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Robert Morrisson
join:2000-03-31
Silver Spring, MD

Robert Morrisson to nasadude

Member

to nasadude

Re: FIOS Installation is a go in Montgomery County

The phone service and costs do not change. Only the medium for delivering the service changes.

The Internet service may cost $5 more than DSL per month.

Verizon wants you on FIOS Internet. The phone switch is secondary. I doubt they would switch just your phones to fiber if that is all you wanted.

As for Vonage, how is the sound quality? I have been considering that service.
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD

nasadude

Member

said by Robert Morrisson:

As for Vonage, how is the sound quality? I have been considering that service.
The ONLY problem I have ever had is when one of my sons was doing some filesharing and our whopping 256k (please note, small k) upload was saturated. This caused dropouts for people on the other end and they would miss every third word or something like that. A quick yell and the problem is fixed.

Otherwise, the quality is mostly the same as a landline. One thing I do like is that ALL of the add-on services (that the ILECs like to charge $2-5 for, like call waiting, *69, etc.) are included in the price. I am paying $27/mo for unlimited local and long distance and all the add-on goodies, including a very nice voice mail box.

Here's a tip if you do get vonage: you can plug the adapter into any jack and it is distributed to all the phone outlets in your house (assuming they were wired correctly). I had to disconnect the copper from the outside interface box, but no other action was required to have all my phones work just like they did on POTS.
Robert Morrisson
join:2000-03-31
Silver Spring, MD

Robert Morrisson

Member

At $27 a month that is about the cost of a single line with Caller ID. I am paying that for a line that I use for fax, and which I had to unplug due to the high volume of junk faxes.

Duplicating that range of services with Verizon would run around $50 per month. I'll have to think about this. I wonder if Vonage has a trial period, without a commitment.

Yes, the Vonage interface would turn the phone jack into a distribution point. If the old connection to the phone company were still connected it could cause you some trouble. You can just unplug the test jack in the Network Interface Device (NID) on the side of the house to break that connection.
splicer2
Premium Member
join:2004-08-27
Pasadena, MD

splicer2

Premium Member

VZ's Voicewing VoIP is $34.95. I dont know all the differences between VoIP's but it's something for you to check out. It's a couple more bucks but it seems pretty cool. From vz's website it looks cool that is.
VZ FIOS TECH0
join:2005-01-27
Virginia Beach, VA

VZ FIOS TECH0

Member

quote:
VZ's Voicewing VoIP is $34.95. I dont know all the differences between VoIP's but it's something for you to check out. It's a couple more bucks but it seems pretty cool. From vz's website it looks cool that is.
Bad thing about VoIP is you need special set to have it work. Also VoIP is delivered through a standard DSL line in most cases.

VZ
splicer2
Premium Member
join:2004-08-27
Pasadena, MD

1 edit

splicer2

Premium Member

Alot of people in Texas are getting VoIP with their FIOS service. I dont know the differences between one VoIP and the other. Vz's seems to be a couple dollars more a month,but I'm not sure what it has that the others do or dont. I'm not that interested so I never bothered to check them out. Just thought if someone was interested they give Vz a look. I'll keep basic dial tone and a cell phone, but thats me, everyone has their own needs. Are you installing in VA beach or somewhwere else in VA? Never mind, I saw your post in the other thread.
Robert Morrisson
join:2000-03-31
Silver Spring, MD

Robert Morrisson

Member

Voice over IP is not perfect. If you don't mind some odd connections it is probably suitable. I don't know that you would want it for your only line, though.

gwion
wild colonial boy

join:2000-12-28
Pittsburgh, PA

gwion to splicer2

to splicer2
Thanks, I'm glad I mentioned that... I never tested that thing on my solid ink, but thanks to a note I got, I did a little experimenting, and I don't think this is going to work... here's why... I computed the demand on the wattage they gave me for power consimption guidelines, probably an average. What matters is peak draw. I did some research (thanks)... and I'm starting to think my APC 750 model computation's not necessarily adequate, even dedicated. And yes, I suddenly realized why APC cautions against it. It's not using up a battery too quickly, it's about possibly frying the PS. I was looking at the APC netsmart model 750, too, as an upgrade, and I'm starting to think it might be problematic with my monitor, even on the system...

