FTTP, baby! (Verizon FIOS)

We're finally on fiber at my house, na-na! Dan Bricklin has a long article with lots of photos on his blog so here's some random points I've discovered since the install.

• Earlier in the week the fiber line was brought down from the pole to the outside of the building in preparation.
• The install really does take 4+ hours.
• The final connection into the "ONT" was made from the feed left earlier using a portable splicer that melts/fuses the glass fibers together
• The glass really is about the size of a human hair
• The meter reported 18 Mbs download at the ONT
• Verizon offers 5 Mbs down / 2 Mbs up for $34.95 and 15 Mbs down / 2 Mbs up for $44.95 (both with a one year agreement, phone call to upgrade)
• They also offer a 30 Mbs down / 5 Mbs up
• Unlike high-speed cable, Verizon installs a battery backup in case of power outage that's rated for 4 hours (tech said he's heard of customers getting 8 hrs of life from them)
• They pull the old copper wires from the house during the install
• I read in a forum somewhere that all the old regulations regarding access and required sharing of lines with other providers only pertains to the copper lines, not the new fiber ;)
• They give you a D-Link DI-624 wireless G router which also has four ethernet ports
• Vonage's Linksys router is now "hanging off" (behind) the D-Link and it only required a power off/on to pick up new address from the D-Link
• D-Link's default internal IP is 192.168.0.x whereas Linksys (w/ Vonage) was 192.168.15.x
• D-Link's router really is true port forwarding - you can, for example, map port 8080 outside to 80 inside (Linksys forwards a port to an IP only - same port)
• Verizon blocks port 80 (port forwarding works around this)
• Fiber uses PPPoE like DSL does
• In the span of 4 days I've had 4 different external IP addresses assigned
• External DNS names are dynamic, containing the IP address (e.g. pool-x-x-x-x.subdomain.fios.verizon.net)
• Discovered free dynamic DNS service (dyndns.org) to overcome name/ip changes

A big SORRY to Dave Burke - I'm sure it'll be a while before fiber finds its way up into Vermont.

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