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[Capn Trips]

Thought I'd share some insights I have gained. Got FIOS 11 days ago, and after working through a few problems (explained below) one persisted:

My QIP6416 DVR box in the Family Room kept locking up about every 8-12 hours (frozen at a particular time, unresponsive to any command (Remote or Front Panel) until unplugged and re-plugged in). Initially, the tech replaced the box - it happened again. I swapped it with another 6416 in the house and the replaced box locked up (whereas the NEW box did not.) So the problem was associated with the location in my house rather than the box itself. The tech came out and replaced a bunch of coax connectors and splitters, but the problem remained. I bypassed the in-wall coax cable completely and just ran a temporary coax line from the last splitter through the hallways to the box and voila - all is well - so I have to replace a run of coax (this week's project). Lesson learned - your home wiring must be able to handle data rates for this service.

Here's the long story version:

A sort of general informational/cautionary note about FIOS. Make sure you read the fine print before the installer comes out. I believe that every locality has its own idiosyncracies, but for Northern Virginia:
(1) They will run exactly ONE line for you in the course of the installation, and that is from the OMT (Optical <something> Terminal) to the location you choose for your router (either coax or CAT5e - you and the installer determine what's best for you);
(2) They will install up to 3 TV boxes (any flavor you choose) but they must use EXISTING coax cabling. If they have to run coax for you, that's extra $$$.
(3) They WILL transfer your telephone service from copper wire to FIOS (tapping into your existing home phone wiring). They will not run any internal phone wiring for you free of charge.

That said, your pre-existing wiring/cabling/connectors and splitters must all be up to the capability of handling the FIOS bandwidth. My relatively older house has miles of criss-crossing coax and phone lines that were there before I moved in and although they were adequate for my copper wire phones, DSL and Cox Cable service, they proved no match for FIOS. After installation, we have spent the last 10 days chasing various ghosts (and eliminating them). Amongst the problems found:
(1) unused runs of phone wires act as antennas and introduce significant hiss into the phone line. We ended up disconnecting a fair number of "lame duck" phone wires throughout the house to get noise-free service;
(2) Coax splitters should be minimized and must be capable of passing up to 1000MHz (many older ones only go up to 600 or 900 MHz);
(3) The connectors on your COAX cabling have to be firmly attached and not under strain.

Fortunately, our guy was very helpful in tracing these problems and helping to resolve them. He replaced splitters, removed unnecessary wiring and in general was very helpful in accomodating my requirements/questions. All during normal service calls and at no charge. (I still have to install a run of Coax myself to the family room, because the existing line introduces glitches that lock up the cable box).

Bottom line: The FIOS service is GREAT! PQ FAR exceeds Cox and Dish. Download speeds are awesome! I just love it. (I'll also say that using Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer has GREATLY increased webpage loading speeds on ALL of the computers in our home! I heartily recommend giving it a try.)
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(But I still have to get up for my beer)

[speaker.guy]

"using Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer has GREATLY increased webpage loading times"

I hope you mean decreased!

[Herbie]

I have some experience with FIOS and FIOS-like systems from my day-job (from the product engineering side), so I can fill in a few extra details:

1) OMT == ONT - Optical Network Terminal

This is your actual "modem" that takes the FTTH (Fiber to the Home) and then creates a local network for you.

2) Your home network on your coax cable uses a standard called MoCA (Media over Coax Alliance). You can look up the full specs online, but the basics are exactly as Capn Trips pointed out: Its uses a high frequency spectrum around 1GHz. Some of the upper channels (configurable) are up to 1500MHz, which means in some installations (particularly with long runs), even the 1GHz splitters are barely adequate.

3) More bad news: The system will "work" with a variety of line impediments, but the MoCA standard takes a big hit (bandwidth wise) when the line is not ideal. Over-long cables, crappy crimps, crappy connectors, or crappy splitters can all hurt your max throughput, so if you're seeing low bandwidth or video problems (like persistent macroblocking, etc. ) that suggest a bandwidth problem, this might be a cause. The technician should be able to access diagnostics screens and see the phy rates for the various nodes. Often just one node can have a problem while the rest of the mesh rates are fine.

4) MoCA chipsets run HOT HOT HOT. Current generation CPEs (Customer Premises Equipment) don't usually deal with this very well. If you have a FIOS box connected via coax and it sits in a closed media cabinet or the like where it can heat soak, this might also be a cause of problems. The chips can lockup - just the MoCA chips, which kills your network connection to the ONT), or the main CPU which makes the whole box lockup...

Hope this may be useful to others in the future.

Lastly, be glad the rest of your install went well, Capn, since there have been a few examples of less-than-smart technicians hitting the 120v or 240v mains while drilling through exterior walls to mount the ONT!!
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TiVo FREAK!
Brutalizing my 15-1994 since 2000, thanks to JP1
Now abusing a 6131m, 2116, and 2104 too!

[Capn Trips]

[classicsat]

FIOS uses MoCA just for the two way communication of the QIP boxes (rather than QPSK or DCOSIS a normal cable box uses), including receiving interactive VOD and likely PPV video.. It communicates back to the headend over your internet connection. That is bridged in the Actiontec MoCA router.

Regular TV comes off the ONT as standard QAM cable, and you can use cablecards in your TV or other Cablecard device, such as an HD TiVo, as well as tune unecrypted QAM cable. Some places may have analog channels you can tune directly on your TV, but FIOS have been turning off analog channels in places.