In an earlier first impression post about Windows 7 Beta 1, I called Microsoft’s new HomeGroup feature brain dead. Well, after further review, I’m standing by that assessment. HomeGroup isn’t working here. The feature feels only partly implemented to me. And, normally I’d forgive Microsoft that foible, given this is Beta 1, except that Microsoft’s top dog for Windows 7 Engineering, Steven Sinofsky, just confirmed that Windows 7 will move straight to a release candidate build, skipping any other betas.

So, why do I say that when so many other reviewers are raving about HomeGroup? Well, here’s my experience.

I started by creating a HomeGroup on my Windows 7 test machine. Then I thoroughly tested networking with several other computers on my network, including a Vista machine, an XP machine, and two Macs. I had no trouble with either Vista or XP, networking the way any Windows user would on a peer network. In that mode, Windows 7 networks exactly like Vista does. All computers, even the Macs, are using the same workgroup name. My Vista and XP machines can file-share back and forth with the Macs quite easily. The Windows 7 machine could not. The Macs can connect to Windows 7 without trouble. Windows 7 sees the Macs but issues a path error when I try to force it to connect to them. I had run into this same Mac problem with my earlier test of Win 7 Beta 1 and the November release of Win 7. Networking is often dicey with beta versions of Windows, so this Mac issue wasn’t a huge surprise.

The only way to test the HomeGroup feature is with two Windows machines running Win 7. Unfortunately, I don’t have another PC available and suitable to be a Windows 7 test machine. So I downloaded Sun’s freely distributed VirtualBox software for the Mac. The hardest part about setting up VirtualBox was locating its Guest Additions (add-on drivers specific to your guest OS). It wasn’t where Sun’s documentation said it was. But there were several variations on the installation directions, and one of them worked. In all other regards, VirtualBox is an impressive product. Anyone who has used either VMware or the Parallels virtualization tools will recognize similarities.

VirtualBox has a pre-configured Windows 7 guest-OS mode, and that made set up easy. It took me only a little over an hour to rig up both VirtualBox and Windows 7 on one of my MacBook Pros.

With the two Windows 7 installations running, I expected to have no problems with HomeGroup. Even though there’s clearly some sort of issue with Windows 7 and Mac networking, the fact that the Macs could connect with Windows 7 left me feeling confident. It’s actually not uncommon for the Mac to have an issue networking with a Windows box while the virtual machine of Windows running on the same Mac has no problems connecting. But if you’re inclined to discount my experience with HomeGroup, this would be the best thing to hang your hat on.

So, with Windows 7 running on the Mac, I proceeded to try HomeGroup. You’re supposed to create your HomeGroup on one machine and then from all other Windows 7 machines, use the Join HomeGroup function. But no matter how hard I tried, the two Windows 7 installations were unable to connect to one another. The Join HomeGroup dialog wouldn’t appear. I tried it in both directions. I also tried creating HomeGroups on both machines and making them use the same password. No go.

Note: It’s possible to change the HomeGroup password after the fact from the Network and Sharing Center or Control Panel. It’s not possible to change the Windows 7-assigned HomeGroup password while you’re initiating HomeGroup.

I probably would have put off posting my less-than-stellar experience with HomeGroup except that I decided to go looking for other people’s experiences, and it was not difficult to find other people having the exact same problems with HomeGroup that I was.

I’m sure that Microsoft will straighten out HomeGroup in most people’s Win 7 installations by the time the operating system ships. I’m sure I will get it to work, too. Although I still sort of doubt that this Windows Networking Wizard on minor steroids will truly obviate the need to fully understand the ins and outs of Windows networking.

One final note: For those of you who read my previous post on Windows 7 and disagreed with me about performance, my MacBook Pro-hosted virtual machine Windows 7 installation seems no faster or slower to me than the other one. Windows 7 feels like Vista to me.

Maybe it just feels faster because you’re not constantly being bombarded with those annoying UAC prompts?

There followed some several items on these pages about another concern I had with FiOS TV, the fact that video-on-demand movies and shows use the same bandwidth pool in the FiOS architecture as the Internet access. I became concerned that concurrent video-on-demand programming and heavy Internet usage might result in slower performance. Verizon has been peeling back the onion and explaining this to me. There’s a little additional detail later on in this post.

