Re: Avenger's Question Thread
Avenger
Enthusiast - Level 3
So just to be clear because I get help here a lot better than on the phone with verizon, is it true that because I have FiOS internet and not TV, I am unable to use the outlets in my house?
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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
Provider7
Contributor - Level 3

Stick with me here.  Twice in this series of post it was mentioned that the ONT has to be within 20' of your breaker box.  Relocating an Ont is no easy task, so eliminate that from your thinking.  There is a way the technician can send the data signal over all the existing coax in the house.  There is a special splitter we have that enables this.  I was under the impression that you had Fios Tv.  Sorry.

The easiest route I would think for you would be to have a wire run from the Ont to somewhere more central in the house.  Werent' you going to have a Technician visit?

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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
Avenger
Enthusiast - Level 3

Sorry I must have missed the part where there has to be a maximum of said length. 😛

I was kinda disappointed that I wasn't informed earlier on about not having FiOS TV = no use of cable outlets. It's no one here's fault though. 😛

I didn't need the technician to run the wire. I got a 50" and a 25" coaxial cable and connected them, from the ONT to the router. Now the router is within 11 feet of my computer and 360, did this over the weekend :). signal strength is excellent. The wire isn't that exposed; 90% of it is hidden behind carpets and furniture. Plus drilling walls is a no no for me.

Though now, I am trying to do the best I can to optimize my connection, whether that means moving the router or picking a different router channel. By doing so I use a upload/download meter site that gives me my speed. (though so far poor router signal has effed up the speed more than anything). I have 10/2 FiOS plan but what I really have is a speed of 9/2, so download speed is affected either due to cable length or bad signal (must have either one due to the unchangeable distance between my computer/360 and the ONT). I have not tried all the channels yet so..maybe I can have a little higher than 9 mb download speed.

Just out of curiosity I read ONT's converts fiber optic/light signals into copper/electric signal. So does that make the copper/electric signals faster? Or does the ONT play another role? I'm not thinking of moving it anymore (for now).

Finally, a more important question is this...I will be glad if someone knew the answer to this

Say if I run a 75" coaxial cable between my ONT and my router so that my router reaches a certain spot, and someone else (who has FiOS TV) uses a splitter to split the ONT signal so that a certain outlet can be used for the router. Say the total distance between the ONT and the router is also 75" (that means the sum of the cable length from the ONT, length to the splitter, then to the outlet, and then the cable length from the outlet to the router). Both of us have the same exact router settings and are under the same ideal conditions.

Who's connection would be faster and why? If they are supposed to be the same than I can no longer be disappointed about not being able to use my outlets (if using outlets for routers is even possible...)

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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
sazifraz45
Newbie

There's a lot of information being shared,but there are still some extenuating circumstances that could effect the answers in here.  The question about the DSL and available download speeds.  The speed of DSL connections available to you are dependent on the condition of the copper line leading up to and into your home and more importantly the lenghth of the copper run to your home.  A German physicist, Georg Ohm express this relationship and how it applies to electrical curcuits, it states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportionall to the potential differencee or voltagee across the two points, and inversely proportional to the resistancee between them. (It's all Wiki to me)  Short answer is the the futher away you live from the central office the slower you internet connection is likely to be and outside of 18,000 feet DSL ceases to be a viable option.  One of the attractive features of using fiber optics instead of copper is, light pulses over a glass line, no resistance, no appreciable signal loss, so it doesn't matter how far away you live.  Neglegible signal loss means enhanced bandwidth for consumers, and more customers, Verizon can reachout beyond the 18,000 foot barrier. 

   

       As for the portability of your router on the inside of your home.  A lot of that has to do with the type of installation that is provided.  When Fios was first offered to the public, a typical installation meant the running of a communication grade CAT5E line from the ONT to the "main computer" in your home.  This type of connection was almost always delivering the provisioned upload/download speeds. (currently a wired connection is always faster that a wireless connection)  But it added a good deal of time to the typical Fios install.  So Verizon started using a MoCa type install where the installer was able to "annex" existing coaxial cables in your home to minimize both the time required for installation and the need to drill more holes in customers homes.  If you are planning a new Fios (data/phone only) install the tech may choose to connect one of the coaxial lines in your home to a splitter, and run a shorter piece of cable to your router.  It is possible, depending on the installer to "MoCa" the whole home essentially converting all of the coaxial outlets in your home.  This would give you the ability to place your router anywhere in your home where there is an outlet.  In Avengers case the best case option is to add Fios Tv if available.  When Verizon installs TV they esentially provide this MoCa connection throughout your home.

      In response to the 75' coax question, the connection without the splitter will deliver the most efficient connection.  A high end two way splitter still suffers a 3.5 db loss on each leg.  So when the installer comes out to install Fios Tv, they usually want to remove any cheaper splitters and limit the number of spltters from the ONT to the **bleep**hest TV. 

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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
mattheww50
Contributor - Level 2

Ohms are a problem that easily overcome, because resistance is pure attenuation. For regular telephone service, until the lines get very long (literally dozens of miles), it is easily overcome. At the frequencies used for voice telephone service, the copper pair behaves like a simple Direct current electric circuit.

