidth cap, no blocked ports, and a /29 subnet allocation. If they can offer that for $85-$150 a month including a server rental then surely a telco or cable provider can provide that level of bandwidth too. Give the Internet back to the people with affordable bandwidth and symmetric connectivity.

          Suggestion for a new moderation option: -1: Absolutely no understanding of the t

    • I get 11Mbps/1Mbps ADSL2+ where I live, and there are a lot of people who get close to the theoretical max of 24Mbps ADSL2+. For about US$45/month too. In other words, his fiber connection is slower than good old copper.
    • Maybe you don't get it my friend - The capital B stands for Bytes, and the lowercase b in you 10Mbps stands for bits. Therefore 1 megabyte = 8,388,608 bits, where 1 megabit = 1,048,576 bits, so your connection gets 10,485,760 bits per second, while his gets 125,829,120 bits per second. Still not impressed??
    • FTTH runs at 622-2400 Mbps, while cable modems are 30-60 Mbps IIRC. Thus the fiber ISPs have more room to increase their bandwidth caps without having to install new equipment. I expect telcos and cablecos to keep leapfrogging each other in terms of Mbps/$ over the next few years.
    • Gee, I'm strangely not that impressed. I can get 10Mbps cable modem service right now ($44.95/mo), and I'm in Kansas. I just checked AT&T/SBC's site and it looks like their top of the line service in my area is only 3-6mbps .

      That's fine, but the 10Megabit service you get from cable is, in all probability shared between your entire neighbourhood. i.e. you MIGHT be able to get a 1Megabyte/second download at 4AM on a weeknight, but if everybody in the neighbourhood is trying to do a download, you mi

      • That's fine, but the 10Megabit service you get from cable is, in all probability shared between your entire neighbourhood. i.e. you MIGHT be able to get a 1Megabyte/second download at 4AM on a weeknight, but if everybody in the neighbourhood is trying to do a download, you might end up as low as voice modem speeds (at least that was the experience of my friends in the early dayS when cable-modem installations were delivering to obscenely large customer groups). It's just the nature of the product -- but it

  • I think I speak for everyone when I say (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:24PM (#15491047)
    YOU BASTARD!!
  • What kind of demented thing is this? Verizon is laying fiber so it can do an end run around cable franchising and supply TV, VOIP and broadband to customers. The cablecos are responding by rolling out higher speed broadband (like CableVision's Boost). How is that justification for some sort of Verizon puff-piece???

    • I dont understand, why are you complaining? An ISP arms race is the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to residential bandwidth, and it is in fact a BIG deal. It's the perfect way to resolve this little HD-DVD/Blue-Ray dispute - chuck 'em both! And I think it'll be neat to see where video blogging might take us.

  • Only 15MBPS? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:26PM (#15491056)
    Here in France, ADSL2+ gets us 20MBps (for almost everyone), and Optic Fiber gives some lucky Parisians (not all Paris, though) 100 Mbps. VoIP and IPTV are bundled with both. It feels like a sweet revenge, given the fees we used to pay 10 years ago, compared to the US. (ADSL2+/TV/VOIP is 15 to 30 euros per month, unlimited and comes with the equipment [tv decoder, adsl modem, wifi spot] freely. Tons of sweet features such as static IP address and personalized reverse DNS and other customizable stuff like some DSLAM configuration directives [interleave & such]).

    American ISPs are cheap... well, expensive, but cheap :). Well, let's just say they surrendered to ours ;). just kidding.
    • http://www.internode.on.net/adsl2/graph/index.htm [on.net]

      If a person lives within 1.7km of wire from their nearest concentrator, then they can get 20MBps.

      If you think "almost everyone" lives within 1.7km of wire from their nearest concentrator, I think you're wrong.

      Over time, as more remote concentrators are installed, most people in dense areas will be able to get something like this. But right now, I can't imagine that over half of the people in your country live that close.

    • Isn't is sad that we consider a static ip address a "sweet feature". Roll on IPv6. Personally I want reasonable upstream speeds on residential connections.

  • No turning back (Score:5, Informative)

    by the_tsi ( 19767 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:27PM (#15491058)
    Before everyone goes and gets FIOS for their broadband fixation, beware that in the vast majority of markets, Verizon *CUTS THE COPPER TO YOUR HOUSE* when they run the fiber for FIOS. They pull it out of the ground. You are off the grid. You are no longer subject to all the wonderful federal and state utilities requirements placed on telephone companies for purposes of "protecting" residential telephone customers. Your FIOS line isn't even really considered a telephone line in most states.

