My recollection was that the drop (line from the street) was supposed to be pulled and laid prior to the truck install roll. The Verizon install folks seem to budget about 4 hours per install and like to get three done per day from what the technicians have told me over time.
John Mealey -----Original Message----- From: Computer Guys Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jeff Wright Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 7:52 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [CGUYS] My Big, Fat FIOS Installation [was: just one..] > Keep me informed. I'm pleased that you were able to get through > but I'm very concerned that it wasn't easier. > > I am particularly interested in knowing how smoothly the installation > goes and what your opinion of the product is. Following up on this from a couple weeks ago at Eric's request. The FIOS install went very smoothly. Long, 6 hours (!), but that involved the following: -Pulling a line from the street. -Installing the ONT (Optical Network Interface) on the house. -Drilling through the outside wall to run the coax from the ONT (a bit nervous there, but the installer was very neat and sealed the hole afterwards). -Attaching to the inside phone wiring. -Installing the inside terminal w/ the battery backup. -Running new coax inside the house for TV (2 sets). -Needed to run back to the distribution node, a street over, to get the phone working -Installed the router, which is wireless with a 4-port wired internal hub. The installer was cool with me going into the router interface and turning off the wireless, since I already have a wireless network. NOTE: The default setting is for WEP (Weally Extra Pathetic) encryption, and you have to hunt around, but you can enable WPA2. There is also a built-in firewall, so if you don't have one already (I already have a hardware firewall), this could be used, but it's off by default. -It took a while to get my main PC to come up on the router. I forgot that I had given it a static IP a while back while troubleshooting an intermittent connection. -Confirmed that the all 3 services were working and programmed the TV remotes. -Gave a quick primer on the DVR component. I will say that I love having this. I never had a Tivo before, but I suspect that I'll keep this after the freebie year is up. It's an 80 hour model made by Motorola. As far as the FIOS service goes, it is excellent, far and away better than Comcast, by miles. The TV guide interface makes the Comcast interface look like DOS. Verizon's is colorful and easy to read, responsive and works much better. I used pay-per-view on Comcast a couple times and it was awful. Terrible, grainy video quality and the unit would reply to button presses (pause, play, FF) a few seconds after the button was pressed. That can get old quickly. The FIOS DVR is almost DVD player quick. The TV picture (standard definition) and vastly better than Comcast's with none of the annoying pixilation and drop outs we would get regularly. Phone service is clear and it's nice to have caller ID after not having it for years. Internet service is quick; I got the 10 Mb down/2 Mb up service, but can upgrade all the way up to 20/10 (for $150/month...no thanks). I did, however, have a significant DNS lag when surfing at first. That may have had more to do with my internal network setup, since after futzing with IPs and subnets for about an hour one night, the lag went away. The only downside is having to memorize the new channel numbers. That'll take a couple more weeks. But, unlike Comcast, the channels are grouped by genre mostly, with a few exceptions, and that makes it easier to avoid the chick channels (all 10 of them!). ;-) Notable additions are Boomerang, which my kids love, and American Life, which shows all the stuff from the 60's and 70's that TVLand doesn't (which is just about everything except Andy Griffith and Lucy). Am Life shows The Green Hornet, which I don't think I've seen since it was on originally. Oh yeah, plus the Speed channel, the NFL channel and Fox Soccer. Oh, and I'm saving about $80/month over how everything was previously (that will go down a bit after a year...sigh...) Sayonara, Comcast (and AT&T long distance)! We won't miss you! ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** ************************************************************************* No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.175 / Virus Database: 270.8.2/1739 - Release Date: 10/22/2008 7:23 AM ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