I'm doing some more research before I plug back in, right now, thanks to this thread... I'm not entirely sure how the solid ink works, but the thing with a laser is warm-up... now, I'm not going to start up the printer, we say, why's that matter? Because on a laser, the fuser "warms up" every fifteen or so minutes, to be ready to print... I have a TI laser that draws enough power when it cycles that it dims the lights if I run it on the wrong circuit, here. I don't know if the solid ink does, too, but it's sure worth researching.

The reason for UPS'ing a printer, in the case of the solid ink, is that cleaning/self-test cycle, a twenty minute warmup from cold start, and wasting up to a fifth of an ink stick in the process. At a couple hundred dollars per pack of 5 sticks, that adds up. On a laser, I guess the reasoning is that if it's mid-print, it would finish the page, and give you a chance to shut down smoothly ... but per copy costs really don't justify that with most any printer, except maybe inkjet, which, if you figure it out, will really surprise (even stun) you, if you do full color photo enlargements or things like that. As I said, with the solid ink, it's an economics of ink analysis. They have a very low cost per print, averaged out, but it jumps by twice or thrice, over the life of a stick of ink, if you shut down and start up too often...

Anybody have any experience running a Tektronix Phaser 800 series printer with a UPS? I and at least one other forum regular would appreciate any remarks anybody has... I was thinking that would cover me through those short summer drop outs, but if it fries a 200 dollar PS to save 20 dollars in ink, that just doesn't add up... I'm really curious. This has been the one single complaint I've had dogging me since I got the Tek. Great printers, beautiful output, nice cost analysis, long as it doesn't have to start up too often.

VOIP (to keep focused, and return to the thread topic ) isn't my killer app, yet. Might be down the road, but I really want to see that in the field, being developed a little more, before I plunge in. My vision is more aimed at bandwidth for internet, CTV, and future expansion, right now, I'm really not ready to trust IP based telephony, just yet... it has advantages that need to be weighed against disadvantages. That's an individual call, though.

Fiber is, as I see it, the big move forward in telecom tech, right now. The carrier medium. And, I admit, it's an enigma, to me. It's light years better technology than copper, but it does introduce new, unique points of failure into the infrastructure. And I'm a little nervous, I admit, today. We rely immensely on technology, and it really has dawned on me that we're a great deal more at risk of catastrophic infrastructure failures, not just in telecom, today than in my father's generation. We don't seem to prioritize durability and redundency very much, in the infrastructure, any more. And nothing's changed, if anything, complex systems introduce more points of failure, as a rule, than simple systems. All systems, however simple, are vulnerable to failure. Durability and redundency used to be given absolutes in infrastructure design, features were always expendable for system durability and resiliance, when I was growing up. We need to be very cautious not to be tempted to reverse that equation, and make durability expendable for features, or, worse, cost containment. When in doubt, "overbuild", was the motto of the old glory days of Ma Bell and as part of our legacy from the experience of the industrial revolution. And strive to create redundent, fail-safe systems, wherever possible.

Today, we're so dependent, as a society, on technology, that the fail-safety component's far more important than it was in my father's generation. And my fear is we're treating it as a far less important than feature sets and cost containment, today. People are more dependent. I've striven, myself, to have a home and lifestyle that works best and most fun with technology, but that is never placed at risk by proactively contemplating points of failure and making sure none of them can unilaterally create a catyastrophic failure of one service or another.

That's as simple as having at least one wired, old fashioned phone on each floor of my house, sometimes... or having a spare ignitor (or at least knowing where the nearest HVAC supply store is, if you get caught without one, and what part number to ask for) for the furnace on hand...

... there, in fact, is a perfect example of fail safety as an after thought, to finish up with, in a critical infrastructure system... great metaphor, in fact, makes it very easy... in our home, the "critical infrastructure" includes "heat." In my youth, a furnace was a big cast iron heat exchanger over a big firebox with an industrial style burner and a pilot light. Even in a catastrophic failure, you had a better than around 75% chance of getting it up, manually, while waiting for repairs. Now, they're computerized, use exotic firebox and burner design, and rely on an "ignitor," an electrically activated very fragile limited life span heating element. When it goes, the entire system fails. A $25 easily replaced part, and it can, hypothetically, create the conditions that lead to someone's death from hypothermia.

