Verizon FIOS delivers 15Mbps always

[EdfromCocoa]

Last week I switched from Cox Communications in Northern VA to Verizon FIOS (both at 15Mbps on the download). Full disclosure: I do not work for, nor am affiliated with or own stock in either company). Cox?s download speeds would swing from 23Mbps to less than 1Mbps during a week day, becoming very slow at night. (I use www.speakeasy.net/speedtest as the standard). This started happening since December 2005, Cox would fix the problem only to return, and later would again swing periodically on the DL speeds. I used WPA encryption on my Belkin N1 wireless router and ran two wired desktops and a Dell laptop. I took my laptop to my daughter?s house one day and got a constant 15Mbps during the day and evening connected via an Ethernet cable using FIOS.

Here is what Cox told me both from their help desk and in person: I had viruses on all 3 machines and I should get them reformatted. Well on the laptop I did and no change; left the desktops alone.

When I had FIOS installed, the tech laughed at Cox! Now, I get the 15Mbps on the desktops and 12-14 Mbps on the download for the laptop using the wireless router (an Action Tec Model MI424WR (WEP encrypted as the default for now that Verizon installed), except last night when I got 15Mbps wirelessly.

So, here is my conclusion: Cox and other cable companies make you share the broadband highway on your card at the neighborhood, which makes you susceptible to traffic jams due probably to gamers and high file downloaders. They LIE about their speed of 15Mbps- yeah you get it early in the am in my experience. FIOS has much more sophisticated equipment and the broadband highway is dedicated to you. PLUS the price is $12-13 cheaper monthly for FIOS now.

 

[spidey07]

As more and more FIOS customers sign up their network will become too oversubscribed just like cable.

And by then Cable will have 50/100 Mbs to the home.

Plus FIOS is using the older optical network technologies while the telcos will be using the newer/faster ones.

 

[InlineFive]

Be warned that although WEP increases speeds it is much less secure then WPA.

 

[EdfromCocoa]

I got 100Mbps with Cox and the same now with Verizon.

I agree with you that the cable companies will not sit still. Told Verizon this too.-they better keep up. What I like now is my Web and e-mail come up instantly. My mail goes out quicker. The wireless laptop speed of 15Mbps last night was super! No way Cox could do that from the Belkin router!

Thanks for the quick response.

Ed

 

[EdfromCocoa]

Just found the page in the tech manual that shows me how to select WPA and enter the password.

Ed

 

[EdfromCocoa]

Sir,

Verizon is a telco for VA- the RBOC. They very well know that unless they keep ahead of Cox and the other cable companies, they are toast. What Verizon provides me now is consistent and reliable speed.

Ed

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: InlineFive
Be warned that although WEP increases speeds it is much less secure then WPA.

FUD...neither impacts speed on any modern hardware. WEP may have slowed down wireless in 1997, but not now.

 

[n0cmonkey]

The biggest stuff I download finishes in less than 15 minutes typically on my current cable connection. I'm happy. 🙂

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: InlineFive
Be warned that although WEP increases speeds it is much less secure then WPA.

FUD...neither impacts speed on any modern hardware. WEP may have slowed down wireless in 1997, but not now.

Depends what you mean by speed. If you're referring to latency than there is going to be *some* overhead when using encryption versus none at all. Especially if you've got cheap or underpowered clients accessing it.

Of course the difference between WEP (128bit) and WPA should be minimal.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Originally posted by: spidey07
As more and more FIOS customers sign up their network will become too oversubscribed just like cable.

And by then Cable will have 50/100 Mbs to the home.

Plus FIOS is using the older optical network technologies while the telcos will be using the newer/faster ones.

this will be no time soon, thats for sure..5-10 years...if not longer.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage

Originally posted by: spidey07
As more and more FIOS customers sign up their network will become too oversubscribed just like cable.

And by then Cable will have 50/100 Mbs to the home.

Plus FIOS is using the older optical network technologies while the telcos will be using the newer/faster ones.

this will be no time soon, thats for sure..5-10 years...if not longer.

Yep, and at that time I'll just switch to the local carrier with the best package. 🙂

 

[RyanM]

Originally posted by: spidey07
As more and more FIOS customers sign up their network will become too oversubscribed just like cable.

And by then Cable will have 50/100 Mbs to the home.

Plus FIOS is using the older optical network technologies while the telcos will be using the newer/faster ones.

Hush! I'd perform in a donkey show for FIOS. I'm stuck with 8Mbps down/768Kbps up cable. What do I gotta do to get Verizon to lay some fiber out my way?

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: MachFive

Originally posted by: spidey07
As more and more FIOS customers sign up their network will become too oversubscribed just like cable.

And by then Cable will have 50/100 Mbs to the home.

Plus FIOS is using the older optical network technologies while the telcos will be using the newer/faster ones.

Hush! I'd perform in a donkey show for FIOS. I'm stuck with 8Mbps down/768Kbps up cable. What do I gotta do to get Verizon to lay some fiber out my way?

Stuck with, that's really not a BAD speed, atleast nothing to be complaining about? Now if you were in the boonies and were getting like 256/256 on a broadband plan, that's something to complain about.

 

[ZippyDan]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage

Originally posted by: spidey07
As more and more FIOS customers sign up their network will become too oversubscribed just like cable.

