KentuckYSnow t1_jdx316o wrote on March 27, 2023 at 8:42 PM

Reply to comment by jayx468 in Is Xfinity internet bad in Pittsburgh? by jayx468

For FiOS you need an optical network terminal and it's unique to you, and powered. The router hooks into that with Ethernet cable. If you see a coax terminal on the wall, it's Comcast.

theidleidol t1_jdyis1g wrote on March 28, 2023 at 2:55 AM

Every apartment I’ve lived in has had the ONTs in the basement of the building and data was carried to each unit via coax. In the one building they had the whole wall gridded out in the demarc room and when you started service Verizon came, mounted the ONT in your little Sharpie box, and swapped the coax over from the Comcast terminal block on the opposite wall to the coax terminal on the ONT.

I still have the FiOS gateway in a box (only have Comcast where I am now); if you don’t believe me I can take a photo of the back and probably also the instruction manual. IIRC there’s two coax connections, one for WAN and one for MoCA back out to your set top boxes.

KentuckYSnow t1_je3pbkw wrote on March 29, 2023 at 4:37 AM

And was all this in newer buildings? Because most stock in Pittsburgh is older than FiOS and wouldn't have been fitted out with fiber optic before Comcast wired it up with coax.

theidleidol t1_je4wia8 wrote on March 29, 2023 at 1:13 PM

I’m not sure your point. These were all older buildings, in the sense that they were built before fiber to the home became a thing. That’s basically every housing unit in Pittsburgh, as you say. Though even many brand new buildings simply aren’t running fiber to the unit, and even fewer have Cat5/6 from the demarc