Yet many of us never consider that - in dad's day, we got a wire brush, under similar conditions, and cleaned the pilot light, or stuck a match in there and relit it manually. Risky, hell. So is freezing on a -1 degree morning, like we're having, here, recently. But how carefully is that being considered in modern design??? When your living room's 37 degrees with a roaring fire in the fireplace, at any rate, the triviality of a 25 dollar part in a 3500 dollar furnace is decidedly not trivial, and you are not grateful for a safety feature that shuts the whole system down at the CPU when any subsystem, however trivial, fails... that's not easily over-ridden by the average homeowner... I rest my case.

I do spend some time thinking about that sort of thing... it's so trivial and transparent, while everything's working, but a few trivial failures create one big infrastructure failure. Analogizing the telecom system, imagine the power's out, your cell phone's dead, and you need to call 911 to get a sick child to the hospital... suddenly, the "triviality" of always available telephony is a great deal less trivial...

nycdave
MVM
join:1999-11-16
Melville, NY

nycdave

MVM

gwion, I can assure you that the Verizon FTTP network has built-in network monitoring systems that are light years better than the old copper-based POTS network. If a copper cable fails, customers have to call up to report a failure most of the time. Verizon's FTTP network is completely different in this respect. For example, if a fiber failure is beginning to happen, a system will alert the Verizon NOC that the fiber is failing, allowing for technicians to fix it very quickly. Most of the time, the customer won't even notice that their fiber was beginning to fail because of these monitoring systems.

This is one example of a whole new way of dealing with network reliability...
FDM80
join:2001-07-16
Silver Spring, MD

1 edit

FDM80 to gwion

Member

to gwion
said by gwion:


Yet many of us never consider that - in dad's day, we got a wire brush, under similar conditions, and cleaned the pilot light, or stuck a match in there and relit it manually. Risky, hell. So is freezing on a -1 degree morning, like we're having, here, recently. But how carefully is that being considered in modern design??? When your living room's 37 degrees with a roaring fire in the fireplace, at any rate, the triviality of a 25 dollar part in a 3500 dollar furnace is decidedly not trivial, and you are not grateful for a safety feature that shuts the whole system down at the CPU when any subsystem, however trivial, fails... that's not easily over-ridden by the average homeowner... I rest my case.
Haha, I relight my pilot manually and I have a special stove on my fireplace that can keep a room at 85F if the heat is off in the house. I feel very old
splicer2
Premium Member
join:2004-08-27
Pasadena, MD

splicer2 to nycdave

Premium Member

to nycdave
You are correct nycdave.

Tzale
Proud Libertarian Conservative
Premium Member
join:2004-01-06
NYC Metro

Tzale to nycdave

Premium Member

to nycdave
said by nycdave:

gwion, I can assure you that the Verizon FTTP network has built-in network monitoring systems that are light years better than the old copper-based POTS network. If a copper cable fails, customers have to call up to report a failure most of the time. Verizon's FTTP network is completely different in this respect. For example, if a fiber failure is beginning to happen, a system will alert the Verizon NOC that the fiber is failing, allowing for technicians to fix it very quickly. Most of the time, the customer won't even notice that their fiber was beginning to fail because of these monitoring systems.

This is one example of a whole new way of dealing with network reliability...
Basically what they are doing is bringing the technology the major backbones are using to the consumer. People used to say the information super highway with a long driveway to our homes, now the driveway has come to US.....

Welcome to the future! Life looks bright with fiber! (No pun intended)

-Tzale
Robert Morrisson
join:2000-03-31
Silver Spring, MD

Robert Morrisson to gwion

Member

to gwion
Solid ink printers are definitely not consumer grade products. These are highly specialized devices for the professional market, which can tolerate the start-up cost every Monday morning. I will bet the output is fantastic, though.

A laser can pull 5-10 amps. Older units would cycle the fuser every few minutes, causing the lights to "wink" on the circuit to which it is connected. New fusers come to life when a print job is submitted and they can get up to temperature quickly, eliminating much, but not all, of the light winking.

In any event, the power draw of a laser will exceed what most UPS systems can handle. You could blow the internal circuitry before you ever ran the battery down.

