FIOS, I get a bad feeling about this
 

Somehow I don't think we FIOS customers in these areas will benefit from this.

Any Frontier customers have experience to share?

Been OK? Good? Outstanding? Sucks donkey balls?

TIA

Verizon sells three-state territory, including 1.6 million FiOS users | Ars Technica

Frontier is good. I wouldn't be worried.

AT&T started laying fiber in the neighborhood next to us...If FIOS becomes available, I will be ALL OVER IT.

It really is hands down the best internet service I've ever had.

Rock solid.

No stupid port blocking or other shenanigans like that.

I had Frontier before I moved to Georgia. I still wish I had Frontier.

I have a close friend who is a long time Verizon commercial technician - he states that Verizon is already looking past Fiber-optic service. That is in essence considered 'old' and 'too resource intensive' to implement keeping up with residential demand. They are only fulfilling existing commercial and new residential projects that are already in the pipeline.

The 'new vision' is high speed wireless service, faster than existing fiber-optic. For all the obvious reasons from initial planning, execution and delivery of the service.

Really? Gigabit wireless? We barely have Gigabit WiFi.

Yes and no, AC tops out at 866 Mbps per channel but the spec calls for 8 channels so when the hardware is done and the spec adopted we are talking ~7 GB. :eek:

What range, though? I thought AC practical range was tens, not hundreds, of meters. Will they run fiber to a little tower on every residential block?

(Aside: I can't wait for AC in my house . . . Oh but my internet speed is only 50 Mb/s.)

Yes, but that isn't cellular. I looked at the specs on my devices, and only opted for an AC1200. It is nice to see connections in the 400-800 Mbps.

AC is further than N for the same connection level. I think it can go 100-200 meters.

Your Internet is probably 50/10. But my LAN is 1 GB and I use network drives.

One thing - the 5 Ghz frequency doesn't penetrate as well as the 2.4 Ghz

I'd bet on a good mix of fiber and wireless. The local phone co ran fiber down one side of my street and AT&T down the other within the past couple of years. I'm typing this from a 3G connection and during peak rush hours (cars), the tower infrastructure, etc. can't even come close to keeping up with demand based upon my experience. I don't see anyone actually "beating" the performance of fiber optics however....I mean, the speed of light is actually pretty quick :D Of course, what happens on the endpoints actually controls throughput.....as usual, it will "follow the money" and they're in the infancy of bringing it to the masses. Gonna be interesting to see how it plays out imo....

We have Frontier in the upstate NY Adirondack Park, it's the only provider available. We'll never see FIOS up here, not enough density of population.

For us, Frontier has a lot of outages and it usually takes time (hours to days) for service to be restored. Maybe someday we'll get cell service up here but thanks to the APA and environmentalists we have much difficulty getting approval for towers. They don't want anything to obstruct the view of the trees.

So what's the latest recommendation on a good WiFi router? I have 50Mbps service from Time Warner. I have a brand new N+ router from Belkin and my WiFi speeds range from 8Mbps to 25Mbps or so. I went through three different brand new routers from Belkin only to get the same results. They seemed puzzled as well. The speeds above (8-25) were from 12 inches away from the router!! Plugged directly into the modem via CAT6 ethernet cable I was getting ~46Mbps.

What gives??

Thanks,

JA

What's the speed on the network card in the wireless device you are using to connect?

What else is connecting wirelessly?

Wireless networks run at the speed of the slowest connected device.

If you have A or B devices connecting you wont get better than a / b from your N.

Start there.

See....wisdom in 10 minutes from Pelican. Let me check that Stomachmonkey!

I will do some looking, but is there an easy way to see the network speed of the devices I am using? A Windows laptop, for example?

Thanks!!!

JA

Ok...I found the device. It is a "Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter". I checked the driver, and it says it is up to date. Not sure how to check the speed?

Interestingly, under General, there is a yellow "!" triangle with the message, "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)". It doesn't seem to be impacting the use of the device, however, as it connects to everything fine.

JA

Ok...wait...I think I have hijacked this thread. Sorry about that.

When I click my WiFi connection, it says I am using this adapter:

Realtek RTL8188CE Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC

And it says I am connected at 72Mbps???

*** EDIT *** I updated the driver on the above adapter and I am now seeing up to 40Mbps on this device. Good enough! Sorry for the hijack, and thanks for the quick advice Scott!


JA

How old is this laptop?

Try reinstallng the device driver.

Grab the latest, Realtek

I'm in Oregon and Verizon sold out FIOS to Frontier a while back. I've had FIOS since it was available here. I've had no issues with the Frontier transition (other than creeping prices, and a quick phone call fixes that).

BTW, if the driver update does not work and you have a local Best Buy or big box that sells hardware and has a flexible return policy, as in no restock fee on open box, try a different brand router.

It's not very common but there are times when you run into brand compatibility issues.

Meaning thee is nothing wrong with the Belkin unit and nothing wrong with the wireless card in your laptop, it's simply that they don't play nice.

Do you have a neighbor that will let you attach to their WIFI to run a speed test? Eliminate your environment as the issue.

I don't know the technical aspects of Verizon's high speed wireless technology. I do know that Verizon has realized that it cannot realistically fulfill all the need for fiber-optic cable / installation directly to commercial and residential in a timely manner. So they are looking at wireless. Obviously, I don't know how radio waves will ever be faster than light transmission.