Q: What are the steps to get my house connected?
A: There are four main steps to bringing fiber to your neighborhood and home.
-
Planning: Connext works closely with your cities planners to create a solid build plan that provides a safe and timely infrastructure installation path for each neighborhood group.
-
Infrastructure: The Connext construction team installs fiber cable within conduit in the city utility easement that passes through a series of boxes called vaults with one vault set in the ground at every two homes along the planned route. This is where the fiber is spliced and run to each house to offer the FTTH connection
-
Vault to Home Connection: The Connext fiber drop crew brings the fiber cable from the vault in the easement to the side of the house to set the stage for the installation.
-
Installation: Our specialized technicians bring the fiber from the outside of the home to connect your router to offer you the speed of fiber optic internet (up to 10 Gbps service)
Q: What's the box you mounted on the side of my house called?
A: A Network Interface Device, or NID for short. We mount the NID on homes to use as a testing location should the unlikely chance of issues arise in the future.
Q: Do I need a modem?
A: You will need to provide a wireless router. Ensure that it's not a modem or a modem/router combination. Click Here to see the models we suggest.
Q: What is done during the installation?
A: Each installation is different, but before anything is done, the installer will discuss with you about the possible locations of drilled holes, how they will run the cable, and where the best place to put routers will be. In general, there are two ways we install clients:
-
We drill through an exterior wall and run a fiber line directly into the home from the box we have mounted on the side of the house (We call this a NID). The fiber line will then connect to our fiber modem that we will mount over the drilled hole on the interior of the home. Coming from our modem, an Ethernet cable will connect to your router providing you with Wi-Fi
-
We install what's equivalent to a modem in the NID and run a CAT5E line from our NID to another pre-existing box on the house called a Demarc. We tie our cables to the pre-existing cables within the Demarc. The cables in the Demarc usually run through the walls to the main utility room of a house. We will place the router in this location unless told otherwise. Generally, the utility area will have multiple cables that branch off to the rest of the rooms in the home. This allows better direct connections to every room. Technicians have been trained to prioritize this form of installation, however not every home has a Demarc and not all Demarcs have the correct cables. In these cases, we will need to perform the installation using the former method mentioned above. Technicians will not terminate every connection in the home. However, they will terminate one or two rooms for you.
Q: What kind of router do I need?
A: We suggest a TP Link Deco M5 or newer. These come in single and multipacks to allow for a mesh system in your house. We suggest a router with gigabit capability to take full advantage of your new fiber connection. CLICK HERE to see ALL the Routers we suggest.