Verizon FIOS increased its monthly internet charge to $80 and wouldn’t budge on price. Coworkers reported COMCAST was ok as an ISP and it offered cable and internet for $55 a month. In this area, it is nice to have a choice. The Verizon disconnect was scheduled for 1 month after the COMCAST installation in to allow a period of testing. Historically, Verizon FIOS has been very reliable and has consistent 25/25 speed.
COMCAST offers customers the ability to buy their own equipment rather than do a monthly rental. The house is fully wired with ethernet and uses an Airport Extreme and and Airport Express to provide strong signal across 4 floor. The Linksys DPC3008 modem offers maximum speed for a low price of $75 but no routing or Wifi capability.
Verizon provides (early customers were able to purchase rather than rent) a combination modem, router, and wifi. With Verizon’s wifi disabled, the Apple Airports provided wifi.
Settings
Since all traffic traverses the Airport Extreme, the settings there are the ones to worry about. In short as follows;
Verizon – Airport Extreme routing set to Off-Bridge mode (i.e. the Verizon router routes all traffic and assigns IP addresses to devices in the house)
COMCAST -Airport Extreme routing set to DHCP-NAT (i.e. Airport Extreme routes all traffic and assigns IP addresses to devices in the house)
Conclusion
Trial period results by July. Comcast speeds are 25/6 but reliability is the open question.