    That means all that recent hubub about "competitive access" and "CLECs" and all that other theoretically Good (albeit practically Frustrating) stuff that opens up the telephone system no longer applies to you.

    Yeah, I know we all hate the phone company, and everyone screams "well it's not like we were getting the service we paid for in the first place", but try writing a nastygram to your public utilities commissioner regarding faulty (or bad) service on your fiber, and there's a lot less they can do than if you're sitting on the "real" PSTN.

    If you (or a future resident) ever wants to get the copper back, it could potentially be an administrative, technical, financial, bureaucratic, and/or logitistical nightmare.

    Caveat emptor... although I sure wish it were available here.
    • Do you have any sources to support this? I'm not saying you're lying or spreading FUD, but "random guy posting on Slashdot" does not an authoritative source make.

      • I have it, they did it (Score:4, Informative)

        by RebornData ( 25811 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @08:39PM (#15491405)
        I've got FIOS and my traditional phone line now runs over the fiber They completely removed the existing phone box on the house and put the ONT in it's place... it has a similar block for wiring the house phone wiring to it. This is why the FIOS install comes with a UPS- so that your phone line will keep working if the power goes out. They didn't actually tear out the copper wire from the ground, but hooking it back up would be a project.

        However, he's gone a bit too far with the regulatory fear-mongering. Yes, the fiber line is excempt from the regulations passed in 96 that forced the phone companies to allow competitive access to the copper that enabled Covad, Northpoint, and others to start building out DSL networks of their own. However, the FIOS phone line is still a tariffed / regulated service, with the same Public Utility Commission oversight as before.

        -R
    • Verizon does NOT cut the copper to your house. They will do so if you request... because they offer phone service through their fiber (NOT VOIP) And its all on battery backup as well.

      BUT... You the installer will ask you if you want to keep the copper or not. They will ask. If they dont, you can mention it and ask them to not remove it.

      Its not a big deal at all.

    • Re:No turning back (Score:4, Informative)

      by mduell ( 72367 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @08:47PM (#15491442)
      For all of the commenters asking for a source, here it is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/05/07/AR2005050700178.html [washingtonpost.com].
    • Talk to any cable internet/tv operator and they're happy to lay another one if you sign up for a year (you have to do this anyways). Its only a few bucks on their part, but they get to lock you in for a whole year. They see it as a win.

    • Um, no. (Score:4, Informative)

      by tgd ( 2822 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @09:56PM (#15491752)
      I have FiOS. And contrary to the "they remove the copper" bullshit people seem to hype up online, I still have copper lines. And, contrary to that article, I do not have (and never have had) a Verizon phone line.

      If you order FiOS and don't want them to remove the copper, tell them you don't want them to. If you don't want phone service, don't order it. I think I pay $5 more a month for the service because I don't have phones, but that may be wrong. Its $44.95/month for 15mbit. Someone who knows what they pay with phone service can chime in if its less than that.

      There's no grand conspiracy to force people off copper. Of course they'd rather do that, but they don't force it on anyone.

      Oh, and your phone service is quite considered a telephone line if you are getting phone service from Verizon over the fiber -- you still pay all the taxes and have all the "rights" associated with phone lines. Only if you use a 3rd party VOIP over FiOS would you lose those. (Verizons fiber-based phone service is NOT VOIP)
      • I pay $39.95/month for 15/2 service, and that is not with a phone line. It was just the special DSL customers received and bundling was not required.
    • How is that? Or do you only mean if you are purchasing verizon phone service? My phone service runs through copper and is with another company, I would have no intention of letting them cut off another service when they install the fiber for my internet connection.

  • All What? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:27PM (#15491059)
    ...all 15MBPS of it.

    Excuse me, but that seems pretty lame for fiber to the curb. At 15MBS, I doubt the cable companies are shaking in their boots yet.

    • At one point, the technician said...

      The tech asked for my phone, made a quick call and then did another test.

      "45 megabits . . . I know you didn't order that. It'll adjust."

      You can get more bandwidth - you just have to pay for it.

  • Verizon's plan for world domination with FiOS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by caryw ( 131578 ) <carywiedemann@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:28PM (#15491071) Homepage
    What they DON'T tell you is that they completely cut the existing copper pair to your house, insuring that you can never "downgrade" to a competitors DSL service if you hate them as an ISP or from ever changing your local phone carrier to any other CLEC [wikipedia.org].

