Verizon FIOS: Setting wiring cabinet and FIOS router in separate rooms (new home)

Hello Everyone,

We are building a new home and as part of the package, I have been given the option of setting up 12 ports (phone, data, cable) as well as any additional ports I would want to add for extra. I currently have Verizon FIOS service for PHONE, TV and INTERNET. I have been reading several posts where it is stated that if I have both TV and INTERNET, then I need to make sure my router has incomming COAX and CAT5 lines. One additional requirement is that the wiring cabinet will be placed in the basement, however, I want to have the router located in the office room to ensure I can leverage the wireless adapter.

Based on my desire to have the router placed in a room separate from the wiring cabinet, I wanted to get feedback from the community as if my assumptions are correct for my selections.

I selected to add 2 CAT5 ports and 1 COAX port to the office room. The COAX port will handle the TV needs for the FIOS TV service. For the 2 CAT5 ports, I have listed one port which will be an incomming Ethernet connection comming from the ONT via the wiring cabinet and will be connected to the WAN port in the router. The second CAT5 ethernet connection will go from one of the LAN ports and go down to the wiring cabinet so it can be connected to a switch to distribute the internet to the rest of the ethernet ports in the home.

A picture of the overall topology is listed below. Have I covered everything I needed to be able to have the router separate from the wiring cabinet? Please let me know any suggestions or advice.

Accepted answers

bbinnard

It looks to me like you have overly complicated the your situation. My home is not new, but it does support FIOS triple-play and here's how my wiring works;

1. FIOS cable goes from outside telephone pole to ONT installed inside my 2nd floor bedroom #1 closet.

2. 1 telco cable and one coax cable go from ONT back outside to connect to home's internal telco wiring and coax cable initially installed for cable TV. The phone wiring goes to one telco type outlet in each room of the house (installed when house was built.) Coax cable goes to 2 rooms via splitter installed in attic - this was done when house was originally wired for cable TV.

3. Wireless telephone base installed in kitchen via in-house telco wire. Other extensions are wireless ($100 VTech phone system from Costco.)

4. FIOS Router installed in bedroom #4 (my home office) connected to one branch of coax cable from ONT. At the time I got FIOS VZ was not installing N capable routers (this is a story in itself), so I bought a separate Wireless N router which I connected to the FIOS router via CAT5 cable. The N router provides my home's wireless connectivity. My 2 office desktop PC's are connected to the FIOS router via CAT5 cable. I also have a network printer connected via CAT5 to the FIOS router.

5. MY HDTV DVR is connected to the other coax coming from the attic splitter.

That's it. Basically you need coax only for the FIOS router and the TV set-top box(es). Wireless N works well in a home so I'd question the need for running CAT5 everywhere. But if you do it should all end where the router will be installed. You'll need a separate bridge box or router to supply the additional CAT5 ports - the FIOS router has only 4.

The FIOS router needs only coax or CAT5 as input - not both. I used coax becuase it was already installed in my house. Each TV needs a coax feed for it's set-top box but these can come from a splitter. At some point splitting off coax feeds drops their signale level to the point where some sort of booster is needed. I'm n ot familiar with this but the FIOS tech will know what to do about it.

I think the choice of feeding the FIOS router with coax or CAT5 depends on whether or not you want to be able to control your STB's from a web browser. If you do (and I have done this) I believe you have to use coax input to the FIOS router.

All comments

bbinnard

It looks to me like you have overly complicated the your situation. My home is not new, but it does support FIOS triple-play and here's how my wiring works;

1. FIOS cable goes from outside telephone pole to ONT installed inside my 2nd floor bedroom #1 closet.

3. Wireless telephone base installed in kitchen via in-house telco wire. Other extensions are wireless ($100 VTech phone system from Costco.)

5. MY HDTV DVR is connected to the other coax coming from the attic splitter.

ezegarra

HI BBinnard,

Thanks for your suggestions. It looks like the newer ONT boxes are capable of carrying both Cable and Ethernet signal over the COAX cable therefore there might not be a need for the additional ethernet connection as you pointed out. I have updated my diagrams based on your suggestions.

Also, the reason why I am having the additional ethernet ports is to be able to carry wired signal to the rest of the house just in case someone might want to use them in the future. For now, those ports would just plug directly into a Playstation box on one room and a DVD player (Netflix enabled) on another room.

I have uploaded an updated network topology here.

Also, the reason I was including one COAX and one CAT5 cable is because the router at my current home is setup as follows: (one COAX and one CAT5 both comming out of the ONT box)

smith6612

I don't see anything wrong with the wiring diagram. I'm assuming you know the requirements for CATV/MoCa to Set Top Boxes as far as splitters and cabling goes, so you should be fine. Just be sure to wire what you've got going to where, just to ensure you don't hit any snags with things being plugged into where they shouldn't be.

Be aware with the Ethernet connection from the ONT, Verizon will need to activate that in order to use that as the WAN connection. They provision things on MoCa by default.

lasagna

I can't see your second set of diagrams yet ... but from what you describe, no ethernet connection is required from the ONT to the wiring center nor from the wiring center to the office -- FiOS can indeed be delivered entirely over coax. With that said however, I would perhaps take a slightly different approach -- keeping in mind that while FiOS delivers over coax today, it might not do so tommorrow (if you every upgrade to a 1gbs service if/when it would ever be available) and you might not always be a Vz customer (sorry Vz, just being practical here since it's a home design).

What I would do would be to focus all my wiring on the wiring center -- bring coax and ethernet into that location and then distribute an ethernet and a coax port out to each room. This will give you the most flexibility down the road for various alternate network configurations as well as service providers.

In your office where you want wireless access, simply purchase a wireless access point (Linksys has some E-series devices which easily can be configured as an access point, Apple's TimeCapsule, Belkin, and many others -- pretty much any home router can access as an access point but those I listed above have a "bridged" mode that makes configuration just slightly easier).

Place the access point in your office and connect it to the ethernet cable running to the wiring center -- where it can connect to a LAN port on the Vz router. You can optionally turn off the Vz wireless or leave it on with the same SSID, passcode, and security protocol for better coverage in your home. Benefit here also is that you can invest in a dual band wireless-N access point for your office affording you better thruput on the wireless network.

weedeater1

Remember to make sure that the cabling you use (and the connector block) is rated sufficiently for the speed you'll need.

Anti-Phish1

There are valid reasons for running cat5 from the ONT to the VZ router as you have in the first diagram.

1) If you are considering 150/35 now or in the future, 150/35 is delivered only over cat5.

2) If the VZ router fails, you can replace it with any spare router while waiting for a replacement. You would lose guide data updates and VOD in the interim, but at least you would have internet.

Since this is new construction, running a second cat5 from wiring closet to the office should be a no-brainer.