Yesterday Verizon FiOS was installed in my apartment. I had to install an outlet near the breaker box to power the unit so I'm lucky I keep spare parts in my truck. The outlet I used was something I picked up out of the trash several months ago. I knew it would be useful somewhere.

The wireless router came configured with a 64 bit WEP key, but for some reason my Mac didn't like that and refused to get an IP address. When I reconfigured the router to use a 128 bit hex key, everything worked beautifully.

As this speed test demonstrates, I now have a blazingly fast, 20/20 (mbps) connection. I was a bit surprised that the fiber only runs to the box in the basement. From there, a standard coax cable runs to the router -- exactly like a cable modem.

Going from fiber to coax definitely creates a bottleneck the maximum speed, which is probably why Verizon only offers up to a 20/20 connection. It makes sense though; this allows Verizon to use the existing wiring in the house instead of running extra CAT5 or Fiber lines. Technically, this is fiber-to-the-door, not fiber-to-the-computer. But for $60 a month I'll take it!