    CNET article on it [com.com]
    --
    From Northern Virginia? Visit Fairfax Underground [fairfaxunderground.com]! (Just added: Fairfax County wiki, need submissions)

  • I've had FiOS since November 2004 (Score:5, Informative)

    by cheezus_es_lard ( 557559 ) <cheez17NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:29PM (#15491074) Homepage
    I was one of the first people in my town to get wired for it; we happen to have the headquarters of the old GTE entity in the city limits, and they piloted the service to the towns their execs lived in. I got lucky in the old broadband roulette game.

    All things considered, the biggest annoyance is the fact that the power is no longer line-supplied. That 12v battery in my garage has been replaced twice already. Sooner or later, Verizon quits paying for them; I have no idea when, but soon.

    My FiOS is set up similarly to that of the article, except my run comes into the NID outside, has the power source and battery separate, and splits off 3 phone lines, my WAN IP interface, and my FiOS TV connection (which goes to a splitter/grounding block in the attic).

    All in all it's definately worth the speed at 45 a month. I'm paying about $230 a month after you roll in my 3 phone lines ($85) Internet@15/2mbps ($45) and FiOS TV ($100)

    They offer a 5mbit, 15mbit and 30mbit connection, but the last I checked, they priced the 30/15 connection at $199 a month.

    peace

    • You pay $100/month for TV? Does that include porn movies?

      • You pay $100/month for TV? Does that include porn movies?

        Dude, pretty much everyone I know has been paying at least $85/mo for "basic" digital cable for a couple years now - add any premium channels (e.g. HBO) and it goes over $100/mo. And no, the pr0n is PPV and costs extra - except for a little nudity here and there - no real porn. As a side note, it's fascinating to me that there are so many people living in govt housing project where they are paying e.g. $15/mo for rent, but they manage to keep a

    • Yes, that 30/15 is horrifically expensive.

      I just got Verizon's FIOS service earlier this year, after Charter cable was having so much down time it wasn't funny. Of course, Charter's downtime seemed to increase as Verizon started to dig in the area. Mostly DNS problems or so.

      Now that I have FIOS, I really like it, and their FIOS TV prices seem to be better than Charter's digital cable offerings. However, I still see some DNS problems, so it feels like the backbone of the internet in this area (North Texas
      • I've had the 15/2 service for a couple of months, and while I haven't had DNS problems, it doesn't play nicely with my alarm system. Now that I've got FiOS, if I let the landline ring more than twice the alarm system seizes the line as if it were trying to call out with an alert.

        I got Verizon in to fix the problem, since it didn't happen until they installed FiOS, and the tech generously informed me that (a) this is a common problem, (b) they were supposed to ask if I have an alarm system when I ordered and

  • Cat 5e? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:29PM (#15491079) Journal
    My home-improvement project involved ripping off all the old siding and running Cat 5e wiring to every room.
    Why did he not run Cat 6? I know that you don't really need it today, but surely for the little added cost it would be worth some additional future-proofing of his installation -- especially since the install job is not easy.
    • why didn't he just run fibre?
    • Well, at that point, why not wire the house with fiber?
    • Future-proofing would have been if he'd been smart enough to install conduit if he was going to open up the walls.
    • Cat cables get less effective the further you get from the exchange, fiber doesn't.
    • it's odd that he put in a network and then transfers his new movie to his thinkpad by sneakernet (thumbdrive)
  • A friend of mine lives over in Verizon-land on the other side of town and he just got FIOS at 5Mbps for about half the cost of cable. I got a notice in the mail yesterday saying that Comcast was upgrading the cable broadband to 6Mbps. The latency on the fiber is way lower than on Cable Modem, though. Unfortunately, I live in Qwests area, so I'm screwed for Fiber. Oh well, $20 wireless is coming to town [oregonlive.com] anyways.
    • A friend of mine lives over in Verizon-land on the other side of town and he just got FIOS at 5Mbps for about half the cost of cable. I got a notice in the mail yesterday saying that Comcast was upgrading the cable broadband to 6Mbps.

      Wait a minute ... Comcast is upgrading cable to 6 MB? Please check the postmark on that envelope. Comcast has been touting 6Mbps as their base speed for well over a year even on their internal newsgroups. Their new speed boost, trial runs in New England are now experiment

  • Total Download Limits? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by abscissa ( 136568 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @07:39PM (#15491134)
    Does anyone have any info on whether there are download caps?

