The FCC recently conducted a study of some of the top broadband ISPs in the country and measured customers’ actual bandwidth as compared to what the ISPs advertised. FiOS really came out on top.

The report is available on the FCC site. The bottom line, though, is that Verizon FiOS averaged nearly 120% of advertised speed (i.e., more than was advertised) and Cablevision was between 50% and 75% of advertised speeds. Latency (ping) was also heavily in FiOS’s favor.

FCC - Fios vs Cablevision

More than 78,000 consumers volunteered to participate in this study and a total of approximately 9,000 consumers were selected as potential participants and were supplied with specially configured routers. The data in this Report is based on a statistically selected subset of those consumers—approximately 6,800 individuals—and the measurements taken in their homes during March 2011. The participants in the volunteer consumer panel were recruited with the goal of covering ISPs within the U.S. across all broadband technologies, although only results from three major technologies—DSL, cable, and fiber-to-the-home—are reflected in
this Report. To account for network variances across the United States, volunteers were recruited from the four Census Regions: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. Within each Census Region, consumers were selected to represent broadband performance in three typical speed ranges: less than 3 Mbps, between 3 and 10 Mbps, greater than 10 Mbps.

The testing methodology itself required innovation on both the consumer, or “client,” side and on the ISP, or “server,” side. The server-side infrastructure, which comprised reference measurement points that were distributed geographically across nine different U.S. locations, was made available to SamKnows for the project by M-Lab, a non-profit organization that supports Internet research activities. Each consumer participant’s broadband performance was measured from a hardware gateway in his or her household to the off-net test node that had the lowest latency to the consumer’s address.

On the “client” side of the test, consumers self-installed a measurement gateway that was provided by SamKnows. These gateways, or “Whiteboxes,” were installed between the consumer’s computer and Internet gateway and came pre-loaded with custom testing software. The “Whitebox” software was programmed to automatically perform a periodic suite of broadband measurements while excluding the effects of consumer equipment and household broadband activity. This approach permitted a direct measure of the broadband service an ISP delivered to a consumer’s household.

Anyone who’s experienced both Cablevision and Verizon can probably corroborate these results. Unless Cablevision significantly improves their services (DVR/TV as well as Internet), at the same price there’s no way I’d go back to Cablevision; I’d even stick with Verizon if it meant spending $10-$20 more per month, the service is that much better.

Well, that was quite an ordeal. But Verizon came today and finally installed FiOS. All’s well that ends well, I suppose. My phone number was finally ported over and the internet is insanely fast. This is 25/25 internet with my desktop Fedora box plugged into the TP-Link router which is then plugged into the FiOS ActionTec router. I didn’t want to have to reconnect all my computers to a new SSID so I’ll just continue using the TP-Link until I have a reason not to.

FiOS 25/25 Speed Test - May 20th, 2011

One thing I did right away was change my DNS servers. The default DNS servers with Verizon were 68.237.161.12 and 71.243.0.12. By default, Verizon uses “DNS assistance,” meaning that DNS queries against these servers will return IP addresses when they should return NXDOMAIN, so if you mistype the hostname in a URL it can direct you to a page full of ads. You can disable this by replacing the last octet of the default DNS IP with 14. So for the two IPs above, it would be 68.237.161.14 and 71.243.0.14. I figured I’d compare the response times of these servers with Google’s 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. I used dig to time DNS requests and also used ping to measure latency. 68.237.161.14 was the fastest for me, followed by 8.8.4.4 and then 71.243.0.14, so those are my primary, secondary, and tertiary DNS servers.

Several weeks ago, I scheduled the FiOS install for 5/14/2011 and they said it would be between 8am and 5pm. I got confirmation emails (welcome to FiOS) and a confirmation call on 5/12. I waited all day yesterday for Verizon to show, and they never did. I called at 11:58 AM and gave my order number to see if they could tell me roughly what time the tech would be here, since I didn’t want to sit around all day if the tech wouldn’t be there until 4 PM. They couldn’t. They said we were still scheduled for today, between 8 and 5. I asked if they could call the tech scheduled to do the installation and see when he thought he’d get here and I was told they couldn’t.

