HomeFusion 3 Days down and counting (My experience with HF)

[MIZZOU]

I live approx 5 miles outside of Columbia MO.  The VZ website show my address as qualifying for HF (not sure if I'm in extended though) so I order it in Oct 2012.  Installer came out and spent 4 hours running wire and looking for the strongest signal.  He found a spot on the NW corner and attached the Cantenna (aka HBA or Home Broadband Antenna) to the house with lag screws about 4 ft off the ground.  On my Cantenna, there are two indicator lights on the bottom:  One for "Power" and one for "SWiM".  The power light will only turn red or green.  The SWiM light is a signal strength indicator and can turn Red, Blue, and Green.  Best case is both lights green at all times.  On mine when it's working the power light is solid green and the swim light bounces between red, blue, and green.  My download speeds can vary between 1MB and 15MB but generally speaking when a network connection does exist, the speed is acceptable.  When it's not working both lights are red and my frustration level is not acceptable.

The internet worked ok for 2 days after that, then bang..nothing.  The HBA showed red on both lights.  I logged into the Wireless router admin console(aka HBR) via http://192.168.1.254 and the signal strength indicator bars on the left side of the page were all empty and the Connection Status was "Unreachable".  I selected "Advanced" and then HBA Advanced Settings and the page displayed "The HBA is currently unavailable."

I went to HF support site and learned that unplugging the power inserter (the small black box that has 2 coax connections on one end and plugs into a 110v socket) and waiting 30 seconds to plug it back in will "reboot" the HBA.  After a few attempts of this the HBA appeared to reconnect to the 4G network, obtain an internet routable IP address (which could be observed from the HBR admin console "System Monitoring" page), and function as expected.

Practically every day throughout the following week this was my experience.  I call this the "routine". 

1. Get home from work and try and get on net with my laptop. No luck.

2. Walk to HBA and find 2 red lights.

3. Go to basement and unplug power inserter.  Wait 30 seconds.  Plug back in.

4. Go back outside and watch lights on HBA. 

5. After 2 mins if lights still red, repeat steps 3 and 4.

Sometimes after spending an hour or so unsuccessfully I would have to give up and try it in the morning before I left for work just to see if it was any different at that time.  Sometimes yes.  Sometimes no.

After a week or so of this I called Verizon support and explained the situation.  The scheduled a new installer visit.  A different installer arrived the following week and he and I spent several hours one evening walking the HBA to different locations on the back of my house looking for a better mounting location simply by watching the SWiM light for blue/green vs. red/blue or solid red colors.

We believed we found a location on the roof just a few feet up from the gutter that was "better" than the previous spot.  A few more lag screws and some silicone around the bracket and I was good to go. 

The following morning I checked the HBA and found 2 red lights.  Sigh.  The admin console showed the HBA was unreachable and I was again dead in the water.  After work, I again started the routine and after several attempts, I could get it working.  This same daily experience played out for the majority of October.  Rare was a day I could come home from work to find a glorious green power light waiting for me which meant I wouldn't have to burn an hour to just get things functional.

After power cycling the HBA probably more than 100 times in Oct/Nov 2012, I've learned a couple things about how it boots up

This is what happens after I plug it in and it connects:

1.  HBA gets power and after 2 secs power light turns red.

2.  1 sec after that the swim light turns red

3.  Approx 30 secs the swim light will blink off and back on once.

4.  Approx 5 after that, the power light will turn from red to green

5.  Immediately after that the swim light will start bouncing from red, to blue, to green.

This is what happens after I plug it in and it DOES NOT connect:

1.  HBA gets power and after 2 secs power light turns red.

2.  1 sec after that the swim light turns red

3.  Both lights continue to show solid red until power-cycled.

What this appears to mean is that while in the boot cycle, if the connection is not made to the 4G network (i.e. a connection as indicated by step 3 and 4 above) there will be no further attempts to connect until the device is manually power-cycled.  I see this as a major design flaw in the software.  The HBA, should boot cycle itself every 10 minutes or so when no connection exists so that it could self-heal in the event of a 4G network outage or signal degradation.

That being said what appears to the be the issue for me is that when the HBA is booting it cannot connect to the 4G network either because: A. there is not sufficient enough signal strength to allow the negotiation or B. there is no signal being transmitted due to an area outage.

One other thing I've learned is that I can improve signal strength by rotating the HBA.  I generally know where the towers are and I've found that if the HBA is in a good spot I can point the side with the lights AWAY from the towers and get green/blue swim light where if the lights are pointing towards the tower I will get solid red swim light(indicating a low signal not necessarily a lost signal).  I have also found that a difference of a few feet laterally can dramatically affect signal.  Although vertically it doesn't seem to matter so much.  I live on a pretty steep hill so my experience could differ from any flatlanders out there.