VOIP is an inherently chanchy technology. IP packets arrive via different routes and must be re-assembled. That can result in some rather spooky sounding connections.
I have invented FedEx over IP to send parcels. I once sent myself to San Francisco but the packets got out of sequence and I came out looking like Picasso so I had to send myself back. Once I get the bugs out of it, FedEx over IP will be a sure-fire winner. Investment opportunities are available. Please write for more information.
New technology takes a while for us old-timers to get used to. Digital circuits used to require a tech on each end of the line to turn up a circuit. Now it can be done by one person in the central office. People now understand the concept of remote control software, whereby you can operate a computer remotely, but that used to be a foreign concept.

Compaq has taken that one step further with their Remote Insight / Lights Out technology. It is now possible to power a computer off and on remotely and watch it cycle through POST (counting the memory, etc.) via a remote IP connection.

This means you can do things that would normally require a technician on site, such as hitting F4 or F8 before Windows loads. Now you can pull maintenance late at night at an office that is closed without sending anyone.

Fiber has its own bag of tricks. I don't know how Verizon has theirs set up but I will guess that visits to the cabinets on the poles or to the ONT on the customer's house will be rare, whereas with the unmanaged copper such visits were somewhat commonplace. The built-in diagnostics should allow determining when a system is failing and fixing it remotely before the customer knows there is a problem.

This has been available on servers running SNMP for years. A failing disk drive or an overheated chassis will be displayed on a status panel and an e-mail can or page can be sent to the appropriate parties.

Newer technology often has more severe results when it fails, but it is often far more reliable than the old technology was.

In the case of my furnace, if the igniter goes out the power is probably out, meaning I will have no blower even if I can light the gas. My furnace is over 20 years old and has never lost an igniter. The old one did lose a thermocouple or two.

If you can't reach the pilot with a match, have you ever tried using a piece of spaghetti? Just light it with a match and stick it into the furnace, or your stove, as if it were a long match. It works quite well.

It is now Saturday and my FIOS has been up since Tuesday. I have a ping monitor that tells me if the signal dies or slows. With DSL there would be periods where the connection between my house and Verizon's Point of Presence (POP) would drop out or slow briefly. With FIOS the ping times to the POP rarely change. There was one time where the signal got choppy for a few minutes but for the most part it has been rock solid.

FIOS Rocks!
Robert Morrisson

Robert Morrisson to FDM80

Member

to FDM80
So, where is the pilot light on an electric stove? Do you light that with a battery?

JTRockville
Data Ho
Premium Member
join:2002-01-28
Rockville, MD

JTRockville to Robert Morrisson

Premium Member

to Robert Morrisson
said by Robert Morrisson:

FIOS Rocks!
* decends from the roof after installing a high-gain antenna *

Wanna share?
FDM80
join:2001-07-16
Silver Spring, MD

1 edit

FDM80 to Robert Morrisson

Member

to Robert Morrisson
said by Robert Morrisson:


So, where is the pilot light on an electric stove? Do you light that with a battery?
Haha, not an electric stove. When I say stove, don't think something with burners to put pots and pans on. It is an all metal thing that you stick the logs in and the heat from the fire heats up the metal. Then there are chambers inside where the air heats up and comes out hot. Think of it like a hair dryer that takes regular air, heats it up inside near the metal coils, then spits it out all hot. The energy just comes from the burning wood, instead of electricity. It's pretty much made of cast iron. It's old school I'd try and find a picture of it online but we've had it since I was like 2 years old so I wouldn't be surprised if it was near impossible to find.

Just to stay on top: Turn on FIOS for 20904!
Robert Morrisson
join:2000-03-31
Silver Spring, MD

Robert Morrisson

Member

That sounds like something the Europeans would use without reservation, and that the Americans would snub because it was too complicated.

It probably takes a little effort to run it but I will bet it cranks out the heat. They need to build more of those.
FDM80
join:2001-07-16
Silver Spring, MD

FDM80

Member

said by Robert Morrisson:

That sounds like something the Europeans would use without reservation, and that the Americans would snub because it was too complicated.

It probably takes a little effort to run it but I will bet it cranks out the heat. They need to build more of those.
Haha, I'm italian.
Robert Morrisson
join:2000-03-31
Silver Spring, MD

Robert Morrisson

Member

Well, Italy is European.

For a comparison of Italy vs Europe, check out this page on my Website. Click on Europe vs Italy on the lower right hand part of the menu.

»www.eagle-wing.net/FunSt ··· to.shtml