At 5:45 we called Verizon to find out what happened, why the tech didn’t show, since we’d waited around the house all day. They told us the order had been put on hold 2 days before because Cablevision wouldn’t release our phone number. I understand things happen, but not calling to let me know, and then giving me incorrect info when I called, is inexcusable. The Verizon rep we spoke to afterwards wasn’t even apologetic. Disappointing.

Verizon is coming tomorrow to hook me back up with FiOS. I figured I’d do one final speedtest with Cablevision’s Optimum Online Boost (30 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up advertised). The speed’s been pretty consistent, but it’s just not as good as FiOS.

Bandwidth test:

Optimum Online Boost Speedtest 2011-05-13

Ping test:

Optimum Online Boost Pingtest.net latency test 2011-05-13

I’m not sure why these guys operate this way – they’re more than happy to lose me as a customer and then throw huge discounts at me to get me back. If they’d just give me a good price I’d love not to have to go through this rigmarole. But after being with Cablevision for 2 months I checked Verizon’s pricing and it beat my current deal with Cablevision.

FiOS digital voice with number ported for free; 25/25 Mbps internet; HMDVR free “forever” plus a second HD STB, Showtime, Movie Channel and Flix. Since I already had the battery thing installed last time I had FiOS they gave me a fair discount. Basically the whole package for $87/month + tax, price locked for 2 years, no contract. Not as great of a deal as I’d had with FiOS originally, but it’s pretty good, and FiOS’s service is definitely better than Cablevision’s. I’ve heard Cablevision was rolling out their “DVR plus” service with all programs recorded “in the cloud” rather than on the actual box, but it’s been two months and I haven’t heard of it coming to Long Island. So basically 2 years later Cablevision’s service is exactly the same while Verizon has iPhone apps to control the DVR and use the phone as a remote, plus DVR that’s much faster and just generally better service.

On a side note, I noticed tonight I was having problems trying to stream Netflix to my Wii. I tried loading netflix.com on my laptop and that also didn’t work, it said “couldn’t find server movies.netflix.com.” I tested this via dig on my linux box and sure enough, movies.netflix.com isn’t resolving against the default Cablevision nameserver (167.206.3.206) – getting a SERVFAIL:

[evan@lunix ~]$ dig movies.netflix.com

; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-P1-RedHat-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_5.3 <<>> movies.netflix.com
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 17569
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;movies.netflix.com.            IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
movies.netflix.com.     232     IN      CNAME   merchweb-frontend-1502974957.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com.

;; Query time: 2129 msec
;; SERVER: 167.206.3.206#53(167.206.3.206)
;; WHEN: Sun Apr 24 01:23:58 2011
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 103

I tried the same query against Google's nameserver (8.8.8.8) and it resolves correctly:

[evan@lunix ~]$ dig movies.netflix.com @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-P1-RedHat-9.3.6-4.P1.el5_5.3 <<>> movies.netflix.com @8.8.8.8
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 43718
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;movies.netflix.com.            IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
movies.netflix.com.     300     IN      CNAME   merchweb-frontend-1502974957.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com.
merchweb-frontend-1502974957.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com. 39 IN A 174.129.220.6

;; Query time: 34 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Sun Apr 24 01:37:26 2011
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 119

I set my router to resolve against 8.8.8.8 rather than whatever Cablevision provides and now it works. I'm not sure if this is related to the big EC2 disaster of the past few days but it looks more like Cablevision's fault than Amazon's or Netflix's.

Optimum Boost advertises 30 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up. Here’s a speed test I just ran at Ookla’s SpeedTest.net:

(My desktop is plugged into the router, the router is plugged into the Arris cablemodem.)

Here’s one of the last speed tests I did with Verizon, on 2/15. I had the 25/15 internet package:

(Desktop was plugged into 8-port Linksys 100 Mbit switch, the switch was plugged into the FiOS/ActionTec router.)

