 Review by jdmurray 
UPDATED: 23 days ago
member for 8.7 years, 848 visits, last login: 23 days ago
 Huntington Beach,Orange,CA
 $60 per month (12 month contract)
 about 23 days
 "It's sure a lot faster than frame relay DSL over copper"
 "It took a very long time and a lot of effort to get it running properly"
 "The jury is still out..."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
• What other options did you consider for broadband?
I've had Verizon's copper DSL for nearly ten years with Flashcom, SurfCity, and HyperSurf as my ISPs. Verizon installed FiOS in my neighborhood in 2007, but I didn't like the packages and prices, so I never subscribed. In late 2009, I discovered that I could have FiOS installed and DSL Extreme (DSLX) as my ISP, so I jumped on it.
• What SPEED/package did you order, at what monthly price?
Ultra 20M/20M residential fiber service for only $60/mo from DSLX. This is a much better bargain over my old 1.5M/512K copper DSL service for $33/mo.
• How was the order & install process?
The installation and installers were great. The subcontractor that ran the fiber from the junction in the street to my house was very proud of the drill they used. No trenches needed to be dug in my yard, and the fiber was run to my side yard without me needing to be home. The patches in the street are very clean, and they removed all their spray paint from my walkways and driveway. A very professional job.
The Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) installation of the ONT and router did require my presence to let the Verizon installer into my garage. The whole process took about 2.5 hours. A very clean installation, but I wish the coax inside my garage was a little longer. The 2' run out of my wall doesn't leave me with many options for positioning the router.
The installation of the fiber and CPE cost me nothing.
• What brand/model was the supplied equipment?
The original router installed was a Westell 9100EM. Due to troubleshooting (explained below), an Actiontec MI424WR was what I ended up with.
• What good or bad experiences most struck you?
Getting actual, full-speed connectivity over the Verizon network was a nightmare. I have friends who had DSLX/FiOS installed in their residences and they had full service immediately. I still had no service 18 hours after the installation, and only a yellow Internet light on my router. I called DSLX tech support and they said that, "Technically, Verizon has 24 hours to turn on their service." With still no service after 24 hours, I called DSLX back and, after eventually talking with a Verizon guy, they blamed it on some sort of "72-hour outage" occurring in the Verizon network, and that was causing my connectivity problem. This didn't give me a good feeling about the reliability of FiOS, but residential customers don't have an SLA, so I waited.
72 hours later, I called back DSLX/Verizon and reported that the Internet light on my router was now green, my router now had a DCHP address from the WAN, and could ping its gateway, but I had no connection to the DNS servers, and I could not ping any hosts on the Internet by their IP address. It took Verizon several more days to fix why I couldn't get out on to the Internet, and I have no idea what the problem was. Anyway, I was now able to ping the likes of yahoo.com. However, I now had a new problem: the fiber connection speed was worse than dial-up!
I called back DSLX/Verizon and the Verizon tech now decided that because no one else in my area was complaining about poor connectivity, either my brand new, fresh-out-of-the-box router, or ONT, was bad. The router was the easiest to replace, so they shipped me out one; it arrived four days later. I replaced my Westell 9100EM with an Actiontec MI424WR, but it could not get a DCHP address from the WAN. The Verizon tech didn't realize that the ONT is keyed to the MAC address of the router, and that the ONT needed to be reprogrammed for the MAC address of the new router. I could have fixed this by cloning the old router's MAC to the new router, but the ONT is apparently easy to re-provision from the network side. My new router's Internet light finally went green, but my connectivity was no better.
I again called back DSLX/Verizon and another Verizon tech perform very lengthy tests and concluded that my CPE was likely not the problem (as far as he could tell). He put in a trouble ticket to "The Juniper guys" and I waited for several days. During that time, I received numerous "try your connection now" voice mails and emails from DSLX, but the problem was never corrected.
Finally, exactly two weeks after my CPE was installed, Verizon fixed the problem and dslreports.com now displayed blazingly fast in FireFox. I ran a Java-based speed test from a direct-wired PC and got approximately 19000/15000Mbps, where before the dslreports speedtest Web page would never come up. What most DSLX/FiOS customers experience immediately from their new fiber connections only took me two weeks from the installation--or 23 days from when I placed my order--and many late night/early morning hours on with telephone tech support to achieve.
Here are a few technical things to note for people thinking of the DSLX/FiOS combo:
• Verizon owns the FiOS network and totally controls OSI layers 1 through 4. DSLX is only a bit of fluff on top that handles layer 7 stuff, like passwords and email addresses. DSLX techs can do very little for real network problems and must enlist the aide of Verizon techs for this.
• You cannot get tech support by calling Verizon directly. If you do, you will be told that a DSLX representative must always be on the line because you are a DSLX customer, not a Verizon customer. You must call DSLX tech support and suffer through the questions and on-hold time to be connected to the Verizon peiople that can actually troubleshoot and solve your connectivity issues. (I can still hear DSLX's Windham Hill on-hold music in my brain.)
• You cannot get meaningful reports via email of your trouble ticket status from DSLX--even though they say they will give you such. They want to talk with you on the phone; through email you will only receive form letters. In my experience, DSLX tech support does not respond personally through email at all.
• All of the DSLX phone tech support people that I dealt with (at least eight) were courteous and knowledgeable. The Verizon techs were very good too, but varied considerably in their understanding of how Verizon CPE works (e.g., router capabilities, MAC authentication between router and ONT, how DHCP works).
And my story does not end there...
My Actiontec router on its 2-foot coax leash does me little good in my garage, so I bought a Linksys WRT610N to blast 802.11g/n throughout my house using WPA/WPA2-PSK/AES. I had read that the Actiontec MI424WR can be put into bridge mode, allowing the Linksys to DHCP with the Verizon network directly. However, Verizon does not support this configuration, so their techs will not help you in this regard. The thread on this subject at dslrepots.com (»How-to: make ActionTec MI424-WR a network bridge) was of great help, but there are a few things I needed to discover on my own to get it working:
• Clone the MAC address of the Linksys to be the MAC address of the Actiontec so the ONT will talk directly to it.
• Change the MAC address of the Actiontec so there will not be two devices with the same MAC address on the network to jumble the APR tables. (I simply incremented the last octet of the MAC.)
• Cable the Internet (WAN) port of the Linksys to the switchport of the Actiontec.
• You do not need to setup the Actiontec to be a DHCP relay.
• I'm not sure why, but over my home wireless connection, the dslreports Java speedtest will report the upload speed is twice that of the download speed (e.g., 7500/15000).
More updates to follow as I test this DSLX/FiOS combo over the next three months before shedding my slow, Verizon Frame Relay DSL for good.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of DSL EXTREME |
|
DSL EXTREME
(31)
(43)
