Eyeglazing Geek Stuff

Verizon has now completed its quest for communications hegemony at my house.  I have phone, internet, and TV all provided through Fios. 

I’d had phone and internet through Fios for over a year and it had been pretty good, with only a couple of minor outages.  Upon seeing the prices and options for their TV service, I determined that I could get HD service with a dual-tuner DVR (and a second STB in the bedroom) for less than it would cost with Charter. 

The installation window was scheduled for 1:00-5:00pm on Wednesday and the techs showed up around 1:45pm.  I showed them where everything was, and while they were working out the coax runs, I disconnected the Charter cable box and the Tivo and hooked up some component video cables to my TV.  This was the first place where experience was different from theory.  I’d asked the Fios people on the phone what model of DVR they would be bringing.  I was told that it was a Motorola 6416.  I found that the 6416 wasn’t shown on the public part of the website yet, although it was supposed to be functionally the same as the 6412 (just with a bigger hard drive).  The diagram in the manual shows that it has composite, S-video, component, HDMI, 1394, and DVI-D outputs.  I already had a DVI-D cable I was using with the computer, so I was planning to just yank that and connect it to the DVR.  Unfortunately, the actual device does NOT have DVI-D, just HDMI.  It was fortunate that I had a set of component cables to use for now.  Later I will get the correct cable and give full digital a try.

The only other annoyance to the install was that it required changes to my home network.  Fios TV is a “hybrid” architecture.  It’s not IPTV, but instead uses an RF overlay on the fiber (and the ONT has a coax output) and uses an IP connection through my router to download program guide data and handle pay-per-view transactions.  Verizon INSISTS that you must use their router and cannot use one of your own.  Of course, they insisted this for Fios Internet as well, but I ignored it and plugged in my Linksys as soon as they left.  It turns out that this DOES NOT work for Fios TV.  So I had to dig out the old D-Link they’d left me and get it working again.  The installers then upgraded the firmware (using a proprietary version, unique to Verizon). 

Using the D-Link meant that I had to do some fiddling with my Linksys to use it more as an access point than as a router.  But I got it working with a little fiddling (and some reconfiguration as I discovered various failing devices).  The installer tested the internet access using his laptop and pronounced it good.  But after hooking up the DVR and the STB we discovered that the program guide data would not load.  The installers kept fiddling and testing and working with the support center, but to no avail.  Unfortunately, I had to be at a meeting at 7:00pm, so we gave up and I sent them on their way around 6:45. 

The next day I started fiddling and digging…  (always a dangerous thing cool grin )

I did some research and learned about the “hidden” technician menu and was able to access it to learn more about the configuration.  I also learned that the DVR and the STB both had integrated cable modems and were using Motorola’s Whole Home Media technology.  There is a separate device that attaches to the coax and then to my router that provides the IP path out of my house.  It was after looking at the WHM configuration in the DVR that I noticed something odd.  A long time ago I had defined my network as 192.168.2.0/8, instead of the Linksys default of 192.168.1.0/8.  The DVR and the STB were trying to use addresses of 192.168.0.50 and 192.168.0.52, which got my attention, since D-Link uses 192.168.0.0/8 as their default network.  I remembered this, since I’d encountered it while changing the D-Link to 192.168.2.0/8 the previous day.

I took a guess that the DVR and STB were brain-damaged devices that made the faulty assumption that the network would always be 192.168.0.0/8, since Verizon gives out D-Link equipment.  I reconfigured the network back to the default and suddenly the damn things were getting their guide data.  Interestingly, both devices appear to be trying to use DHCP, but in a bad way.  Instead of simply requesting a lease for a new address, they appear to be requesting specific addresses in the 192.168.0.0/8 network that will be “out of the way” of the addresses usually returned from the router (D-Link defaults to returning addresses between 192.168.0.100 and 192.168.0.199).  Of course, all this is speculation, but it’s based on observation and troubleshooting.  Examining the DHCP clients table on the router (as well as the WHM configuration in the DVR’s tech menu) after unplugging and plugging in the bedroom STB showed that one particular MAC address had moved from 192.168.0.50 to 192.168.0.51.

After going through all this, I then called their customer support and explained the problem to them and suggested they add an article to their Knowledgebase about this situation.  I also suggested that they should try to make the devices a bit more standards-compliant (or at least use the standard in a reasonable way), but I don’t know how much good that will do.  Often, the level 1’s just ignore this stuff and close the ticket.  I suspect most people won’t have fiddled with their network configuration like me.  Still, though, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Just for grins, I decided to map all this crap out into a diagram.  I didn’t realize until I was done just how much techno-crap I have in this house…

Network diagram
(click for monster)

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