And by then Cable will have 50/100 Mbs to the home.

Plus FIOS is using the older optical network technologies while the telcos will be using the newer/faster ones.

this will be no time soon, thats for sure..5-10 years...if not longer.

cablevision has had 100Mbs to the home in parts of long island for almost a year now. afaik they were planning on doing a larger scale rollout almost 6 months ago, but im no longer in the area currently

also on topic, i was one of the first getting FIOS in the NYC area, and yes it was awesomely fast - much better than the 10Mbs from Cablevision and their upload caps (FIOS had no restrictions on upload other than bandwidth). now Cablevision has 15Mbs and 30Mbs plans to most areas, im not sure how they compare.

 

[cmetz]

spidey07,

>Plus FIOS is using the older optical network technologies while the telcos will be using the newer/faster ones.

BPON with a very easy upgrade path to GPON... "older optical network technologies"??? I admit I'd personally prefer an OC192 dual-ring running through my home, but in terms of cost-effective ways to do FTTH I'm not aware of any newer or better way to do it than the way they're doing it. They've also built a brand new metro backbone for FIOS, separate from the xDSL backbone, so they have enough backbone capacity for now. And VZ's position in the world gives them a much easier time adding more backbone capacity (lighting more fiber in a bundle is easy for them, and they have lots of it). How is the telco (cable co?) going to do something newer/faster?

>And by then Cable will have 50/100 Mbs to the home.

Divided over how many people? Remember, DOCSIS is shared. If the cable companies wanted to, they could deploy 24-36Mb/s per neighborhood right now on the technology they have. But they don't. And their back-haul networks are sometimes woefully oversubscribed.

I know that the Cox / Fairfax County network is teetering on the edge of falling apart and has been for years. It's not really Cox's fault, they bought the franchise from Media General, who made very bad technical design choices and cost-optimized everything everywhere they could. Cox did a heroic job retrofitting to even be able to support two-way cable at all.

It's very hard for me to believe that the cable companies are going to offer dramatically better service with new technologies soon, when they are not even close to delivering the service they could with the technologies they have. They've made some very obvious choices to oversubscribe at a higher rate and do cut-rate customer service, and treat it as a marketing problem. Truth be told, I don't think the cable companies *want* technically clueful users, they're not nearly as profitable as the people who pay $50 a month and believe what they're told. Slow connection? Must be a virus. Duuuh... okay! 😉

In my opinion (man, I must sound like a fanboy!) Verizon has totally won this round of competition. Now, Verizon can always screw this one up, they're *very* good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The cable companies continue to treat FIOS competition as primarily a marketing problem, and are not improving their service technically at a rate different than before (obviously they do add capacity, slowly, as they have to) or improving their customer service. Hopefully, some day soon, they'll wake up having lost a lot of customers and decide to get competitive again.

If you walk down the street where I live, you'll see a little green box-cover for the FIOS BSW in every 2-3 front yards. Not even a year after beginning the service, they've got an anecdotal take rate of 33-50%. I now get color, glossy, thick-paper ad mailings from the cable company at a rate of 4-5 per week. And neighbors with cable periodically drop in and ask if this fiber thing is worth it, because their cable modem service was acting up and the cable company sent a guy to fix it, and he did some stuff but it isn't fixed.

If I might digress a bit, the real win with with the FIOS service is that it's a new plant and it does what it's supposed to. DSL and cable modem are both kluges, touchy and maintenance intensive. For most residential customers, at the end of the day, it's less about how much bandwidth you get, and more about whether it works reliably. This is a big place where the cable companies are going to get squeezed.

(for those who think I'm a VZ fan, besides the fact that I work with VZ supplied lines in a business setting during the day and oh boy do I have stories of incompetence there, I previously had VZ's ADSL and it never worked 100% right... my modem would have to resync at least a few times a day, and when winter came and trunk lines would freeze reliability would go way downhill and take my POTS line out... and VZ never could get that totally fixed. FIOS was a huge, HUGE step up from VZ's DSL)

 

[j00fek]

no fios for me, i live in maine. we get everything like 25yrs after the fact

 

[nightowl]

As with any network it only operates as well as it is designed and maintained. Also, all networks are built with oversubscription in mind, however the places where the oversubscription takes place will be different. It just comes down to what the provider decides is too much oversubscription for the network.

 

[TC10284]

Originally posted by: kevnich2

Originally posted by: MachFive

Originally posted by: spidey07
As more and more FIOS customers sign up their network will become too oversubscribed just like cable.

And by then Cable will have 50/100 Mbs to the home.

Plus FIOS is using the older optical network technologies while the telcos will be using the newer/faster ones.

Hush! I'd perform in a donkey show for FIOS. I'm stuck with 8Mbps down/768Kbps up cable. What do I gotta do to get Verizon to lay some fiber out my way?

Stuck with, that's really not a BAD speed, atleast nothing to be complaining about? Now if you were in the boonies and were getting like 256/256 on a broadband plan, that's something to complain about.

I'm stuck with 5mbps down/384kbps Earthlink (using TW network) in NC. Best I can get is 8mbps from either the local telco or Earthlink/RR. I'd have to pay probably around $80-90 a month for 8mbps down