This is not the case for DSL. At the frequencies used to transmit DSL service, the copper pair is a radio frequency transmission line, which means it has substantial Inductive and capacitive components that result in very different behavior than a simple DC current electric circuit. These characteristics produce not only losses, but standing wave interference, dielectric losses, signal reflections, and signal/waveform distortion. Those are the things that determine the ultimate DSL performance for a copper pair. If the problem was purely losses, it could always be overcome with simple amplification. Unfortunately simple losses aren't the problem for DSL, the problem is the copper pairs used for the local loop weren't designed  for use as a  radio frequency transmission line, and don't behave especially well when they are used for that purpose. The longer the pair gets, the worse the behavior. If the waveform get distorted enough, no amount of amplification and/or signal processing will allow you to recover the data that was carried on the wave form. That is the long and short of the DSL problem.

The Cable people don't really have this problem, because their distribution network IS designed for and as a radiofrequency transmission line.

DC resistance, and DC ohms are simply not very useful in determing radio frequency transmission line characteristics, and there is no assurance at all that in a radio frequency transmission line that voltage in the line is directly proportional to the distance from the source. Transmission line theory is  a full semester course in Electrical Engineering. It is anything but simple or intuitively obvious.

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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
Avenger
Enthusiast - Level 3

Thanks a lot Saz, and I expected the opposite for the second question (phew). Also it turns out the "standard" channels on my wireless router (1, 6, and 11,) turned out to be the sh1ttiest of them all...why is that? My router is about 11 feet from my computer so...maybe that can explain why channel 8 is generating 9.36 mb download speed while the standards are doing 8.9's.

Btw what's db?

For a while I was wondering...is it true that a cable (Ethernet or coax) kept straight delivers a better connection than when it's curving around things? It doesn't make sense honestly, but I can see how the speed can be connected if a big guy was stepping on it. 

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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
Telcoguru
Master - Level 1
If you connect the computer with an Ethernet cable and run Verizon Connection Wizard and choose intermittent wireless connectivity it will fix your trouble for you. http://www22.verizon.com/ResidentialHelp/Generic/FiOS+Internet+Generic/FiOS+Connection+Wizard/Questi...
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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
mattheww50
Contributor - Level 2

YOu will usually get slightly lower losses from straight line coaxial cable runs, but the difference are very small unless the coax run is very long, and has lots of turns. The mechanical stress affects the dielectric characteristics slightly, and may create flaws in the shield. In applications where this would be a problem, a non-flexible coaxial cable, such as Heliax® is used (usually in high power transmitter applications). In a residental application, those losses are probably not meaningful, since they are small compared to normal cable losses.

db is an abberivation for decibel.  Literally 1/10th of a bel. It is 10 x  log(ratio). The ratio is the input signal/output signal.  If the input signal is twice the signal at the output, the loss is 3db (technically 3.1db) because log 2=.310.  If the output is 1/10 of the input, the ratio would be ten, so the loss would be 10db. if it is 100, the loss would be 20db,

1000 is 30db.  So when a DSL modem is reporting a downlink loss of 60db, not much is getting through (and you probably won't get the promised speed unless it is 768 or now 1024kbps. The losses in the copper pair when used as a radio frequency transmission line are far higher than they are when the copper pair is used a voice grade telephone line.

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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
Avenger
Enthusiast - Level 3

...What does the FIOS connection wizard above do besides fixing connection issues? Just so this is clear my wireless is working fine. Unless the wizard optimizes a wireless connection I don't see what use there is to it in my case.

The best wireless channel delivers about 9.36 mb download speed whereas...a 50" Ethernet cable I bought 3 years ago added more than 1 extra MB for download speed, 10.62...wow. Upload speed is the same under any circumstance (it's always 1.89).

Honestly other than for connection reasons I wouldn't use the 50", for just the way it looks...but I'll probably end up getting a slightly shorter one that delivers faster (heard CAT5 and Ethernet are different), or I could stick with my wireless, depending on how much lag there is while playing Soul Calibur 4. 😛

Thanks a lot guys for your help.

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Re: Avenger's Question Thread
Avenger
Enthusiast - Level 3

I couldn't find this anywhere on google for some reason...

- Which delivers information faster generally speaking? Ethernet cables (CAT5, CAT5e or CAT6) or coaxial cable?

- I heard ONT's can use an Ethernet cable coming out of it instead of a coax one. If so, can you have an Ethernet cable of your choice attached to it, or is there an Ethernet cable built in to the ONT that you must use?

- I have heard long ethernet distances have signal degredation issues, but I don't know how long one has to be for it to screw up. So, keeping in mind I have FiOS 10/2 mbps plan, am I better off using 3 connected coaxial cables totaling 85 feet, or using 3 connected CAT5e wires totaling 85 ft? I must have 85 ft from my ONT to the router for the router to be where I want it.

- I have the 10/2 mbps FIOS plan. Which ethernet cables are best for me to use for my network? Will anything beyond the standard CAT5 do me any good?

Thanks a lot for all your previous help, but I'm still a technical noob as you can see.

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