Verizon FIOS, and Fortinet

[rwpatterson]

I had FIOS installed at my home the end of November. Well the photo lab I do side work just had the ' Business' version of FIOS installed there a couple of weeks back. Business version seems to mean, same service level (they' ll get there when they get there), higher speed, and fixed IP address(es). Well since it is my second gig, the Verizon technicians installed the product while I wasn' t there because I was at my first gig. Upon installation of the ONT(*), there are two options: 1) the easy way, plug the coax cable in, rely on MoCA(**) and walk away, or 2) have the central office reconfigure the ONT for the RJ-45 hand off, and plug in there Well they used Option one when installing. Since I wanted desperately to replace the Actiontec wireless router (the user interface looks like a Fisher-Price ' My First Router' ) with a Fortinet, or something comparable, I needed to be connected to the Ethernet hand off from the ONT. Monday morning, I call the 24 hour technical line, get a drone there who states that you have to use either the Actiontec wireless router provided, or a D-Link DI604 router that Verizon supplies. (I' ll bet he was wearing his red, white, and black Verizon underwear, while swearing with his right hand on the Verizon supplied yellow pages) I told him that it' s funny that I have FIOS at my home, and the DI604 router I use, I purchased from a third party store refurbished some two plus years ago. The firmware on my router doesn' t even have Verizon in it anywhere. And, by the way, my FIOS works fine. TV too. The technicians on my install were kind enough to install a Motorola NIM-100, which provied the MoCA content in lieu of the Actiontec router. While he was scratching his head on this, I asked him how to go about moving the hand off from the coax lead to the RJ-45. He said ' just move it over' . OK, sounds simple enough. After the day job, I go to the second job, ' move it over' , configure the IP information on the new interface, and somewhere along the lines, the thing stops working. Completely. I can no longer ping either interface. ' It' s dead Jim!' I sit on the Verizon tech line for 60 minutes waiting for someone to get on to assist me. After said hour, I hang up the phone, called it a day and went home to bed. Since my second gig is dead, I have to get them back live again, so on Tuesday, I called in on the primary job, went to the second job and called Verizon again. In the interim, I retreived the documentation from my Aciontec wireless router at home (that was still sealed, in the box, unused. The way it should be!), and reset the thing back to factory defaults. In under three minutes, I have the IP information back in this router on the ethernet port, have disabled the coaxial port, and a tech picks up the phone. It' s during this call that I learn a whole bunch of stuff: > If you have a static IP address, you can' t have TV. MoCA relies on dynamic IP addressing. > The bandwidth optimizers out there are primarily for download speed. You have to hack the registry in different areas to get the full potential from your upload. (Any Windows OS before 2003 server, at least) > The coax and ethernet ports are mutually exclusive for Ethernet. You can use one or the other, not both. > Verizon has to configure the ONT as to which port is active. So it was during this phone call that I got my ethernet hand off configured, and my bandwidth speed taken care of. Now we get the full 50 MBps down, and the full 10 MBps up. He is indeed a happy man. I' ve got a FGT-60WiFi on it' s way. Now to get a real router in there. . . Notes: * ONT - Optical Network Terminator. This is the box that Verizon installs at the premises that terminates the fiber optic cable, and provides outputs for the telephone (two, four or eight jacks, depending on the model), television via standard F connector coaxial cable, and Internet over RJ-45 connector. They provide you with a battery backup unit for the ONT, but you have to maintain the battery yourself in the future. ** MoCA - Multimedia over Ethernet Alliance. The ability to treat your coaxial television feed like a network interface and provide enriched services over it. Verizon uses it to provide menus to the set top boxes and DVRs as well as some behind the scene technical stuff.

[Fireshield]

Nice work Bob! As is way too common (in my case anyway), trial and error beats tech support hold time and/or ability hands down. More proof that it isn' t just Fortinet that ignores support capabilities. Did I just say that? Ooops...

[rwpatterson]

Well Fortigates do work with Verizon FIOS. Far better than the piece of crap Actiontec offering they charge you $99 for. I' m happy. More important, the guy I bought the thing for is happy. He pays the bills. Him happy = me happy. The built in WiFi lets me chuck his old Belkin access point as well. Two boxes out, one box in. I can live with that. The increased network speed is definietly a plus, along with the ease of management (for me). Don' t buy into the Verizon sandwich the front line tech drones try to feed you. Any router will work with FIOS, you just need to have the RJ-45 ethernet handoff made active, not the coaxial connection. This can be done after installation, as I found out myself.

[#4]

Hello Super Bob, After I just posted a question about FiOS I tried searching for Verizon and found your posting. That' s pretty interesting stuff. I have Verizon FiOS at my house, too and was wondering how to get all of the gear to play nicey nice. Can you give any tips for dealing with the Verizon goons on the phone so that I can keep my TV as well and get a dynamic IP to a fortinet? Thanks!

[rwpatterson]

Firstly welcome to the forums. Wow this is an old post. If you' re using that P.O.S. Actiontec router, you' ll be very happy to dump it for the Fortigate! One of the very first things you' ll need to do is get someone in a higher level at tech support. Since we were a business based client, I could do that easily. Being on the home side, you may have to chew through a few lemons before you can make your margarita... The handoff from the ONT has to be RJ-45, not the coax that they love so much. You have to get that changed. Only one of the two ports work at a time, so make sure you' re around when they flip it. TV ONLY works with a dynamic IP configuration. I was told that when they installed at the photo lab, so there should be no problem there. I' m using a D-Link router that I got from Tigerdirect.com for $14. (Verizon supplies the same exact model DI-604, but they load it with their crappy version of the code...) I had this before FIOS was installed, so the techs just setup the RJ-45 port when the ONT went in. When the Actiontec gets dumped, you' re going to need a Motorola NIM-100 unit to handle all of the value added channel guide information. The Actiontec does that now, but you' re making that go away... Don' t know if Verizon will supply that for free, or maybe in exchange for the Actiontec... (MoCA, or Multimedia over Coaxial Alliance allows Ethernet traffic to be passed in a standard format over coaxial cable. This is the sole job of the NIM-100 box. It has both an Ethernet port requiring a DHCP server, and a coaxial port. It' s a router of sorts...) Also you' re going to require a DHCP server for the set top boxes. I' m using a Windows 2000 server for that, but I suppose the DHCP in the Fortigate will do the same. Good luck, and post back the results.

[rwpatterson]

Too funny! I just ordered and have received a WiFi60AM (ebay, $204! Love Ebay!), and ran home at lunch to install it. Well like BWelch said, this thing ain' t happy with DHCP, FIOS style. I was hoping it was simply a new MAC address timeout issue, but after a half an hour, I still couldn' t pull an address from the wire. I' m going to hit this after work with both barrels, and get back to you on it... I' ll start with the cheat, MAC address cloning!

[rwpatterson]

That kicked it! Replying through my FortiWifi on Verizon FIOS! Here' s the command:

 Gateway $ config system interface
 Gateway (interface) $ edit " wan1" 
 Gateway (wan1) $ set macaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00 <- enter the current external MAC address here!)
 Gateway (wan1) $ end
 

You need the MAC address of the device that was last on the FIOS port. That MAC address is the one you need to match. Otherwise, you have to wait a couple of hours until the old one times out, or place a call into Verizon support and have them release your IP (or MAC) from the DHCP server so you can add that new one. This was by far easier. Once I established what the old one was, I set it in the FGT on the wan1 Interface (as done above), and just switched the RJ-45 connector from old Dlink to the new FGT. Verizon had no clue, and it was down for 10 seconds at the most... Good luck