Verizon’s upload is much better than Cablevision’s, as you can see. Most people probably won’t notice it, but I do. Another thing to consider is that the FiOS router has pretty good WiFi built in. I got pretty good speeds using 802.11g on my laptop upstairs connected to the FiOS router downstairs. With Cablevision I went back to my old Netgear WGR614v7 router that I’d bought in 2009 after my trust Linksys WAP54G AP had died (at that point I was using my Linux box as router/NAT). The WGR614v7 is pretty crappy. The UI is fine and I guess for basic usage it’s acceptable, but the antenna is pretty small and the signal was very weak. When I connected 6-7 devices to it (Wii, 2 laptops, Mac Mini, 2 iPhones, Kindle) it would randomly not work on one of them. Rebooting the router fixed it, for a while. Somewhere in the logging facility of the router I saw an out-of-memory error. The kicker was that we’d get errors in the browser randomly when loading pages, and wifi speeds were pretty lousy – 10 Mbps down on the 30 Mbps Optimum connection.

I decided to right this wrong and spring for a new WiFi router. After some quick checking of Newegg I found the TP-LINK TL-WR841ND 802.11n router for $25 with free shipping and a free 802.11n USB adapter (TL-WN727N). Seemed like a no-brainer. I got it, set it up in under 10 minutes, plugged the N adapter into my wife’s laptop and can easily max the 30 Mbps cable connection from upstairs now. My laptop is still using G and the speeds & signal are pretty good. The TP-Link has 2 antennae and both are much larger than the Netgear’s single antenna; I can get a strong signal outside on my deck on the opposite side of the house from the router in the basement.

So we switched back to Cablevision and it went pretty well, but apparently Verizon users can’t call our house number (ported from Verizon to Cablevision). Verizon users have to call from their mobiles in order to complete the call. I’m guessing that Verizon hasn’t updated their systems to indicate that they no longer “own” our number and is trying to route the call inside their network. Sucks because I can’t imagine Verizon jumping to help fix this since I’m not their customer anymore.

As I expected/feared, Cablevision still blocks port 80 so I had to move my site to external hosting. I signed up with JustHost.com, which has (supposedly) unlimited storage and bandwidth transfer for ~$5/month. Not happy about their DNS handling, and that my 404 pages are apparently filled with ads & popups now, but with the discount code I found it came to about $42 for a year of hosting. Not bad.

Still cleaning up, hopefully all the existing links will work. WordPress’s import function is pretty good but I wasn’t able to pull the attachments off the old server (due to the port 80 block).

At least this seems way faster than my old Athlon box.

Edit: Ping times have gotten much better since the move:

So the credits are finally wearing off my FiOS bill. I was paying $49/month for about 8 straight months for all 3 services plus HBO & Cinemax (a ridiculous price) with great phone & internet, plus HMDVR and 2 boxes. My most recent bill was $127 which includes a $40 credit that ends this month, so next month’s bill will be $170 or so.

Cablevision’s been beating down my door for weeks to come back, but they couldn’t come close to the deal Verizon had given me so it was easy to fend them off. But after this recent bill I gave them a call and signed up for the Optimum Triple Play. They have a special deal for people coming back from FiOS: $69/month for all 3 services plus Boost (30/5 Mbps) and a DVR. I added another box and HBO and it came to $100.30. So as of Friday I’ll be on Cablevision and this website will probably be down until I find a new home for it – maybe WordPress.com.

I switched to FiOS in December, 2009, and I was pretty apprehensive, having been a Cablevision customer for many years. I really had no problem with Cablevision’s service, I just thought their pricing was much too high in the face of the new competition (and deals) Verizon was offering. I ended up going with Verizon due to their awesome deal, but now it’s almost a year later and I can’t imagine going back to Optimum. It’ll probably come down to price when the current promo pricing I have with Verizon ends, but if the price was equal then no contest – I’d stick with FiOS.

To cancel your Cablevision service, you need to call them.

• Nassau county: 516-364-8400.
• Suffolk county: 631-267-6900 and 631-727-6300.