  • I've got it in TX (Score:3, Informative)

    by NFNNMIDATA ( 449069 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @08:17PM (#15491301) Journal
    And let me warn you: the D-link router is a POS. It reboots itself way too much (daily at a minimum, compared to never with my old Linksys). Very painful when you play WoW or work at home. I finally got around to switching back to the Linksys I had, but I had to get rid of the Sveasoft firmware I'd installed in order to get above 4mbps (and get 15mbps). It turns out the Linksys gets almost 1mpbs better throughput than the D-link in my tests as well, so if you get fiber do yourself a favor and ditch the D-link. Oh sure, you could go the customer service route, but I for one am too lazy to sit there pretending to empty my temp internet files while some stooge reads a troubleshooting script.
    • I used to think this. I once bought the Dlink 624 router and it did exactly as you described. It would reboot constantly... every 5 seconds.

      I ripped that thing to shreads by word of mouth... I bought the linksys WRT54gs and returned the dlink-624 router...

      That was a couple years ago...

      Fast foward to today... I was very concerned about the dlink 624 that FIOS gives you. I had FIOS installed a few months ago and it turned out that the Linksys WRT54GS would SLOW MY SPEED DOWN. It would cut 10mb from the servic
      • Don't know what to tell ya, I got my 624 from verizon in january and it is a POS. Tried updating the firmware etc. There are apparently 2 reboot problems, the every-5-seconds one was solved by D-link a while back whereas mine was not. Some say it has to do with wireless interference causing it to automatically reconfigure to a new channel (and thus reboot) periodically, but I have not had any luck trying to tackle it from that angle.
        • Thats interesting. I dont at all doubt your situation. I've experienced plenty of hell with a dlink 624 in the past. It was a revision C i beleive.

          I cant explain why this one works now, and the old one i had did not. I'm happy it does though.

          The problems i had with my first dlink 624 were just unbareable. XP would tell me every 5 seconds that i've lost network connection. The whole router would reboot. It was a nightmare and i quickly hated the dam thing.

          Its just odd that this one works. I've had a friend h

  • And behind the scenes, the real dangers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @08:19PM (#15491318)
    First, note that this isn't a symmetrical implementation. The Verizon network uses a PON scheme that can't really do symmetrical, and so, please download more than you upload. Secondly, they also have great difficulties with VLANs, and IPV6-- try it to see (not that IPV6 is worth a crap).

    Let's see if it's future proof.... can they update their hardware to accommodate multiple concurrent IPTV QoS-based streams at HD raster/frame/color levels? No. Are they going to guarantee your network applications-- no matter who provides them-- won't be port blocked or attenuated by service type/port? No. This is called 'net-neutrality' and Verizon isn't net-neutral (just their services of course).

    Can you join an MPLS network, even though Verizon supports their own internally? Nope. Can you join theirs? Nope-- not today anyway and no date in sight.

    Can you run Skype and Vonage, or are they blocked? Can you run mulitple QoS- VoIP streams without raising eyebrows? Nope.

    Can you get them to do an SLA? Nope.

    Can you currently up-and-download stuff amazingly fast? You bet.

    And no- I do not work for any carrier or affiliate of any kind. Instead, I've been following FTTX for 20 years.
    • I have Vonage, and it runs perfectly fine on my FIOS 30/5 service.
    • Most of your complaints are irrelevant, because FIOS is a form of consumer broadband and whether we like it or not, consumer broadband is totally different from business-class dedicated Internet access.

      they also have great difficulties with VLANs, and IPV6

      DSL and cable ISPs don't support VLANs or IPv6 either.

      can they update their hardware to accommodate multiple concurrent IPTV QoS-based streams at HD raster/frame/color levels?

      A HD H.264 stream is only 10Mbps, so FIOS can fit roughly 62 streams per fiber, w

      • DSL and cable ISPs don't support VLANs or IPV6 either

        Not so. Do your homework.

        .....2 streams per customer worse-case

        That's if you don't have several children.... eschew things like QT7.... and want to have any kind of reasonable future running non-carrier-controled QoS streams! As for consumer broadband ISPs that support MPLS, again-- you need to do your homework. The big guys don't, but the little ones are getting smart. SLAs are becoming important, too. What happened to 5-9's? Is it one 9, two,

        • DSL and cable ISPs don't support VLANs or IPV6 either

          Not so. Do your homework.

