The installation technician arrived at approximately 10:45 AM, with, as promised, a co-worker in tow. An hour and fifteen minutes later, with still no progress, reinforcements arrived. The original extra co-worker departed, and two more technicians joined. This would lead to there being a total of five different installation technicians which have worked on wiring us up to the new fiber connection.
The lead tech from the reinforcements had the wiring issues diagnosed relatively quickly, showed the assigned tech where he had screwed up, and they proceeded to punch down the wiring in to its proper locations. By one o’clock, we had phone and data coming over the fiber. Sweet.
Then I set to the task of dumping the free D-Link router provided for my Netgear WGT624 router, since it sports 802.11b and g wireless connectivity. Verizon FiOS, like a lot of DSL service, uses PPPoE. I made the necessary changes to the Netgear router, but still couldn’t connect to the Web, or check e-mail, on the PowerBook.
I had the Network preferences set to Automatic, and apparently PPPoE doesn’t like this. I had earlier set up a network location called Home-Wired VZ, and was able to connect on the new fiber connection with the PowerBook plugged in via Ethernet. So I duplicated that location, renamed it to Home-Wireless VZ, and changed the connection from Ethernet to Airport. Voila! Connected to the fiber wirelessly. C’est bon!
Michael urged me to test the speed. On the Upload Speed Test, I selected the Largest file size, and got the following results:
+ connection rating is 5 stars, the highest
+ upload speed was 1528 Kbps
+ the file uploaded at 187 kB/s
+ Testmy.net’s TruSPEED: 1635 Kbps
+ the connection, via Airport Extreme, is running 27 times faster than 56k and can upload 1 megabyte in 5.48 seconds
Then came the Download Speed Test, again, with the Largest file selected:
+ connection rating is, again, 5 stars
+ download speed is 3906 Kbps
+ connection downloaded the file at 477 kB/s
+ TRuSPEED 4179 Kbps
+ the connection, again via Airport Extreme, is running 70 times faster than 56K and can download a 1 MB file in 2.15 seconds
How do you like them apples, Lee?
Retrophisch