Outage (and why Verizon FIOS sucks)
So, I do know for a fact that there are some people who read my blog prior to it being unceremoniously being taken down due to us moving to Philadelphia and choosing Verizon as our ISP. I have to apologize for being down for the last 7 months.
I was checking out ISP’s just before we moved from Rochester and realized that Verizon was offering FIOS Internet in my building. I quickly signed up for it with a one year contract.
I love the speed. It is awesome. I have never had an outage so far with respect to the internet connectivity. I do have to reboot the crappy Actiontec router that came with it once in a while. It just seems to hang when I try to download or stream copious amounts of data.
However, what I did not know was the fact that Verizon blocks incoming traffic to port 80 and port 25. C’mon now, are you kidding me? Such policies make me laugh and cringe at the same time. I can run bittorrent to dowload massive amounts of content, all of it legal BTW ;-), run servers on all other ports but cannot have incoming traffic to these two ports. I just do not understand. I read some forums, Verizon lets you run servers only if you buy their business package.
I wish I were smart enough to realize what Verizon was thinking.
As a result however, I have had to transfer all my content from my trusty old AMD K6/2 to a managed ISP. I have had 1 and 1 as my domain registrar for the last couple of years and they have reasonable hosting plans. I have decided to move my domains over there till either Verizon changes its policy or I move to Comcast, the other ISP in Philadelphia. I am currently paying $4.99 a month to host this blog and my website. Do check it out. It has a nice slide show going now. The 1 and 1 package also comes with 2 blogs that can be set up through their control panel and use Wordpress, something I am comfortable with and have used i the past. The only drawback is, with the cheap plan, I miss out on all the little customizations I had going on with the older version of the blog.
I was also able to hack the Kubrick template to suit my needs for the main page. I may change it later but I am happy with the way it looks now.
Well, all said and done, we are back online. Hope I can continue to post on a regular basis.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:07
I called Verizon FIOS to order phone, internet, and cable prior to my move in. My Consumer Order Summary was dated 3-28-08, and the scheduled installation date was 4-7-08. I reviewed the e-mail and all looked well. I move into my new house and install date comes. They setup an 8 AM-noon window. I already had the Optical Network Terminal unit (ONT) in my house, so I figured this would be cake for them. I am a Sys Admin at an ISP, so the internet stuff I could do myself with ease.
On install day, no one showed, no one called. I had my mobile with me at ALL times. So around 1:30 PM I called Verizon to see what was going on. If something came up, I had a week off to move in and if they needed to come by in a day or two, I was totally cool with that. After about an hour on hold I got in touch with a “state level” dispatcher. That said that there were “no facilities available for my order” and I was called. Nope, I wasn’t called; they did have my cell (which I had with me all of the time) in their records. I wanted them to come out later in the week if possible since I was home. They said that their next available time for me was 4-12-08, which was a day where I was going to a wedding. The next available time after that was at the end of the month, on a work day for me.
Basically because they did not show up, or even notify me with a reason, they put me at the back of the line. I was trying to escalate my request and the support only gave me unreasonable dates and that “no facilities available for my order” BS. I later wanted to get my copper line put back so I could at least get phone service, and after a long wait in hold they gave me the end of the month as a date. Basically I was being run around in circles and being shoved to the end of the line because Verizon screwed up my installation. I was told the only way I could get it sooner is if I “knew an installer who’d do me a favor,” and I was pretty much screwed with the window of time I had to get the service installed. The salesperson fed me a load of bull and the installer didn’t even call me with a reason. I tried to figure out what “no facilities available for my order” meant, and why this was such a problem since I already had the ONT in my house. Half of their work was already done.
The same day, I called a local cable company who installed my phone, internet, and cable the next day. They showed up on time and did the normal pre and post appointment verification. I unplugged the ONT in my house and let the battery go out. Verizon gave me such a lousy customer experience I swore I would never do business with them, and be sure to let other people know about their awful customer service and commitments they setup and do not honor. Verizon screwed up prior when they bought Bell Atlantic, and screwed up our perfectly find DSL service I had around 98/99. My money is going to a competitor, and Verizon won’t see if because they have abysmal customer service. I am certainly interested in fiber optic lines connected to my house, but so long as Verizon is the only provider, I will happily do without.
James
Herndon, VA
January 12th, 2009 at 19:26
I work at Verizon and have never used it, and will never use it.
For your Internet, go with Comcast Cable Internet- they are waay better and faster. And yes, I run servers on any port I want. They don’t police my ports (at least where I live).