Verizon FiOS Installation - The “Before”
It’s just before 3pm on January 27, 2009 as I write this, and about 45 minutes ago, I got the call from the Verizon installer that he would be here at about 3 o’clock to install my FiOS internet connection. I’ve been waiting for Verizon’s fiber optic service to arrive in my neighborhood for over a year.
About six months ago, I upgraded my Comcast service to their highest-speed offering, “Power Boost.” The 8Mbps download speed was good for a while, but once we started to stream movies from NetFlix on our LG BD-300 Blu-ray player and download TV shows and films from iTunes on our AppleTV, even Comcast’s best started to choke.
The final straw was my decision to use Backblaze for an online, off-site backup of all of my data. Comcast’s measly 2Mbps upload speed turned my first Backblaze backup into a month-long process, this on a machine that is on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When I saw that first service van and curb-side Verizon FiOS sign proclaiming, “We’re upgrading your Internet” just down the street, Verizon’s 20 Mbps symmetrical (20 Mbps for download and upload), I decided to make the jump.
The technician should be here any moment, and I’m extremely curious to see if the service lives up to the hype. Using the tried-and-true speed tests at the locally-named Speedtest.net, my results were all over the map. I decided to give my Comcast connection the benefit of the doubt, and have below two “best case” tests results, one showing the fastest download speed at 9892 kb/s and the other showing the fastest upload at 5025 kb/s. The latter figure is particularly anomalous; in other tests, my upload speeds ranged from 1100 kb/s to 1980 kb/s. But it is what it is, and the Comcast gauntlet has been thrown.
Because Backblaze was the catalyst for my upgrade, I am particularly excited to see what gains FiOS will bring. Backblaze provides a simple link in the Mac Preference Pane to determine how long until your backup is completed. It’s a pretty coarse measure, but I’m not looking for laboratory-quality testing here. This isn’t Consumer Reports, after all. As it stands, I have one month before the 1.8 Tb (yep) update Backblaze is working on finally completes.
For the geekily inclined, I should note that I did all of my speed tests with all applications closed and with background sync or backup processes suspended. My Mac Pro is connected wirelessly on an 802.11g network to my Apple Time Capsule, which itself is wired directly into the Comcast cable modem. And yes, I know that cable’s shared connection means that speeds vary widely over the course of the day as nearby customers connect and disconnect. But again, I’m not planning on presenting my results at the upcoming Senate Hearing on The True Speediosity of Internet Connections, so the OCD folks reading this will need to “suck and deal,” as a friend would say.
More once the new connection is live. Stay tuned.
