turning it up to 11

The geek level at our house jumped by a couple notches this week with the arrival of Verizon’s fiber optic data service: FIOS. What does this mean for normal mortals? We can push and pull more junk through our Internet connection in less time. Our Comcast connection to the Internet was pretty good, but this new offering should allow more concurrent activities (games, video) without running out of room. In the end, many of the websites have their own “throttle” to keep pigs (like us) from sucking up all of their available bandwidth, so our connection to the individual web sites isn’t much different from before.

For the nerds, a bit deeper information. The connection we have is symmetrical 15 mbps / 15 mbps. Our phone service (POTS) has also been moved onto the fiber. I asked the installer if Verizon would be pulling our old copper lines (as they are in some parts of the country) but he indicated that they have elected to leave the capability in place. The fiber appeared on our street over a year ago. Now we'll see what it can do.

The installer arrived just after 9:00 Friday morning in his Verizon van. I half-expected to see a contractor sent out to do the installation; I was glad to see a Verizon rep. I’ve found the people who are directly associated with the company seem to have a stake in doing good work. It wasn't disappointed in the work done Friday - not one bit.

After drilling a couple of holes in the garage wall (and passing through a couple of cables) the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) was installed. The installer was careful to leave a little extra cable everywhere, neatly twisting and bundling wires. He knew exactly where every connection belonged without consulting any paperwork. He even took time to give me extra information and gladly answered my questions. When I broke out the camera to snap a few pictures I thought he might object, but he was happy to have someone show off his work!

In the garage he mounted the power supply, battery back-up, and supplied router. He brought in the signal from the ONT on CAT5e, sent power out to the ONT, then got the router configured for basic usage. He didn’t try to push any software installations – rather he recognized the level of technical competency and very professionally adjusted his delivery. I had a few challenges getting some of my usual software to run initially (such as Remote Desktop) due to the firewall in the ActionTec router. After waving my magic wand a bit, things all came back on-line.

Now we have gigabit internal networking with a 100mbps link to the 15/15mbps Internet connection. The wireless is being handled by the new ActionTec router and seems to work fine. Anyone wanna Skype?