Frontier Fiber Question

[joesxm3]

I am about ready to pull my hair out (despite being bald) after being run in circles on the phone trying to ask a simple question.

I have had lots of problems with my Xfinity Internet dropping off 5 or 10 times per day and gotten fed up to the point of starting to order Frontier Fiber. I am in the correct location and my order is almost placed.

My run around with Xfinity led to them coming and checking, saying it was the power company problem. Power company coming and reconnecting my house to the pole and saying nothing wrong. Had to pay $200 to hire an electrician to search for the alleged amps that were getting onto the co-ax cable when there should be none. Electrician could not find anything.

So I figured if I got Frontier Fiber I would have a fiber optic cable that would not have electricity in it and maybe side step the supposed problem.

My friend just told me that the "Fiber" is only on the pole and from the pole to my house is copper wire. I tried to ask that to Frontier and got nowhere.

So my question is, when Frontier says "100% fiber optic" does that mean I have a fiber optic cable coming into my house and some sort of fiber optic modem instead of a cable modem?

Thanks.

 

[joesxm3]

I did more searching and it sounds like they put an "optical network terminal" in the closet or garage and then you run cat-6 cable to a WiFi router.

It seems that the ONT needs grounded power. I suppose I can put a UPS and plug the ONT into that.

Does this seem like the way it works?

 

[FI_RElater]

I don't know about Frontier....

but my fiber connection goes all the way to inside the house. The box then has coax and Cat 5/6 leading out

edit:the box is next to the breaker box, where it draws any power

 

[MichaelB]

I did more searching and it sounds like they put an "optical network terminal" in the closet or garage and then you run cat-6 cable to a WiFi router.

When I was looking at fiber from AT&T this is how they intended to set it up (garage). Not sure about the grounding, but I though it was recommended to ground all cable signals coming into the home.

 

[joesxm3]

The ONT needs to be plugged into grounded power, but if the fiber signal is light, I don't see how stray electricity could affect it.

The alleged Xfinity issue was that the extra amps on the coax made the cable modem reset itself. That was their story at least. However most of the time the Internet drops the cable modem does not seem to be resetting and the Internet light on it is still on.

I suppose if I could try tracert on it when it is out I might see. Last time I tried that it seemed that the newer windows did not have that command on the home version.

 

[MichaelB]

My experience with Comcast has left me skeptical of their diagnoses. I nonetheless find them better than AT&T. No recent experience with any other cable provider.

In my case, when I’ve had unresolved or poorly handled issues I’ve been willing to spend a couple of hundred $$ just to try an alternative knowing it might not work.

 

[joesxm3]

Me too.

Xfinity gave me a good deal initially and for a few years when I pushed them. $85 for internet, basic tv and HBO. When I was busy with vivid they jacked it to $160 and I had too much going on to resist.

I also get two cell phones from Xfinity for really cheap, but that requires that I buy internet since they ride on WiFi when they can so Xfinity can avoid paying Verison. Not to mention dozens of accounts linked to my Comcast email address, which I think goes away if I drop internet.

That said, at this point I am fed up to the point of buying Frontier for $45 a month just to see if it works. I skipped the free gift card so I can cancel anytime.

 

[Freedom56]

We have Hotwire fiber at our Condo in Florida. It is Fiber optic into the optical terminal in the condo and then CAT 6 to the router and CAT 6 to each room. Our condo was pre-wired for both coax and fiber optic and also Cat 6 wiring to all rooms from the terminal.

As far as internet dropping off several times per day. We had that problem also at our home in California (coax not fiber). Spectrum investigated and found that someone was using an illegal cable modem and grabbing all the band width in our area.

 

[joesxm3]

Oh to have a modern house wired for technology. I got Comcast so long ago I can't even remember. That might be part of the problem.

The illegal modem idea sounds interesting. However a new guy on the street moved in three years ago two houses down and buys gig speed (I buy 100mb). He says his is fine all the time. Maybe he has newer wires. Or maybe he is the one sucking up all the bandwidth. There have been several younger neighbors in new houses added, so the street may just be overloaded.

One other possibly foolish wrinke is that the old coax comes into the basement and seems to be irreparably mingled with some romax wires out of the breaker box. I suppose I should have just run a new coax from the outside straight to my modem, but no-one thought of that.

The electrician and maybe Xfinity said not to worry about the mingled wires since they are insulated.