So it's November now and a new billing cycle and after 4 days of uninterrupted internet (the new record), on Thursday I came home to find those red lights staring back at me like the devil reincarnate.  I thought perhaps the VZ gods had ironed things out but alas it is not the case.  No matter how many times I've power-cycled since (I estimate 30 from Friday to Sunday) I cannot connect.  I called VZ on Friday and they walked me through a power cycle and after no success entered a "trouble ticket".  I've heard nothing since.  I'm getting ready to call them again after one more "routine" of course.  Wish me luck.

It's a real shame this service is as flaky as it is because like everyone says, when it works it works great.

[scott21]

Its a software issue when they pushed a firmware update in august. Vendor messed up the software now you got reboot HBA  lol. ATM  HF sucks nothing you can do but wait or leave sucks i know.

[MIZZOU]

Glory Hallelujah!  After a quick run in to town and back, I did my normal power-cycle on the HBA and lo and behold it connected around 4PM CT.  Hopefully it will stay up for a spell.  Speedtest reports 15MB down and 12MB up with roughly 85ms RTT on pings.

HomeFusion 3 Days down and counting (My experience with HF)

[MIZZOU]

Just got home from work.  The power light was red and the swim signal light was bouncing between blue and green.  The internet was down.  I power cycled the HBA one-time and it reconnected exactly as described in the "This is what happens after I plug it in and it connects:" section above.

[MIZZOU]

The HF Antenna has been up since my last post.  I'm getting greens and blues when I look at the swim light and solid green on the power light.

I hope I'm not jinxing myself but for the past 2 days the service has performed as expected.

[MIZZOU]

HF was down today when I got home.  I've tried to power cycle twice and it will not connect.  Solid red lights on both sides.  Verizon called me at work earlier today regarding the trouble ticket I opened the same day I started this post and indicated it has been closed because they saw traffic pass through my device since I reported the outage.  I guess I'll have to reopen it.  Maybe I'll try and power cycle one more time.   It's starting to get a little chilly outside watching the light go blink blink (or not).....

[MIZZOU]

After having it work for a 4 or 5 days consecutively, the connectivity dropped on Friday 11/30 in the morning and I haven't been able to reconnect since despite multiple daily power-cycle attempts in the morning and evening (and in between on the weekends).  Sigh.

[MIZZOU]

I can tell there's still customers on this forum who continue to have issues with HF.  I feel fortunate in saying that my HF woes have been solved after no small amount of effort by Verizon.  Despite any evidence to the contrary I've experienced first hand that there are people in their organization who do care about their customers and want to provide a trouble free services.

For me there were several additional visits from installers and the dropping was improved by moving the power inserter closer to the cantenna (i.e. from 100 ft to 3 ft).  While this shortened the outages and seemed to improved the odds that a power cycle would result in a successful connection, a full replacement of the cantenna and the router on a final visit is what I believe did the trick.

My gut tells me the cantenna was primary source of the issue.

I've been by in large up for 2 weeks now with only one or two outages which were resolved by rebooting the HBA through the management console and not having to resort to power cycling the inserter.  I wish the same luck to any of you out that continue to struggle.

[mymy0513]

Yes I care, I am very happy to help all of the Home Fusion Customers when I can!

I have read your posts and I am pleased some of my suggestions have helped with your situation.

The last thing I would check is the wire and the grounding.

I would check to make sure the wire that was used in the installation was solid copper.

Do this by unpluging the power supply and the router first. Disconnect the "Power to ODU" RG6 Coax cable and place a magnet near the Copper stinger in the connection. If the magnet contacts the cable, you have a copper lined, steel core center RG6 cable.

If it contacts and sticks it really needs to be replaced.

Second, the Cantenna produces a static charge, if your cantenna in not grounded it may produce this charge. The Cantenna should be grounded, you can check this by looking for a green screw on the right hand side of the mounting bracket for your cantenna. There should be a thin black wire from the green mounting screw along with the RG6 Coax cable,  to a  grounding point. Such as an electrical ground block, 4 Foot ground rod, copper ground strap, ECT....

If this is not present it may be a problem.

Please let me know if this solves your problems.

[mymy0513]

Your cantenna is mounted to low to receive the 4G Signal..... Please call Verizon and have them move the cantenna to at lest 6 to 8 feet above ground. ( or place the cantenna on your roof where it can receive signals from multiple cell towers. And if you rest the power supply, there is about 3 minutes of residual power, so if you unplug it for 30 seconds it will not reset.

[mymy0513]

The swim light was for a cooperation with Direc Tv, It should be LQI light you are looking for signal strength....

MyMy