It isn't often that I get out-teched by my friends and family. Actually it happens, never. I went to my moms house in Delaware for her recent birthday. While I was there I of course had to get online to get some things done. The access point was pretty darn snazzy, having not only B/G/N but also a 5 port ether switch and USB port for hooking up storage! I noticed right away that my speed was quite a bit snappier than usual.
I went to Dslreports.com and fired up the java speed test. They have a great array of testing options, including speed tests via flash and java, hosted at mutiple locations throughout the country. If you create an account you get access to even more tools as well as a test history.
Turns out my moms has 10Mbit fiber running straight into her living room. Note the 9878 Kbit downlink speed. That's pretty damn close to 10Mb considering typical network overhead. The 1872 Kbit uplink slaughters my downlink speed at home!
However, this shares duty with the phone service and the 1500 channel TV. Not sure if it's pre-apportioned for the different services or if the big vented box on the wall does some on-the-fly adjustments in quality. Most users wouldn't notice a downshift in voice quality on their phone service. If the video starts banding or the downloads take longer that may register some complaints. I didn't notice any differences in throughput when the TV was being channel surfed or when folks were on the phone. Didn't have time to run exhaustive tests while doing family-time things (like tinkering with my relatives computers and cell phones!).
There is a gigantic fiber CSU bolted to the wall behind an endtable.
(sorry mom for showing cobwebs in your immaculate house!)
. It is pretty gigantic. I placed an LG Envy on top to give you an idea of scale. It's like having two DVD players bolted to the wall. Usually customer premises/demarcation boxes would be in a more discrett location. However the unique architecture of my mom's place and her picky lanlord dictated this unsightly placement.Apparently she only pays $100 a month for the fiber. This includes her "cable TV" which they call FIOS. It also provides her home landline and her wireless phone service, though the last is just a billing convenience, not a function of the CSU.
The TV end is okay, I am kind of dissapointed that the channels are broken out into regular channels and HD channels. The HD channels are not available unless you have the requisite HD capable display and set top box. They are merely duplicates of lower number channels at a presumably higher resolution. Not the most elegant solution is it? You would think it would simply autodetect the type of output you are using and source the correct signal. But you know they gotta have market segmentation and all that come with it (like price tiers). So instead you channel surf past the regular channels then you start seeing "landing pages" for HD channels you cant access. Somewhat akin to when you surf into a block of pay per view channels, except you can't "accidentally" order a blue movie.
I found it kind of ridiculous that this setup required not one, not two, but thr
ee seperate pieces of gear in the enduser's home. There is the aformentioned CSU or demarcation box(the big white thingy that looks an awful lot like an Atari 1080ST). As well as a set top box that interfaces with the IR remote, and finally a switch/access point for your interenet access. Any one of these boxes should have been designed to provide all 3 functions. At least combine the set top box and the internet connectivity. Most folks are gonna use wifi anyway, so unsightly cat-5 cables snaking out from behind the flat panel shouldn't be a concern.