 

[Qs Laptop]

I just went through the same hassle with intermittent internet dropouts that you are experiencing. You might want to take a look at this thread.

https://www.early-retirement.org/fo...ot-intermittent-internet-dropouts-115365.html

Could you elaborate on this, "My run around with Xfinity led to them coming and checking, saying it was the power company problem. Power company coming and reconnecting my house to the pole and saying nothing wrong."

When Xfinity came to your house did they check the coax cable from the pole into your house and up to the point where it connects to your modem? They should have checked signal voltage levels.

Because is makes no sense for the power company to check on the electricity hookup from the power pole into your circuit breaker box. What exactly did the power company check?

 

[joesxm3]

Xfinity put some sort of wrap-around amp meter on one of the cables. It has been a year since then, but I think it was the coax cable. It may have been the ground, but I don't think so because when it was OK they had a barely visible amp amount that would go from something like .1 amps to 3 amps (don't quote me on this - just memory).

They disconnected the cable from my house and measured and also climbed the pole to get at the signal booster, which they said I was the first house after the booster. They said that they had no extra amps on their wires.

They seemed to think that there was some electricity flowing around my house wires that was not going properly to ground. I don't claim to understand, but my impression of what was said is that the power company has the dominant way for current to flow away from the house and it should be taking that path. There was also a ground comping off of the Xfinity stuff. My memory is fuzzy, but it seemed to be going into a rod stuck in the ground or maybe into the cellar and onto a water pipe, or maybe both. When the electrician came he checked this and maybe switched it to the main ground on the breaker panel, but not sure.

So, Xfinity said that I needed to call the power company and tell them that their grounding connection to my house was not right. When the power company came they said that for this type of call they don't investigate, but instead just climb up and reconnect the two or three really thick wires coming from the pole to my house. Supposedly there was some device that they called "the beast" that they could have used to measure stuff but that was not used. The power company guy had some sort of measuring device that he hooked up and said that everything was OK from his point of view.

The electrician was not that familiar with cable TV stuff, but he did various measuring, including unhooking the coax and touching the middle pin and making a wire to maybe ground something to the power company meter box.

While all this was going on I would run inside and turn off all my dehumidifiers and air conditioners and turn them back on etc.

One suspicious thing that made me think I may have found the problem at the time was that one sump pump had blown and was running constantly, but after that had been removed the problems still continued.

The problem seemed to not be as bad and maybe even stopped for many months. This August it seemed to be starting up again. I asked the electrician if it might be that the ground was very dry and the grounding rod into the soil was not conducting electricity properly. He said it conceivably could be but unlikely since electricity would take the easiest path and go out to the power company rather than to the grounding rod.

What Xfinity said was happening was that when the coax had the extra amps on it, the modem thought there was a problem and reset. But I don't know if they meant a full reset like pulling the plug or if it was just some partial reset.

When I lose the Internet now, sometimes I unplug the modem. Other times I just let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes and it comes back. In this case my tablet sometimes says "a network change has been detected". The TV is on a splitter and sometimes the screen goes black and then comes right back. I don't watch TV much.

I have the Xfinity app on my phone and when I lose the Internet it says that my hub or modem (forget the term) is offline. When things are working and I run the test it says that I get 119 MB out of the 100 MB I am paying for and things run fine.

Losing the Internet is somewhat random. It might drop off 5 times during the morning, but when I watch Amazon Prime or HBO Max using the Internet at night with my dad it can go a couple hours with no problem. In the past month maybe only two times while watching at night.

Also when it goes off it almost seems like it was on and I get to do a few things that almost seem like they are then causing the loss of Internet.

I keep all my windows machines up to date on Microsoft and run McAfee. I have two Amazon Fire tables that are old and repeatedly lose WIFI and have to be restarted and it hooks right back up. As I write this I wonder if they might have picked up something bad. Maybe I should turn them off for a day or two and see if I lose the Internet.

At this point I my Frontier order is almost in, but installation not scheduled. I would hate to think that it may have been something stupid like malware on the tablets.

BTW - last year they put in new coax connectors and splitters and gave me a new modem. A month or so ago, after the problem returned, the 3 foot coax cable from the splitter to the modem broke off (not sure why maybe they tightened it too much). I replaced it with the one that came in the modem box. I thought that would fix the problem, but no.

The fact that I get 119 MB when it works makes me think that it is not some loose wire type of issue.

 

[Telly]

..........So I figured if I got Frontier Fiber I would have a fiber optic cable that would not have electricity in it and maybe side step the supposed problem.

My friend just told me that the "Fiber" is only on the pole and from the pole to my house is copper wire. I tried to ask that to Frontier and got nowhere.

So my question is, when Frontier says "100% fiber optic" does that mean I have a fiber optic cable coming into my house and some sort of fiber optic modem instead of a cable modem?