          There are enough DSL and cable ISPs that I'm sure some of them support IPv6. Very few, but some.

          As for VLANs, they work just fine on FiOS as long as you're using one that is OK with a dynamic IP endpoint.

          Can you run Skype and Vonage, or are they blocked?

          I'm using Vonage, so the answer is yes. Works just fine.

          I also ripped out the D-Link router the provide and hooked up my Linux firewall directly to the ONT. This means I get unmol
      • You ignored this one "Can you run Skype and Vonage, or are they blocked? Can you run mulitple QoS- VoIP streams without raising eyebrows? Nope." that is a pretty serious issue.

        In fact, blocked ports and throttled services in general is a serious issue where I am concerned.
  • I am wondering what the maximum service offering from Verizon is. I get the sense from the article that the AFC ONT is underutilized. It shows the 4 POTS lines are connected but the author says "we don't need them all". The video port is not connected, and it looks like the connector has a cover installed (also the video LED is not on) so this is not being used.

    Does anyone know the speed of the PON interface and whose OLT that Verizon is using? I'd be curious how much bandwidth from the optics the end u
  • For instance, turn the clock back 5 years and the bandwidth up by 6.7x and you get the old slashdot article http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/08/215523 8 [slashdot.org] which was about some people in the town I live in..
  • From TFA:

    Verizon has, unfortunately, coupled its FiOS service with its telephone service.

    As a Verizon FIOS subscriber (have been for the past 4 months or so), I can attest that you don't need to have phone service through Verizon to get FIOS. In fact, I did have phone service through them and the day after my FIOS was connected I shut off my phone service and went with Vonage.

    Does this guy do his research?

    Also the article states that the speeds are 5, 10 and 15 MBps. That's wrong. It's Mbps.

  • Knowing Verizon (and looking at their terms of service), they will block ports and tell you that servers of all types are forbidden. Combined with a lack of static IP address, that, IMHO, makes the bandwidth useless - I like to access my files from locations other than home, have a mail server, host a small web page, etc. Who really cares if you get tons of bandwidth if you can't use it for anything except watching a TV show? (maybe the rhetorical question is asked and answered)
  • I have FIOS 30/5 service and i love it. I'm lucky enough to be in a Cablevision market and FIOS 30/5 is offered for $50 a month

    The install process is a few hours long. I'm proud to be the first person in my area to have it. (I've had a few months now) I cant tell you how happy i am to no longer be a Cablevision Optonline broadband subscriber. I was one of the first Optonline subscribers and saw their service degrade horribly over the years.

    FIOS has forced OOL to "BOOST" their speeds but they're still plague
    • FIOS is the internet as it should have been 10 years ago. Every house in America should have had Fiber 10 years ago.

      Passive Optical Networking Systems (PONS) weren't around 10 years ago. The technology first saw serious discussion about any form of commercial deployment in 2003.

      Without PONS it wasn't cost-feasible. You needed two fibers to every location instead of just one, and the fiber had to go all the way back to powered equipment at the CO instead of being merged with other subscribers on to a small n
      • Its really not cost feasible now as i understand. The installer said the hardware they give is basically $400+ in value per person and they arent charging for it.

        He also mentioned that they've changed hardware once already and verizon is paying quite a bit per person and losing quite a bit on each install.

  • I keep getting these "Come back..." mailings from Verizon, about once every quarter. In them they quote some obscene price for basic phone services with a few extra calling features. It's always somewhere around $45 a month. And you still pay a per minute for LD and toll.

    But once they roll out FIOS I might call and beat them up a bit, tell them that if they can give me unlimited to the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Spain and the U.K. as well as CLID, CW-CLID, Three-Way calling, voice mail, and a ton of o
  • One essential part of the fiber install process, at least for Verizon, is to cut the copper. Why? Because thanks to rules drafted by politicians to whom Verizon has contributed megabucks, Verizon is obliged to allow competitors to rent and use the copper, but not the fiber. Let Verizon run fiber to your home and you're stuck with them forever. It's a Faustian bargain.
    • Would you arsehats stop repeating this. First your post is redundant, gobs of people repeated the same rumour ahead of you. Second, each of them has a thread under it debunking the myth. They only cut the copper if they are installing phone service (which is not required) and they won't do it if you ask the installer not to.

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