FIOS router networking arcana - only for geeks

[target2019]

donheff is teaching the internet new tricks!
I know how to make things work, but don't have the networking degree.
This reminds me of bus termination. Something must terminate the connection or it does not work properly.

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tulak Regarding the printer on the WAN port, maybe it is on Wifi? This doesn't make sense to me.

Yes, I looked at the TP-Link network and see that the brother printer in question is on WIFI. It is also plugged into the FIOS router WAN port by ethernet cable and the port light is lit so the router understands that a device is present. I found a Brother FAQ that explains that you can plug into an ethernet port and toggle back and forth between ethernet and WIFI by holding the GO button down for 13 seconds. Since I didn't do that the Brother (fortuitously) kept it's wireless connection active. Since the FIOS router wants a device plugged into the WAN port and seems happy enough with an inactive printer all is good.

I also learned a bit about how the coax side works. The FIOS Quantum gateway has two MoCA bridges (MoCA is a coax network). A WAN MoCA bridge is how it is getting Internet from the ONT. In newer VZ setups they bring in an ethernet cable from the ONT because they can get more consistent higher bandwidth that way. The router also has a LAN MoCA bridge that handles LAN side TCP communications with the TV set top boxes. Interestingly you can get adaptors to tap into the MoCA network to hard wire devices in rooms with no ethernet connections. I guess you put in a coax splitter and connect the adaptor which has an ethernet port for your devices that need hard wire connections. It sounds like you can also buy inexpensive MoCA bridges to pass any LAN side Internet from your router of choice onto your house coax to get to rooms without ethernet cabling. Who knew?

[donheff]

Well, color me embarrassed. The whole fiasco was user error.

I was 100% certain that Verizon only brought a coax cable into the house. And, interestingly, a VZ tech who came to the house a few days ago when a new set top box wouldn't install thought the same thing when he looked at my setup. But I just noticed that the "printer" cable had a lot of loops sitting on the floor behind the cabinet where the router and printer are located and I thought "I don't have a printer cable that long." I followed it around and discovered it goes up and out the same way as the Coax. My "printer cable" connects to the ONT! When I was hooking up the TP-Link initially I must have pulled it thinking it was the printer and then plugged the TP-Link into the WAN port. What is even more confusing is that worked. So the TP-Link must have somehow been able to get an Internet connection from the FIOS router through the MoCA WAN bridge and back to the ONT via coax. And it somehow fed that service over to the FIOS box which NATed it to the internal LAN to serve the set top boxes. But, when the TP-Link was not in the WAN port the FIOS router was unable to get an Internet connection thru the coax by itself. Strange. If I hadn't experimented with the "printer" cable I might never have sorted this out.

Thanks for all the help and don't trust me on anything like this in the future.

[Piper20]

Just as a side note my 3 year old G1100 started dropping WiFi on a daily basis. Of course no help from Verizon after spending 4 hours with them. Anyway I installed a TP-Link A10. If you use the Fios TV app on your phone the remote control feature will no longer work unless you are connected to the G1100 WiFi.

[tulak]

Glad that you got it figured out!