Thanks.

My FIOS setup is fiber all the way to the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) hanging on the outside of the garage, by the electric meter box. A ground wire is run from the ONT to a clamp put on the outside of the meter box. The ONT is powered by a low-voltage cable coming through the garage wall, from the ONT power supply box inside, which has a wall wart that plugs into a 120 volt AC outlet. The ONT power supply box has some power and battery status LEDs on it, and an an audible alarm that intermittently chirps if AC power is lost. The box also has a few amp-hour 12 volt battery, that powers enough ONT circuitry to keep the inside-wired house phone connection up for a while. The battery does not support TV or internet if AC power is lost. I have replaced that battery a few times.

Except for wired house phone that connects to the ONT, the high-speed connection into the house is via satellite-quality coax, and it uses the Motorola MOCA TV over Internet RF protocol. I bought and ran the coax myself, so no installation person would have to stumble through my moonscape-levels attic. A 2-way splitter splits off coax signal to set-top TV box, and also to the modem.

The Verizon/Frontier FIOS system is fiber to the home. There is a single wire that is part of the fiber cable. It serves no operating purpose and is not connected to anything. It is used to attach a locator transmitter to, like the wire at a gas meter, so a signal can be put into the fiber cable to locate underground cable, if needed. Just like locating a plastic gas line. Without a wire running with a plastic gas line, or a fiber cable, there would be nothing to detect.

As far as quality of service, it's great, until it isn't. Frontier is a PITA to deal with. A couple years ago, after they bought the Verizon phone and FIOS fiber business, they went bankrupt. I assume they came out of BK eventually. Due to major construction in my area, a long new underground fiber drop needed to be installed for me. Two guys showed up in an unmarked pickup, with a Vermeer cable driller/puller on a trailer behind it. They didn't use it, and say they never do. Instead, they just used two wider, flat spades. They each just stuck them in the ground at edge of street, driveway, and sidewalk, and pushed/pulled the spade handle forward/backward, to create a slot in the soil that they just pushed the cable down into. Really shlockey. Wrecked plastic edging, ran cable through expansion joint between sidewalk and driveway, etc.

When things quit, or go intermittent, it takes hours on the phone with Frontier. And they screw up almost every time. It takes days for them to come out. And if they fix internet but kill phone, days more for me to get them out or look at their end to find out what they didn't set right, in the repair. It's disheartening, the level of Bozoness I've encountered.

Like I said, when it works, it works. When it doesn't...

 

[Telly]

Xfinity put some sort of wrap-around amp meter on one of the cables. It has been a year since then, but I think it was the coax cable. It may have been the ground, but I don't think so because when it was OK they had a barely visible amp amount that would go from something like .1 amps to 3 amps (don't quote me on this - just memory).

They disconnected the cable from my house and measured and also climbed the pole to get at the signal booster, which they said I was the first house after the booster. They said that they had no extra amps on their wires.

They seemed to think that there was some electricity flowing around my house wires that was not going properly to ground. I don't claim to understand, but my impression of what was said is that the power company has the dominant way for current to flow away from the house and it should be taking that path. There was also a ground comping off of the Xfinity stuff. My memory is fuzzy, but it seemed to be going into a rod stuck in the ground or maybe into the cellar and onto a water pipe, or maybe both. When the electrician came he checked this and maybe switched it to the main ground on the breaker panel, but not sure.

So, Xfinity said that I needed to call the power company and tell them that their grounding connection to my house was not right. When the power company came they said that for this type of call they don't investigate, but instead just climb up and reconnect the two or three really thick wires coming from the pole to my house. Supposedly there was some device that they called "the beast" that they could have used to measure stuff but that was not used. The power company guy had some sort of measuring device that he hooked up and said that everything was OK from his point of view.

It sounds like, if they were using the measuring equipment correctly, that they found significant AC current running along the shield of your coax. There should not be. If your house has a local grounding problem, that could cause it.
Your house is "grounded" two ways. One, a local ground to water pipe, long grounding rod, etc. Second, via the neutral lead coming from your power company. A 240 volt AC service drop has 3 conductors. L1, L2, and Neutral. The identification of L1 and L2 are interchangeable. It is the output of a transformer. L1 is one end of the transformer's secondary winding, L2 is the other end, and Neutral is the center-tap of the secondary winding.