But first let me deliver some good news. The account problems I’ve had with FiOS — which have amounted to Verizon’s records showing me as having standard DSL instead of FiOS — have been fully rectified. Frank Boersma, director, set-top box and in-home network engineering at Verizon, whom I quoted in this recent post, was able to set in motion a resolution process. The problem dates back to my original FiOS Internet installation date, early in January of 2006.

There’s an upside and a downside about the account fix: My bill will likely go up because the FiOS service costs more now than it did when I first installed the fiber-optic service. But Verizon has already upgraded my service from 15Mbps down/2Mbps up connection rates to 20Mbps/5Mbps. The increased upstream throughput is, in particular, very welcome. The faster 20/5 rate was a free FiOS upgrade rolled out in some areas last year. It didn’t reach me because, to Verizon, I didn’t have FiOS.

Boersma recently added to his description of how video-on-demand (VOD) co-exists with Internet data transmission:

The 50Mbps service available to many FiOS customers is provisioned at 59Mbps. The data service is throttled at 50Mbps — leaving 9Mbps for VOD traffic. Therefore a FiOS data and TV customer with 50Mbps data service would not see an impact to their data service until they started three or more concurrent video-on-demand sessions (each VOD session uses approximately 4Mbps of bandwidth). Even then the impact would be a small percentage of the overall bandwidth available for data as video traffic has priority. For a customer with 20/5 service, there would be a 39Mbps for video on demand before there would be any effect on data traffic.

Verizon is also moving to address the video and data bandwidth for FiOS service areas capped at 30Mbps. Boersma said: “In markets where 30Mbps is our maximum speed, the service will be provisioned at 54Mbps. We are in the process of rolling out these new standards, so not all markets have the 54Mbps or 59Mbps settings yet.”

Apparently, my town is configured to support 50Mbps service (but at $180 a month, I think I’ll pass). Bottom line, though, while some 30Mbps-provisioned customers could experience a video-on-demand squeeze when running multiple, concurrent on-demand sessions while performing heavy Internet downloads, Verizon is moving to address that possible issue. The concerns I expressed in earlier missives about this potential problem have evaporated.

• Good News About FiOS TV
• FiOS TV Has Drawbacks

Last time, I offered something of an apology for my earlier surmise that there might be some impingement of broadband Internet throughput because Verizon also uses that pipe to send video-on-demand programming, such as movies and shows. In my household, I have five televisions and set-top boxes connecting them to digital programming. My kids are addicted to on-demand children’s programming, and my oldest loves to order free on-demand movies. Personally, I’m more into Netflix. But there’s a lot of on-demand programming going on in the Finnie household. So I got to thinking: Would multiple on-demand TV programming coming down the pipe diminish the bandwidth available to my Internet connection?

It turns out that my concern actually does have some merit, although only in the worst-case scenarios.

Since the last issue, I was contacted by Frank Boersma, director, set-top box and in-home network engineering at Verizon. He explained the way FiOS TV and FiOS Internet work together in a telephone interview. We followed up the interview with this question and answer in email:

Scot: “My understanding is that the video on demand (VOD) can use the full bandwidth available to my connection while the Internet connection is capped to whatever service level you ordered. In my area, for example, the most you can get is 30Mbps, and my Internet broadband service is capped at 15Mbps. But what if I had ordered the 30Mbps Internet service level? Wouldn’t my Internet connection be reduced whenever VOD was playing?

Frank Boersma: “If your FiOS Internet speed was provisioned at 30Mbps, and that matched the limitation for your area, you could see an impact to your Internet speeds using VOD. That would only occur if you were watching VOD while attempting to access a website which could reach speeds of 30Mbps download. Each VOD session takes roughly 4Mbps of bandwidth from your permanent virtual circuit (PVC), so a single VOD session would leave 26Mbps available for Internet downloads. It’s more likely you could see an impact to your data speeds if you had multiple VOD sessions going at the same time (e.g. 4 VOD sessions simultaneously, which would use about 16Mbps). FiOS TV customers are limited to a theoretical maximum of seven VOD sessions (28Mbps), which in your example would leave only 2Mbps for Internet traffic.”

