An update on our FiOS installation saga now that I am feeling a bit better. Last Sunday afternoon 2 nice guys from Verizon came over for the FiOS installation. I knew that they needed to put in some new equipments for the fiber, but I had no idea that these boxes are huge! I opted for them to install it in the garage, since I didn’t really want them drilling holes everywhere in the house. The installation package came with a fiber interface box (huge white box), and a coax/wireless dual purpose router (black). Since I made their job really easy by asking them to just install everything in the garage, it took them less than an hour to finish. And since everything is in the garage, my whole network had to go wireless, but more on that later.

First order of business, our home phone. Before FiOS, I had DSL. And since you can’t get DSL without a phone line, I had to pay $18 a month just to get basic phone service, add that together with $30 a month for DSL, I was paying $48 a month for my 786kb/128kb internet service. Now with FiOS, Verizon is moving your home phone lines to VoIP using this fiber interface box (transparent for end users) and they still charge you the same, but you don’t need a phone line to get internet service anymore (sweet!). So now we are paying $40 a month for 5Mb/2Mb!!! And since they are connecting your phone line to the fiber box, it’s super easy to rig up your house phone with your VoIP service provider of your choice (a much much better deal, trust me). Check here, you see the phone jack that your house phone line goes into. I simply pull the 2 wires out, cut the phone line that comes out of my Vonage box (that normally goes to a phone), and twist them together with the little yellow wire-twister thinging, and bam, all the phone jacks within the house are now connected to Vonage. Awesome! (And it worked with my DishDVR box. Double Awesome!)

Naturally the first thing I did when the FiOS was installed was to test out the speed, and I was unpleasantly surprised when I checked it out. The download speed was horrible, worse than my DSL (~100kbs). But why? Maybe my wireless connection wasn’t good? Well, after some trial and error, it’s the poor performance of the Verizon wireless router. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since generally when they give you stuff, especially if it’s something multi-functional, it usually can’t do any of the single functions that well. So I disabled the wireless router function on the Verizon box, and added my own D-Link router, and BAM, it’s all good now (~630kbs). So just a word of advice, if you are getting FiOS and going all wireless with your network, get your own decent router otherwise you are getting ripped off (bandwidth-wise!).

This concludes our tales of our FiOS installation. I will update some more once we get to use it some more, but so far, so good. Here’s a look at the final setup. It’s kinda messy with lots wires, but hey, that’s why it’s in the garage.