MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-01-13 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Fios - David Sugar
|
As we prepared to open a new Freedom Technology Center in a rehabilitated
site in New Jersey, I came to learn that Verizon was capable of offering
fiber service at our location. Officially, they only claim to support
those using Microsoft Windows and Mac OS/X with their service. In
fact, with a little foreknowledge, you can have installed, activated,
and use your FiOS service with an entirely free operating system such
as GNU/Linux.
Verizon will run a fiber cable to your home or business, and have it
terminate not on a D-mark, but rather on a special optical termination
box. This box has both PSTN jacks and an ethernet jack. The ethernet
jack they will normally run to a wireless/wired router that they also
provide. The router they give you is generally preconfigured as a NAT,
and as 192.168.1.x network.
First, of course, you can go in and explore your router. It has a browser
interface, which you can find at 192.168.1.1 as you might expect. You may
wish to change the default admin account and password. You might also want
to change the DHCP range if you want to preserve space for static hosts,
setup port forwarding, change the wireless SSID, etc. It appears to use
PPOE to establish the initial gateway defaults and then drops the PPOE
stack. If so, it should be quite easy, if you never intend to use their
future IPTV offering, to substitute it with a Linksys or a PC running
GNU/Linux. However, that is left for those wishing to achieve advanced
reclamation of their freedom in full. Let’s cover getting you activated.
When the service comes up, it is immediately running. You can hook up
your GNU/Linux PC, get a DHCP address from their router, and immediately
connect to the outside world. However, the service will not stay
running for very long until it is “officially†activated. For this
step, the installation technician is given a “script†to follow
to activate your first computer, and the first thing he will ask you
to do is run your antivirus software and then establish a “system
restore pointâ€. Rather amusingly, he will do this even when presented
with a Mac (so woe even to the “officially supported†Mac user…),
let alone a machine running GNU/Linux. Your immediate job then is to
retrain your installation technician.
The real meat of the “activation†process is a software package
Verizon provides. This ugly little Windows binary only package of
applications will desire to do things like install Outlook address books,
bookmarks, Yahoo! toolbars, MSN (being a service so poor, I gather, the
only way they can get users is bundling it with other things for free),
and who knows what else. I am told there is an option to disable/reduce
the junk that it installs. However, it also includes a Microsoft Windows
executable that does the service activation. I have no idea if it runs
on wine offhand, nor do we need to worry.
What of the Mac OS/X user they also “officially†support, you may
ask? For them, they offer a downloadable disk image file that also
includes a binary activation program, and that offers some other things
you can install. So how do you then activate service without a proprietary
operating system?
It is actually very easy. The installation technician also has an
access code for a special verizon web site. They have this backdoor
method and often have to use it because the proprietary activation
software “freezesâ€, or so I have gathered. If you have firefox
(khtml on konquerer will not do it) fired up on your newly installed
FiOS service, then your installation technician can simply log into this
“fsc†website (I forgot the exact url he used), and “activateâ€
your service for you. No junk gets downloaded. No proprietary operating
system is required or used. You can then share the bandwidth in freedom.
Tags: gnu/linux, isp, telecomm
--
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
© Copyright for the Digital Millennium
|
|