So it appears that if you use a lot of on-demand programming simultaneously (and my family does sometimes) there could be some fallout.

There’s another piece to the puzzle worth noting. In some areas, FiOS is capped at 30Mbps while in others it’s capped at 50Mbps. Last I checked, my home is still in a 30Mbps area. If you have 20Mbps FiOS Internet and you’re in a 50Mbps area, there’s no way your Internet connection could be affected by heavy simultaneous usage of video on demand. In my case, I’ve been trying for some time to get Verizon to upgrade my FiOS Internet service to 20Mbps. I was provisioned at 15Mbps and, due to a problem with my account, they haven’t been able to raise me to 20Mbps.

That problem with my account, which I’ve detailed in the past, amounts to this: For whatever reason, as a very early FiOS customer Verizon’s account system wound up listing me as a DSL customer, not a FiOS customer. I’m being charged the introductory FiOS charge (about $37 a month) for my 15Mbps service, which is a good deal less than the $49.99 Verizon now charges (with a subsequent rate hike) for its 20Mbps service. I have tried about a dozen times since my early 2006 FiOS Internet installation to get this fixed. So far, Verizon has been unable to resolve it.

So, anyway, if I ever get to 20Mbps FiOS Internet in my 30Mbps-capped area, that would leave only enough bandwidth to have two simultaneous video-on-demand programs playing. With three or more programs playing, my Internet connection would be impinged on. So, my situation is close to being the worst-case scenario. I think I made the right choice in sticking with Comcast for digital television. But your usage and your provisioning from Verizon could be very different.

If you’re considering Verizon TV, I think you should make sure to ask your Verizon rep what FiOS is capped at in your town.

Martin Heller, a past colleague of mine who reads the newsletter, wrote me to tell me that he tested FiOS TV related to my concern about erosion of broadband Internet performance while data-intensive, on-demand programming was being downloaded and played, and the results are very encouraging. Martin wrote:

“I did a controlled FiOS speed test using the Speakeasy.net speed test, with and without an on-demand movie playing. Internet bandwidth was not affected by the TV in my tests: I measured 20Mbps down and 4Mbps up whether or not on-demand programming was playing.

“I did notice some latency that seemed to correlate with the TV activity. Without any TV activity, the speed test dial jumped immediately to 10+, moving up more gradually from there. With the on-demand movie going, it took a second for the speed reading to go up, but by the end of the test it was at essentially the same value as the tests run without TV activity.”

Thank you, Martin, for performing this test.

This doesn’t address all my problems with FiOS TV; I don’t like the Actiontec router they want me to use, nor the way the connections are configured. Most of all, though, as a typical customer, I had trouble getting Verizon to give me a straight answer about how this works. I suspected that Verizon had protected the Internet bandwidth, but wanted to understand how that was accomplished.

But because of the newsletter, I was able to get a back channel directly to the some Verizon FiOS engineers who explained to me why Martin’s tests worked.

One of SFNL’s readers, Peter Gray, a recently retired Verizon engineer, contacted Verizon’s engineers on my behalf. I was emailed this statement from Jimmy Ho, one of Verizon’s FiOS engineers:

“The Verizon network is capable of speeds higher than what a customer signs up for. Even though a customer opts for, in [your case], the 15Mbps service, the rate limiting is only performed on the data service while the video service, which is carried in the same 1490 downstream, utilizes a much higher limit.”

Thanks to Peter Gray for facilitating this communication, and to the Verizon engineers and product managers who were part of the discussion. Between Martin’s tests and this explanation, I now understand how it works and believe it.

It’s a shame the two support people and the field tech I talked to before I terminated my installation couldn’t have given me this information. In the field tech’s defense, he at least wanted to explain but hadn’t been given the information.

Just as I was getting ready to mail this issue of the newsletter, I was contacted by Frank Boersma, Director, STB & In-Home Network Engineering, Verizon Video Network Services. I hope to talk to him later this week about the Actiontec router.

