I finally switched from Comcast to Verizon. I did a lot of research on which service was better and why and found the details in most reviews to be lacking. As such, I thought I would take the time to post what I've learned along with some real world comparisons and metrics.
Installation Installation took about 7 hours total. It would have taken less time, but I apparently had a couple of bad barrel connectors that wouldn't pass some of the technicians tests. The tech was very thorough, did a very neat and tidy install. he also picked up his trash which was very courteous.
Here's some pics of the ONT box on the side of the house.
The ONT box gets power from a Verizon UPS located inside the closet in my office where all of my networking terminates.
The coax on the left side of the above pic goes straight into the FIOS router. The tech said that it's possible to run Ethernet straight from the ONT, but he's had mixed luck with it working that way. He said about half of the time it just doesn't cooperate, but that the coax (moca) always works. Here's a pic of the router.
FIOS vs Comcast Internet The router is made by ActionTec and has 4 10/100 Mbps ports. I was disappointed that it didn't support gigabit on the switch side, but oh well. The configuration of the router is done through a nice web GUI. I was using DD-WRT on a Linksys and was concerned this would be a downgrade. However, the processor is significantly faster than the linksys.
Note the center column that shows all connected devices on the network. This is where things get interesting. The coax leading to the Router is not just the Internet feed, but it also connects your TV STBs (Set Top Boxes) to your network. This is how the STBs get program guides and other data services. Pretty neat. Note that I it shows that I have 3. The first two are actually ONE HD-DVR, but apparently each tuner makes it's own network connection. The other STB is my kids TV.
There are many tools out there to test your speed capabilities. I prefer speedtest.net as it's free, pretty, and easy to use. Check out the Comcast and Verizon speed test results:
The above tests were done to Olympia, WA which always showed the highest throughput for Comcast from my home in the Portland area. However, FIOS tests much higher to the Portland location (which is what you would expect). I can't explain the difference other than to assume that Comcast has a peering location in Olympia and FIOS has a closer one in Portland somewhere. Just a guess though.
It is important to note that Comcast cheats like crazy on the speedtest reports, regardless of which one you use. They even have a marketing term for their cheat... SpeedBoost. Basically, Comcast will give you excellent bandwidth (in my case, 20Mbps) for the first 10 seconds or so of any download. After that 10 seconds of bliss, however, you are knocked back down to a more modest 6-8Mbps. This makes Comcast look great on speed and bandwidth reports, but has little bearing on what you can get sustained. Sure, this will make web pages load quicker, but won't help you with any data transfer.
To illustrate my point, I downloaded Elephant's Dream (an open source movie) via NNTP using Comcast and took a snapshot of the network throttling behavior.
As the breaks in between each set of data is when I manually stopped the transfer. As each transfer began, the throughput spiked to about 20Mbps or so, but quickly settled on a much lower sustained rate. I stopped and started the transfer a couple of times for illustration as the graph shows. Now check out the same exact download from the same NNTP servers (Giganews) on FIOS.
As you can see, I was able to get 1830KBps (roughly 14Mbps) SUSTAINED. No spikes here folks, just real throughput without any tricks.
Some things you should know. All computers connected to the FIOS network require some tweaking to get full speed. Thankfully, Verizon has a FIOS speed optimizer tool you can use to obtain the best performance that tweaks your OS for you. It doesn't appear to leave any malware or adware behind... just modifies the registry to optimize the TCP settings. Vista users will need to grab the KB939006 patch from Microsoft first.
FIOS vs Comcast TV My initial impressions are very positive.
The HD-DVR has revealed little to no menu lag like the Comcast DVR does. Further, the menus are much more elegant than the Comcast ones. The STBs for Comcast and FIOS are made by Motorola, so I can only assume that the firmware developers on the FIOS side are much better at their jobs. The guide is easy to use. You can scroll rapidly through channels by holding the up or down arrow. With Comcast, I had to hit page down or page up. FIOS scrolling is fast, fast, fast. The channel logos appear next to each channel for easy visual recognition as well.
I haven't used the DVR to it's fullest extent, so I will refrain from commenting on it. Nothing negative in my initial impressions came up however.
Compression artifacts are apparently no where to be seen on the regular channel line-up. With Comcast, the cartoon network showed clear compression artifacts, even on the kids 36" standard def TV. The HD channels are also very clean, crisp, and free of artifacts.
The Video On Demand was easy to use, but has a real ugly side... it's compressed like crazy and the artifacts were very big and very ugly on my 57" HDTV. Click on the pic below to see the full size image. The artifacts are readily apparent and very disappointing. Also, I wasn't able to find any HD VOD. Perhaps it's there somewhere, but I didn't see it.
As far as phone service goes... it works. There isn't much to review other than I am able to call people and they can call me. Someday I plan to ditch my phone service entirely and just use our cell phones so I don't care for much more than a dial tone and clear voice, which FIOS has.
Summary FIOS is about $30 per month cheaper than Comcast in my neck of the woods for the "Freedom" package which includes TV, Phone, and Internet service.
The Internet downstream clearly faster than Comcast by more than double when comparing sustained speeds. FIOS upstream is about 7 times faster than Comcast. In general latency also appears to be somewhat lower than Comcast. Winner: FIOS.
