Fios Installation in finished basement w/ pics

[jrs163]

I have been worried about moving from DSL to Fios simply because of the installation of new wiring in my older home.  We do have a finished basement, and as you can see from one of the pictures, there is only a very small cut-out for the electrical box and the phone line connections.  This makes it very hard to work on wiring in this area and leaves no room for a Fios power supply or a battery backup, which would have to be mounted on my family room wall.

I decided to finally go ahead with the installation and called Monday March 12 to schedule a time.  They said they could have it in tomorrow morning.  This was much faster that I ever expected.  The next day they came for the entire installation.  It took about 4 hours since they had to run the fiber from 2 poles away and across the street to my house.

They used coax from the ONT on the side of the house and ran it up to the roof, along side my directv cables.  Going down through the attic, they fished the wall of my office and put in a wallplate for me.  The power supply and battery backup was mounted at the base of my family room wall.  Which was much further down than where the installer suggested.

All I can say is, make sure you are home during the entire installation.  They are willing to do a lot more work on the installation as long as you ask them to.  If you don't ask, you might have the power supply put in an area where you don't want it, or wiring that is not run in the best location.  They gave me an Actiontec wireless router, which I almost knew for sure I would get rid of in exchange for my linksys.  But I was so surprised at the advanced features and ease of use of the Actiontec.  So for now, I'm actually going to stick with it.

[VCP]

jrs163,
Thanks for posting your info. Is the third photo that of your electrical circuit breaker box? Did they need to install something there? (I sure hope that opening in your paneling was not part of the FIOS installation!) -
Thanks,
Tom

[jrs163]

In the third picture that is my breaker box along with the phone lines coming into my house.  They were going to bring the cable through this opening, but decided to drill a hole through the wall closer to the floor where our directv cables come in.  And no, that opening was not part of the fios installation.  That was there when I moved into the house.

[VCP]

jrs163, Thanks for the clarification; FIOS is soon coming into my condominium building and I'm scrambling to learn about the FIOS implications as fast as I can. You mentioned that your installation went from the ONT up through your attic before reaching the router, what was the approximate run length from the ONT to the router? And from you router to the TVs?

What I’m trying to figure out is whether 75 to 100 ft from the ONT to the router is acceptable. If so this would be great because then our small condo buildings could house a multi-point ONT in the central utility rooms and simply connect between the ONT and the existing coax to each apartment. Of course having the ONT within 3 ft of the router/computer/TV would be ‘ideal’... but not likely in the ‘real world’; soon ‘diminishing returns’ for immediate proximity set in and elsewhere in this forum I have read about the signal to the TV being so ‘hot’ that attenuation was needed. Sure would be great to know how dn/up Internet speeds may degrade as a function of run length between the ONT and the router, but I can’t find substantive information anywhere. (Below is an excerpt from another Verizon source.... but the question went unanswered...)

Any information on this will be highly appreciated - Thanks!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At http://verizonlineman.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-may-i-help-you.html
Anonymous said...
What is a ‘reasonable maximum’ length of coax cable between the ONT and the router? Is 75 to 100 ft OK?

 Mark said...
The fiber optic project that we are currently building is called FTTP (Fiber To The Premises) because all installations, be they single family residences, multiple dwelling buildings or commercial structures all get fiber brought into each living unit. The difference between the fiber ending at the utility pole and continuing on coaxial copper wire into your house is a major factor in the speed that Verizon can provide. This speed is key in providing such clear undistorted picture quality on the television and such amazingly fast internet speeds.
It is standard that each living unit has an internal ONT access port or external access port for the fiber to be fed through to each apartment. Most of the time these can be placed in a closet from the inside or on the exterior of the building and a hole can be drilled through the outside wall into the inside of a closet or utility area within each apartment. Unfortunately, most copper coaxial cable has much too significant Db loss for Verizon to use and this would compromise signal strength.

[jrs163]

The approximate distance from my ONT to the router is 50 feet.  I’m not sure if 75 to 100 feet would work for you, but I’m sure they have run into this before and there should not be any problems doing this.  Just to clarify, I do not have Fios TV…I only have the Fios internet service.  In doing my own testing, I do get the actual speed I am supposed to – 5Mbps down 2 Mbps up.  It would be interesting to know if speed diminishes depending on distance from ONT to router…but my guess is you would need several hundred feet of cable before you notice a difference.  But that’s only my opinion.  Let me know if I can help you with anything else.