Posted on August 9, 2008 - by Venik

My Verizon FiOS Experience

The Motivation

I had Comcast as my ISP since 1998, when their broadband service was still known as @Home Network. I had a few complaints about Comcast’s Internet service, but it wasn’t anything major – perhaps a brief network outage now and then or an occasional slowdown. Still, for about a year now I’ve been calling Verizon on a monthly basis to find out when their FiOS service will become available in my neighborhood.

With Comcast I would get about 4Mbps down and 2Mbps up and this would be on a good day and not during peak hours. Verizon was promising 20Mbps up and down at all times with their FiOS symmetric plan. I do most of my work from home and this involves a heavy dose of Exceed, X-Windows, Cygwin and other remote desktop bandwidth gobblers. I felt I would benefit from a faster connection.

The Deal with the Devil

The cool thing about FiOS is that your bandwidth is entirely yours – you don’t share with all of your neighbors. While you may not get exactly the advertised 20/20 performance with FiOS symmetric, even having consistent 18/15Mbps down/up is a huge increase in performance. So you can imagine my excitement when on one sunny Friday afternoon in early August a Verizon sales guy knocked on my door. “Sign me up, Scotty!” was my immediate response.

Well, maybe I did not sell my soul to Verizon quite this fast. There was one issue I had to clear up. I have a small Web server at home, which I use to connect to my data when I am in the office. I absolutely need this machine to do my work and it has to be running on the standard port 80. Knowing how ISPs feel about port 80 I asked the sales guy if this port is being blocked. He assured me that Verizon is not blocking any ports and that I should be able to run my Web server without any problems.

I also wanted to make sure that the built-in firewall on the Verizon router can be completely disabled, so it does not interfere with my SmoothWall  firewall. The sales guy assured me that I can completely turn off the built-in firewall, DHCP, etc. and have the router function as a simple cable modem. “Sign me up, Scotty!”

The Installation

A week later, early Monday morning as expected, the installation technician showed up. After running the cables and hooking up the hardware he was unable to get network connectivity. As it turned out, the fiber line to my house was not activated. The installation guy had to stay on the phone with Verizon tech support for a couple of hours until they enabled the connection.

It quickly became apparent to me that the built-in firewall in the Verizon router cannot be disabled. The best I could do was configure a static NAT with global port forwarding. DHCP for the internal network also could not be disabled. Since all of the Verizon set-top TV boxes have to communicate with the router (to get program listings, on-demand, etc.), the router could not act as a “dumb” cable modem. So, clearly, Scotty from Verizon took care of bulshitting me to make a quick sale.

The Port-80 Trap

After spending the rest of Monday trying to figure out why I could not access my Web server from the outside, I finally concluded that Verizon is blocking port 80. As it turned out, all I had to do to find this out was to check Wikipedia’s article about Verizon FiOS. Feeling reasonably pissed-off I got Verizon customer support on the phone and told them everything I thought about their sales staff.

The funny thing is that Verizon’s customer service folks seem to be well aware of the port-80 issue and, as the service rep told me on the phone, I am not the first one to complain about this. So Verizon is aware that their sales contractor (Verizon outsourced their door-to-door sales activities to an outside company) is deliberately misrepresenting their product but Verizon is not doing anything to stop this illegal practice. Moreover, the Order Form the sales guy had me sign mentioned nothing about the port-80 limitation.

This was an opportunity for me to show some pride and dignity and go back to Comcast, which I still haven’t disconnected. But the promise of 20/20 network speed obviously has clouded my judgment. I found out that, if I sign up for the FiOS Business account, I will get a static IP and no ports will be blocked. The cost of the Business network plan is substantially higher: $100/mo for 20/5Mbps and a single static IP; or $140/mo for the coveted 20/20Mbps and $20 for each additional IP address. In comparison, I was paying only $55 for my Comcast Professional network plan.

“Fine, sign me up” I said. I might as well have had “Jackass” written on my forehead. When I really want something, I don’t allow my common sense and higher brain functions to interfere.

Switching to a Static IP

The really screwed up thing about calling Verizon customer support is that, if you are not signed up for their phone service, the automated voice response system will not be able to pull up your account information. All of your calls will be bounced from one support rep to another for 10-20 minutes before you finally get the right person on the phone. This will happen every single time you call Verizon. It does not matter which number your call. You will be jerked around even if you have a business account and are calling their business tech support number (888-553-1555).

So, switching to a static IP – how hard can this be? My residential service was installed on Monday. The next day I told Verizon to switch me to the static IP plan. By the end of Tuesday I got my IP and network configuration info in the email. Cool, even though the email did not mention the required static DNS information. I reconfigured my router and… nothing was working. I assumed (correctly) that the static IP I received probably was not activated yet – why email it to me then? – and so, after working well into the night trying to get my network going, I finally gave up and decided to wait until the next day.

Bright and early on Wednesday morning I was woken up by a loud knock on my door. Half asleep, stumbling down the steps while trying to pull my jeans on, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a Verizon van outside my house. The Verizon installation guy happily informed me that he is here to install my FiOS service. Without saying a word I opened the garage door and pointed him to the Verizon switch and UPS unit installed by one of his colleagues on Monday. The installation technician spent the next four hours sitting in my driveway talking on the phone with Verizon, trying to figure out what happened.

The static IP was finally activated sometime in the afternoon. I was able to configure the network and my Web server was now operational once again at a $140 loss to my monthly budget. Thank you, Verizon! Oh, wait a minute, I don’t get any channel listings on my TV. The installation guy had to spend another four hours on the phone to determine that the switch from residential to business plan for my network has not been completed yet. He said the router should be able to pull channel information from the network in a few hours. This was a minor issue and I wasn’t too concerned. More importantly, my server was up and running and my network speed was remarkably close to what Verizon advertised.

The Great Confusion

When on Thursday morning I still did not see any program listings, I called Verizon again. After jumping through the usual hurdles for about fifteen minutes I finally got someone on the phone from the business tech support department in the correct state. As I suspected, Verizon uses Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVC) and the support guy said that he was getting a PVC configuration error on their gateway while trying to analyze my network connection. This could easily explain why my TV service wasn’t completely operational.

A ticket was created and this was about it for Thursday. Around two o’clock on Friday afternoon, when I was in a middle of a telecon on my VoIP phone, my network went dead. I used my cell phone to call Verizon and the customer support lady informed me that my account has been disconnected for non-payment. Wait a minute, I said, I just got it installed not four days ago! Eventually we figured this out: my residential service has been disconnected. The line running to my house has been deactivated and there was no record of me signing up for a business account.

I had no network and I could not do my job, so I spent the rest of Friday annoying the hell out of Verizon customer service. By the end of the day I had my network service restored and my TV was working correctly. Transition from Comcast to Verizon cost me about $100/mo extra, about two days’-worth of downtime and about 18 hours of personal time invested to sort through the mess Verizon’s inept support “analysts” created.

In retrospect, I probably should have stayed with Comcast and I still may switch back. I will keep my Comcast service for a month or two to see how the Verizon gamble plays out. I have no doubt that there will be more surprises. Like when I get my first bill…

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