The high definition TV service from FIOS is similar to Comcast, although Comcast had visible compression artifacts on many channels that FIOS does not. However, the FIOS VOD service is horrible compressed and it shows. Winner: FIOS, but if you're a heavy VOD user, you may want to keep Comcast.
Phone service seems virtually identical.
I hope this review was helpful to you. Enjoy FIOS!
We went to Salem yesterday for Easter service as we do every year. This particular sermon was excellent... not just the usual fair of Gospel topics. The focus was on Paul's letters and how the early Christian churches were rife with sin and often a lack of respect for the resurrection of Christ. Good stuff. Pastor Scott always manages to keep me interested.
The music was, OH MY GOODNESS, amazing! The music director wrote a song and the choir sang it. It was a sad classical choir piece, almost a madrigal with multiple parts. The real kicker was the benediction at the end of the service. Normally, it's spoken by Pastor Scott, but this time it was sung in an amazing arrangement of acappella vocals. It made me and Beck misty it was so good.
It's amazing how difficult it is to get Verizon FIOS installed. As you may recall from my first attempt at getting FIOS, it was a less then stellar experience. I was finally able to get a rep on the phone the following week. We talking through various options and pricing and right when I thought things were headed towards an install date, he politely informs me that he can't sell me the "Freedom Package". Rather, he is only able to sell the TV, Internet, and Phone services as seperate items at a higher total cost.
Now here's the best part. He doesn't bother to tell me how I can get the Freedom Package. The irony of this Freedom package is not escaping me at this point. Instead, he just pauses as though I am supposed to direct the conversation somewhere else. Naturally, I pause thinking that he's looking something up on the computer to see why on earth he can't sell me what I want to buy. After several moments of silence, I finally say "how can I get the FIOS Freedom thingy?" He then tells me that I would have to call my local Verizon office. I didn't wait for him to pause this time and directly asked him if he had the number for the "local Verizon office". He did and gave it to me.
At this point it's about 7pm or so. I call the local office and, as I somewhat expected, they are only open from 8-5, M-F. I call them the next morning from work and after about 10 minutes on hold, a very kind gentleman answers and seems more than happy to help me get the FIOS Freedom package.
I am no fool (at least I don't think I am). I've done my homework on the Internet and know that there are many reports of Verizon not having any HD DVR STBs (set top boxes) in stock. He confirmed that they were out of stock, buy he was happy to offer me a standard definition STB for free for 4 months while I waited. I politely informed him that I was not interested in that offer even remotely. He insisted that it was my best option and I told him to forget the whole thing and I might call back some day when they were actually capable of selling me what I wanted.
He back-tracked and said that the HD DVRs should be available the first week of March. After some deliberation, we agreed to set an install date of Saturday, March 15th... plenty of time after the FIOS HD DVRs were supposed to be in stock. He also agreed to call me the Tuesday before and verify that everything was on track.
The whole process took about an hour, mostly time spent waiting for him to type something into his TRS-80 terminal or consult the yellow pages for which department he can call to verify some thing or another. Despite the overly long conversation, he was very nice.
Needless to say, he never called. I called Verizon on Thursday and the agent said that everything was fine and that I should be all set for Saturday. I asked about the HD DVR stock and she said that they were not in stock. I asked her to go ahead and cancel my order. She offered me the same crappy standard definition box as the other guy. I told her that I wasn't interested and she finally said, well I do see a small stock available. She does a bunch of typing and says things like "looks like I might be able to pull some strings for you" and "the system is letting me do it, so there must be some available in your area".
We chat some more which mostly consisted of me asking her to double and triple check that the install time was actually happening and that a HD DVR would be coming on install day. To make it clear, I told her that I would tell the installer to go away if he didn't come with it. She said everything was looking great.
Saturday came and went and no one showed up of course. No call, no nothing. Yay. I call the Verizon repair line a couple hours after the scheduled window and the rep said that there is something wrong with the order. What the heck went wrong with my order since Thursday? She has no idea and said that she has to open a ticket with another department. That department will then call me back. When? She doesn't know.
I get a voice mail on Monday from a fellow telling me that Verizon can only switch phone service with Comcast during business hours, so I need to schedule a new install time during the week. I call the number he gave me and spoke with another rep and schedule a new install date. I was hoping for something fairly immediate, but to make matters worse, they never even bothered to place the 5-day advance notice to Comcast to authorize the transfer. Sigh.
My install date is now scheduled for Monday the 24th.
I almost forgot to blog about this. Michelle was a doll and sent my team a batch of "dork" cookies. As you can see they are in the shapes if various PDAs. It was a fitting gift for our weekend of work on the exchange migration. Thanks Michelle!
Miriam learned how to ride her bike on Friday with her friends and we weren't there to see it. So on Saturday we took Hannah out to show her how to do it. The trick was lowering her seat so she could touch the ground easily. This eliminated her fear of falling and make the whole process only take about 45 minutes!
Beck laid down some serious smack to Racknian. He blew into dust which was awesome because I was *this* close to death. I was dead if she didn't kill him on her turn. *phew*!
