Review by UncleDirtNap 
UPDATED: 238 days ago
member for 2 years, 174 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Pittsburgh,Allegheny,PA
 $109 per month (24 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "Connection Speed is lightening fast, as good or better than advertised and very reliable."
 "If you intend to do any gaming purchase of a router is required. Verizon's bad customer service is worse than you heard."
 "How much is the best tech and whiz bang worth to in terms of stress? Fast and slick, truly horrendous customer service"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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The connection is fast, faster than advertised, and haven't had any outages. Unfortunately my expectations for being able to play games on line were thwarted early on by the inferior Actiontec MI424WR router that is not up to the job. Tech support, both Verizon and Actiontech's only made the situation worse by taking my calls and pretending that my experience was unique ... which became clear it wasn't as I started looking around and realized everyone who was trying to play the same games was having trouble with the router.
Not really sure what Verizon was thinking when they selected this piece of hardware. Do they honestly think that people who are primarily browsing the web, reading e-mail or instant messaging are looking for a a 15/2 connection? Common sense should have told them gamers would be the most interested and either provided an appropriate piece of equipment OR told customers a purchase of an adequate one would be required. Either course would have allowed me to avoid numerous hours on the phone and a whole lot of frustration.
10-29-07
Just changed plan to bundle FIOS and Freedom Essentials Phone to lock in rates. TV is available in my area now, unfortunately I'm obligated for a bit longer to my dish contract... will switch when I have the chance.
01-10-08
Well I've had FIOS internet and phone service for over a year now and I got my TV installed a month ago and I'm rapidly losing my enthusiasm for all of it. For the second time in a week I've needed to call for service, first to address an unrequested downgrade in my service and the second to report a TV service outage and the hellish experience of trying to reach a human person at Verizon support is beyond the ability of the english language to convey.
The voice-mail wall they've erected is nearly impenetrable and clearly designed to simply frustrate people into giving up and not getting assistance. The service certainly has many technical merits to it, but the poor, horrendously, nightmarish poor customer service is rapidly out weighing them. If this continues as it has it probably won't be long before DishNetwork is back in my home and all my Verizon services have been canceled.
Should I ever meet the person(s) who designed and implemented their voice mail from hell I WILL hang them from the rafters in my basement and exact all manner of torture and horror upon them. All the whiz bang tech in the world isn't worth the aggravation the customer service is causing.
Followup comments:  
AnonymousCoward
@verizon.net
| Actiontec Router The router is designed to have more features than most people need so it can be used for both businesses and residential. I actually like it and it is far superior in features and throughput than linksys, netgear, or dlink. Consider the router a lucky bonus. | |
|  | UncleDirtNap
join:2006-08-26
Pittsburgh, PA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Re: Actiontec Router I like the feature set as well, just wish it was a little more intuitive to use. I managed to get everything set up the way I wanted but it was a bit of a chore for me and I have a lot of experience with such things - a novice would be sunk I imagine. Anyway my real gripe, and it's really not that big of an issue, is the size of the thing. Looking inside through the billion or so ventilation slots and judging from the weight about 80% of the thing is empty space. Minor quibble though, the end result is a kick ass connection at a pretty sweet price and that's all I really care about. | |
| canuck999999
join:2004-04-19 | Dump the router Perhaps I have misread the review but it sounds like this is a router issue, not a FIOS one. Have you considered just dumping the router or going out and buying one of your own instead of using the Verizon supplied one? | |
| | WC813
join:2000-12-20
Wesley Chapel, FL | Re: Dump the router Agree, if you dont have FIOS TV use your own router. If you do have FIOS TV, put the ActionTec behind your router.
I had some problems with BF2 as well but once I got the port forwarding setup everything was fine. | |
| | | Reverick
join:2006-02-16
Warwick, RI | Re: Dump the router Put the actiontech behind your router, open up the actiontec in the DMZ, turn off the DHCP in the actiontec. Should work just fine. Or you could just put your PC in the DMZ and use a software firewall. | |
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tim_k
Buttons N Bows
Premium
join:2002-02-02
Stewartstown, PA | Re: Dump the router It's been awhile since I played online games, but AFAIK, he shouldn't need to put his computer in the DMZ or forward ports if he is only playing games. He would need to do those things if he is hosting. | |
| | | | | UncleDirtNap
join:2006-08-26
Pittsburgh, PA | Re: Dump the router Just an update; I resolved all the gaming issues with the purchase of a D-Lnk DGL-4100 router. Could have spent less I suppose but it had the gigabit switch I wanted for my lan. | |
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Bad dog
@verizon.net
| Re: Dump the router I don't do gaming but I have VOIP and run Azureus Bitorrent client. I had VZ DSL and got the D-Link Gamer router a year ago because it had QOS (quality of service) which was needed for the VOIP internet phone. It knows to allocate all the bandwidth it needed to the VOIP session so it wouldn't be choppy or drop the calls. It was expensive but worth it. ($99 on sale at BB). I had also used it with P2P files sharing, (bitorrent). While the Actiontec also has QOS and works well with VOIP, Azureus would throttle down after a couple of hours. All web access would be very slow or stopped, even on the other 3 computers on the LAN. I put my D-Link router back on and it connected after 5 minutes or so with no configuring. I used the same port forwarding I had used when it was hooked up to DSL and that fixed the throttling problem. If you read the product info on D-Link's web site, it says it is specifically designed to work with P2P file sharing where you may have thousands of connections. It has a more powerful cpu to handle the demand. | |
| | | Cyber2lz
join:2001-11-15
Odessa, FL | I have Fios tv and use a Linky 54gs with the alchemy load.
Works fine, guide and everything!!
--
The Light Pipe is the Right Pipe !!! | |
| pcnetworx1
join:2005-09-21
Bethel Park, PA
 ·AT&T CallVantage
| Pfsense... I thought I would chime in that I recently (September) built a router based off of Pfsense, and it works absolutely marvelous on FIOS. I found a Pentium 3 rig in the trash, and slapped on pfsense.
The power wielded now is IMMENSE.
This is not the first time I've "built" a router so to speak, but truly the first time it made an enormous different in quality of connection / features I am getting.
So the commercial routers are fine, but if you can find an old "doorstopper" rig, and like to really use your connection / or just want to have great fun in setting up everything and anything how YOU want, make a Pfsense router.
P.S. The last router-in-a-box software I've used was Coyote Linux, some Portugese thing, m0n0wall, and Freesco. Pfsense blows all out of the water, but Freesco comes at a second in my experience (it comes as a floppy version which is nifty). | |
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