Other phone numbers are listed here:

http://www.optimum.net/Support/PhoneList

Lots of power outages lately. Not the greatest time to move my site. Good thing I don’t need 99.99%+ uptime. Or even 95%…

I left Bluehost. They raised the prices (which seems to fly counter to what one would expect in the hosting industry with Google Apps breathing down their necks), and I realized I didn’t need it anyway. My MX records go right to Google. Anyway, time to go to sleep.

Wow. Glad I left. I imagine this will be temporary (like the HGTV ordeal earlier this year).

On another note, I got my 3rd FiOS bill – still running a credit. That’s $43 for 3.5 months of great service. Good luck competing with that, Optimum.

This is the second time this has happened: All the wifi devices in my house lose their connection to the FiOS router/access point (ActionTec MI424WR-GEN2). I checked my wired desktop and it wasn’t able to get an IP from the DHCP server (the router). The “Internet” light on the router was out. I unplugged the router and plugged it back in and it came back up fine. But this happened about a month ago too – I wonder if it’s a monthly thing? Either way, it’s annoying. Other than this, the internet service is phenomenal still.

So I got my second FiOS bill a couple of weeks ago. After the issue with my first bill was straightened out I ended up paying about $43 for the first 6 weeks of service. Well, my second bill was about $90, but applied a $180 credit on my account, so the bill showed -$91. So basically the first 3 months of service will end up costing me about $43. Even if it comes to $90/month for the remainder of the contract, this is such a huge savings that I don’t see how Cablevision could match it.

Ran a ping test at pingtest.net today. Overall I can’t find fault with the FiOS service so far. Port 80 and 443 are open and I have them forwarded to my Linux box so I can actually run a webserver in my basement. I’m debating moving this domain over to my own linux box, since it’s super low traffic, but I probably won’t.

FiOS Ping Test for Nassau County, NY

Only (minor) problems with FiOS are:

• With FiOS Digital Voice there doesn’t seem to be a “distinctive ring” option, which I had found handy with Cablevision.

• The 10-digit dialing is annoying. It’s nice not to have to dial the “1″ before a long-distance number, but having to dial the 516 area code even for other 516 numbers is annoying. I know that’s how it is for everyone in NYC already though regardless of phone provider.

I’m waiting to see what my bill for month 2 will be. Lots of credits for month 1 so that will be extra low.

Not good. The rep I spoke with had said she’d intercept the first bill and apply all the credits up front. I guess being Christmas she couldn’t, so I got this first bill of $208.22.

This is WAY more than it should be, even without the credits applied. There’s a $40/month credit missing, and they’re charging me for HBO & Cinemax, which I was told was a free trial for 3 months. On the plus side, the taxes are lower than I expected. Attaching scans of the bill. If this doesn’t get resolved when I call on Monday I’ll be heading back to Cablevision, I guess. The whole point of this exercise was to save money.

FiOS bill page 1

FiOS bill page 3

Update: New bill amount after talking to the sales rep is $42.17. That’s better. We’ll see what the 2nd and 3rd bills are.

Fios was installed today. Took longer than expected but I guess it went well. FiOS digital voice is pretty good, has one or two niceties that Optimum Voice didn’t (caller ID info in the emails it sends, for instance). The Motorola STBs are way better than the Scientific Atlanta (or whatever) that CV provides… I’m awestruck that when you hit the Channel + button, the channel actually changes.

Cablevision offered to woo me back again but since the service was already installed I said no thanks. They did say they’ll pay the termination fee for me to go back. Interesting… Anyway, Fios’s speeds are pretty good, I got as high as 26/20 on the 25/15 line. The Actiontec router is pretty nice too (model #MI424WR-GEN2).

FiOS speed test to Cablevision's server 2009-12-04

Well, this was unexpected. Verizon is really playing hardball with pricing. When I called this morning to cancel my install appointment, Verizon countered and they offered an extra $30/month discount. I asked for an extra STB for free (I figured all they can do is say no) and while the rep said she couldn’t do that, she did increase the credit to $40/month which would more than cover the cost of the 2nd box. So as of this moment, I’m on for FiOS tomorrow.

Ain’t competition great?