fios vs comcast

[Robert Seastrom]

On Jul 8, 2013, at 11:44 AM, Jeff Scaparra wrote:

> FIOS has been both good and bad for me. 
> 
> I have 75 down 35 up and I get those speeds or better which is really nice. Additionally I pay for a dedicated server out in MI so running servers isn't an issue ( I used to have a business line and found this to be cheaper and more reliable). I haven't had problems setting up dynamic dns and being able to ssh home to connect to computers there. As for IPv6 they don't have it but I have my own linux router running on an Atom box that has a Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel so I have IPv6 to my house (Its free so there isn't really a reason not to do this). 

I had a similar setup (OpenBSD in this case) but have since migrated to a Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite and may yet migrate again to a Mikrotik or Cisco since there is some stuff they do that I need (policy-based routing for instance).

My servers are in Equinix Ashburn, not the midwest, and I terminate my own IPv6 tunnel to home (as well as for some friends).  Oddly enough, a configuration that looks fairly similar to your HE config.

> Now for the bad parts. Verizon customer service is the worse. The installers never buried the cable coming from their box in the alley and my HOA started to complain. I had called once about the cable about 2 weeks after it was installed and told it would be taken care of in a week. That never happend and I never really go back there so I didn't care all that much but when the HOA started to complain I had to get it taken care of. Short version is 6 weeks, 7 hours on the phone with tech support, 3 visits from mis-utility later the cable is FINALLY buried.

I didn't have any better luck getting them out to fix my line.  Almost hit it with the mower twice.  Finally, four months on, the neighbor hit the fiber with his combine, thus harvesting both corn and my Internet connection.  That took 3 days to get back up on a temporary connection but this time they sent out S&N to mark the ground, and I had them put in the markings and path exactly where I wanted it (rather than the somewhat shorter but in the way of future construction path).

I've had equally bad customer service from Comcast, including getting shunted off to people who wanted to sell me a contract for home network support for $50/month rather than fixing the problem in their provisioning system that was causing my parents' cablemodem to hiccup every 15 minutes.  Finally got that one fixed by escalating in through the back door via a friend who is in Comcast Engineering.

Not to shortchange FIOS, I had to do the same thing (escalating via an ops director friend-of-a-friend) when a friend's business FIOS got hinky in such a way that from an odd numbered IP address you could ping even numbered IP addresses on the Internet and vice versa for an even numbered IP address.  Turned out to be a broken link aggregation group out of their OLT - I at least got a thank-you note from said director since they'd been chasing ghosts in that CO for a couple of weeks and mine was the first report that included the magic data to be able to trace the problem adequately.

Bottom line is that people love to complain about the local cable TV or high speed Internet operator, and the folks who do tech support for same are rarely highly clueful or highly compensated.  It's understandable that these folks get frustrated in dealing with people who call them up to report bogus problems and are hell to deal with when real problems come along.

> Problem now is the signal for some of the cable channels is too low to receive them and I need to get a tech back out to fix the problem. :(

I'm having a problem figuring out what the problem is there.  This isn't like HFC plant; the only coax in the equation is inside your own house and fiber tends to either work or not.  Broadcast video on FIOS is RF-over-fiber at 1550nm.  Are these legacy analog channels that you've lost?  Is your settop box complaining?  What channels is it unhappy with?

> Internet is great, customer service awesome. Don't really care about the TV but it works just fine on my HDTV with the exception mentioned above. 

Would like to hear more about that failure space; it doesn't make any sense to me.

-r