I adore my FiOS broadband service, and so it was a natural extension to consider expanding it to FiOS TV (digital and HD) cable-TV-like service when it became available in my hometown.

But when the FiOS tech arrived to install it, I learned two things that the salesperson neglected to tell me:

1. Verizon uses your broadband access for on-demand TV, downloading the channel guide, and other data transfers specific to you or your town. Verizon says that they have a way to increase the bandwidth for these downloads so that it doesn’t take away from your Internet service, but I’m not buying that. I’m willing to listen to them explain this, but so far, no one I’ve talked to at Verizon can offer one. (In fact, in my latest conversation on the subject, a Verizon Encore customer rep supervisor got angry with me saying that I didn’t need to know how it worked, it just did. In my experience when the customer service people get defensive about a technical question, there’s a problem.)

2. Verizon expected to either install a new ActionTec router for my broadband (connected via coax) or for me to run a new Ethernet line from where my router is down to the FiOS box in the basement. Neither solution was acceptable to me. I might be willing to run the Ethernet line down there, but only if Verizon is willing to explain how my broadband service will not be affected by my kids’ regular use of on-demand programming.

The thing is, I asked my salesperson about any possible degradation of my broadband service prior to the installation date. So it’s not like this is a last-minute concern on my part.

Bottom line: I wound up declining my FiOS TV installation; Verizon needs to do better with its FiOS TV service. The vibe I got was that I was an idiot — just take the service and be quiet. But it’s not like Verizon has a long history of serving digital entertainment content. I’ll stick with my cable company.

A Scot’s Newsletter reader who already has FiOS broadband and TV gave me some insights about his experience that confirmed my concerns. Here are some excerpts from two messages he sent me last week:

“Verizon installed an ActionTec MI424WR router. The router has very respectable hardware specs, but the routing firmware still has a few bugs. The firmware is Linux-based and appears to be based on Jungo’s OpenRG (Residential Gateway) product, but I cannot find mention of the specific version ActionTec/Verizon is using on Jungo’s website.

“One major flaw in the firmware is that it uses a connection tracking table of only 5,000 entries. On the surface, 5,000 connections doesn’t sound like a problem for a home user. However, what actually happens is that each connection creates two entries, one outgoing and the other incoming, effectively reducing the limit to 2,500. That’s still not so bad. The problem occurs when a connection is not properly closed by both sides; when this happens, it leaves one or both sides of the connection stuck in the conntrack table with a five-day time-to-live value. Now the limit is something like 2,500 connections over five days. Apparently gamers and P2P users can kill the connection table in a matter of hours. At that point, the router will not even honor DHCP requests on the LAN, requiring it be rebooted. I have yet to manage a whole week without needing to reboot the router.”

About my concerns about degradation of my bandwidth, the reader writes:

“On the on-demand front: The router has a rule to set up IP addresses and QoS (quality of service) for the set-top boxes. [In other words, you can set the priority of various streams of data based on the IP address. Each node on your network, including your set-top boxes, has its own IP address.] But like you, I don’t see how they get around taking the bandwidth from the normal level of service, unless the upstream throttles know to let it through. If it were simply the QoS priority, what’s to keep someone from giving their PC a priority? The only other way would be to give their video-on-demand server an exemption from being throttled.”

This was exactly my thinking. Again, if someone at Verizon can tell me how it is that the service opens up a wider pipe whenever on-demand video is being played, then I might consider FiOS TV. But I don’t like the fact that some of the TV stuff is occupying my network. I don’t like Verizon’s intrusion there. My LAN is my LAN, not their LAN. All they provide is the broadband connection and television programming. Verizon’s assumptions may work fine for unwitting consumers, but I don’t think us computer folk are going to be happy with this kind of setup.

One point that needs to be made: Our anonymous reader (he’s written to me many times, so I know him, but he asked to be unnamed this time) doesn’t hate his FiOS TV service. He also, though, said it might be interesting to test what happens to his broadband service when he’s got three on-demand shows running to his three set-top boxes.

I’d certainly like to know about that.