Measured with a voltmeter, it's 120-0-120, meaning 120 volts measured from L1 to Neutral, 120 measured from L2 to Neutral, and 240 volts measured across L1 to L2. Those are nominal voltages, around here, with big air conditioning loads, we're more 125-0-125 to counter voltage drop with loads. As an aside, people who refer to 240 service as "220" or the half as "110" are way out of date! That was many many years ago!
Anyway, the whole purpose of explaining the AC power feed, is to note the Neutral. If you have a higher-resistance connection from your Neutral to the power company's, then your local neutral grounding method is taking current, which can cause currents to flow on the coax due to different ground potentials, your ground, versus the outside-world ground. That is probably what the power company was trying to prove.

If "their" neutral is good, they might have clipped off and re-clamped the neutral, and they often do L1 and L2 also while they are there, to take the splice clamps out of the picture. Splice clamps can age, and develop some resistance, especially with water intrusion over time causing corrosion.

There is an air-cooled AC power dummy load with built-in voltmeter that is often used to check the status of the splice clamps, etc. Usually, they pull the meter out of the meter box, and attach big jumper clamp jaws, to L1, L2, and Neutral on the drop side (to monitor everything upstream of the meter box). They turn on the load to L1, and look at the voltage drop, then repeat for L2. If they see more than a couple volts drop under the heavy load on either, there is a problem to find, the splice clamps are first on the list. (The Neutral is used in each of those tests)

They also check out the prongs on the meter box itself, that squeeze the bars on the Meter. Sometimes the meter box prongs loose their squeeze tension with age, which adds resistance. Pulling out and pushing in the meter a time or two will tell them. If it is too easy (Bad), or significant pressure (Good).

 

[Freedom56]

Oh to have a modern house wired for technology. I got Comcast so long ago I can't even remember. That might be part of the problem.

The illegal modem idea sounds interesting. However a new guy on the street moved in three years ago two houses down and buys gig speed (I buy 100mb). He says his is fine all the time. Maybe he has newer wires. Or maybe he is the one sucking up all the bandwidth. There have been several younger neighbors in new houses added, so the street may just be overloaded.

One other possibly foolish wrinke is that the old coax comes into the basement and seems to be irreparably mingled with some romax wires out of the breaker box. I suppose I should have just run a new coax from the outside straight to my modem, but no-one thought of that.

The electrician and maybe Xfinity said not to worry about the mingled wires since they are insulated.

These hackers with illegal modems use your modem's MAC address to steal your bandwidth. The provisioning of bandwidth is done by software at your provider's office and the MAC address on your modem is assigned the bandwidth in your plan. When someone steals your MAC address, they take your bandwidth cutting you off. They alternative valid MAC addresses causing intermittent drop-outs among several customers. This is what was happening in our area until they person was caught. This has been going on for over 10 years with hackers becoming more and more sophisticated.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2523182/fbi-arrests-alleged-cable-modem-hacker.html

 

[TripleLindy]

I’ve had FIOS for well over a decade, back to when it was Verizon. The only downtime I’ve experienced in all that time was due to power outages, except for a recent situation where I just had to reset the ONT by unplugging it and plugging it back in. Upload and download speeds are fine and pricing is competitive. We pay around $50 for 500/500.

My experience with service has been positive, but it’s rare that I have to contact them.

 

[joesxm3]

So how do they get the MAC address? Just run through random numbers and keep track of the ones that work?

Would the hacker modem need to be near me, or could it be anywhere on the Xfinity network?

If not random, would getting a replacement modem help? It should have a different MAC address, no?

Would Xfinity have logs that show me reaching my 100 MB limit? The Xfinity app shows 119 MB. Would their app get to skip the limit or maybe the limit is actually a bit higher than 100 MB.

These hackers with illegal modems use your modem's MAC address to steal your bandwidth. The provisioning of bandwidth is done by software at your provider's office and the MAC address on your modem is assigned the bandwidth in your plan. When someone steals your MAC address, they take your bandwidth cutting you off. They alternative valid MAC addresses causing intermittent drop-outs among several customers. This is what was happening in our area until they person was caught. This has been going on for over 10 years with hackers becoming more and more sophisticated.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2523182/fbi-arrests-alleged-cable-modem-hacker.html

 

[joesxm3]

Now even more screwy. I just ran the test from the phone app and the Internet is working fine but they said that they measure 0% of my purchased speed.

 

[eytonxav]

I have Frontier Fiber 500MB service and it is great and very reliable. The fiber runs to the NID or ONT which is mounted in the garage in my case, and yes it does require house power. From the garage cable and ethernet cables run into the house where my router and wiring cabinet is located. I also have their cable TV in addition to internet. I am not sure about your situation, but if you get it I suspect you will be happy.