Want Fiber Internet? Here’s How Metronet Installed It in My Home

In the previous installments, I wrote about how Metronet brought its fiber internet infrastructure into my neighborhood and then how it installed the network on my street. The process was surprisingly quick, with very little disruption, although I heard a Spectrum tech complain about how Metronet contractors kept cutting into Spectrum’s lines.

Whoops.

So, in this final installment, I’ll show you how a Metronet contractor threaded the street and installed the service in my home.

Metronet finally comes a knockin’

The last I heard, contractors still had to thread fiber optics through the conduits. Plus, I hadn’t seen any activity since the conduit spools rolled on to another part of my neighborhood, so all seemed quiet on the construction front.

However, a sales rep came by a month later to sign me up, who assured me that the optics were already in place.

Instant frowny face.

Say what? Was it a covert operation? Did ninjas install it in the dead of night? The guy had no clue. He shrugged. He was just there to sell me some internet.

So, here are the plans that were available to me, although he really pushed the 1Gbps and 2Gbps plans:

Honestly, my home doesn’t need anything over a gigabit. Heck, I’m not convinced we even need that much. My house of five adults and one fancy pants la-de-dah preschooler got by with Spectrum’s 500Mbps plan, which is why I recommend reserving 100Mbps for each teen and older. We have a tool, too, if you want a more refined number.

Ultimately, I went with the gigabit plan. In three years, I’ll pay the same standard rate I paid with Spectrum’s 600/30 plan.

Once I agreed to service, Metronet contractors returned six days later to install my fiber.

Getting the street ready

So, the salesman was correct: Metronet contractors came and installed the main fiber line through the orange “trunk” conduits. And yes, it was kinda covert because the optical line spools aren’t as humongous as the conduit reels. And yes, I was sad. So sad I missed the installation.

The photo above shows what’s called a vault (or terminal). This is where one main fiber line ends and another begins. It’s also where the main fiber line feeds all the houses on the block. There are three in my area: one vault four houses down, one on the next block, and one across the street on city property. The latter is a double vault in case Metronet needs to come in and install more fiber.

The vault shown above will feed fiber internet directly to the two homes directly behind it whenever those neighbors order Metronet’s service.

The photo above shows what the contractor called a “flower pot.” These host the blue conduits used to protect residential lines. It is buried in the front right corner of my property and has one unused blue conduit that goes to the double vault across the street and one blue conduit that goes to the next flower pot buried in my neighbor’s yard. Each flower pot supports two residential connections—I live on the corner, which is why one conduit is capped and unused.

Each home gets a dedicated optical line pulled through the blue conduits all the way to the local vault. The conduits are wide enough to handle multiple lines, so four or more can be in one blue conduit.

In my case, two contractors used one spool of single-thread fiber and some rope to thread the entire block. The rope pulls fiber lines through each blue conduit so one end connects to the main fiber line in the vault.

On my side of the street there are three flower pots delivering home fiber to five houses and one vault feeding two more houses and connecting the main fiber lines together.

Finally, the contractor dug a hole next to my property’s flower pot, threaded the fiber line through it, and pulled the line up to my house. This part of my connection will be buried in a few weeks.

Connecting fiber to my home

Your home fiber connection consists of two parts:

• The line coming from the flower pot to a box on your home’s exterior
• The line coming from the box on your home’s exterior into a room in your home

A box called the Network Interface Device joins these two lines. Mine is mounted on the side of my house—the setup could be different for other fiber internet providers.

This box is where some real installation magic happens, as the technician must melt glass to merge two optical lines together.

Above, you’ll see a discarded piece of the fiber line used to connect my home to the vault down the street. It consists of the following:

• Two fiberglass rods
• One hair-thin glass fiber protected by one layer of sheathing and one layer of thin plastic
• One copper tracer wire

To secure the external line to the Network Interface Device box, the contractor threaded the exterior line into the box, pulled down the copper tracer wire (it carries electricity, which we don’t want), pulled the two fiberglass rods apart, and then cut and secured the rods into the box using screws.

After that, he measured how much fiber he needed to enter my home and threaded one end of that line upward into the Network Interface Device box.

Now, here’s where things really got interesting.

Above, you’ll see the Optical Fiber Fusion Splicer. This device is used to combine two fiber lines into one.

First, the technician peeled back the sheathing and plastic covering the glass lines. Next, he used an alcohol wipe to clean the glass because oils refract light. After that, he used what he called a cleaver to cut both glass lines at a precise angle. I don’t know the exact angle he used, but for demonstration’s sake, imagine he cut one at 45 degrees and the other at 225 degrees.

Next, with the glass sheared, he put them in the Optical Fiber Fusion Splicer. It reads the connection between the two lines and throws up an error if they don’t meet precisely (recut until it does). Refraction causes the error—it must read as zero.

When all was clear and he had perfect cuts (he recut a few times to get it perfect), he melted the two lines together.

As you can see in the photo above, he applied a heat-shrink wrap around the sliced portion for protection and stability. He then mounted it in the box and wrapped all the extra slack.

Above, you’ll see the finished installation of my Network Interface Device box. The “buried” line enters up into the box on the left, and the interior line goes out of the box through the right. The white line is the coated optical fiber.

On a side note, the little green connector is called the bulkhead, but it wasn’t used for this installation. It usually connects the two white optical lines, but the technician said there’s too much light loss when using it, so the optics are spliced together instead.

As I watched him mount the fiber onto the brick, the contractor pointed out that the line could bend only so much. It can’t bend 90 degrees, as the glass fiber will break. The bends have to be minute, which is why there are tons of fiber looped inside and outside the box.

Getting fiber into my home

The last part of my installation required the contractor to retrieve his ladder and string the fiber line just under the roof overhang. Stringing it along the bottom was an option, but coaxial cabling is already there, and I was worried about nicking the fiber line with the weedeater. Been there, done that already, right Spectrum?

Apparently, Metronet frowns on this kind of setup. But I wasn’t having the fiber brought into my daughter’s room and then reconfiguring my home network topology to accommodate the new connection’s location. So, either Metronet execs could get over it, or I’d keep my business with Spectrum.

My janky fiber internet install prevailed, obviously.

The last bit of external work was drilling a hole through the brick and into the room where my Spectrum modem and TP-Link Deco router unit resided. He threaded the fiber through the hole—a fishing lure that caught the attention of my resident cats and my RoboVac. It was like some wacky team up intent on destroying my new internet. Cats swiped here. Cats pounced there. The RoboVac ate the line. What the heck?

Pure insanity.

Fiber doesn’t use the traditional modem

Fiber internet uses what’s called an Optical Network Terminal (ONT), although many internet providers and technicians call it a modem anyway. No “modeming” is involved, meaning the device doesn’t alter radio waves to send and receive data from your provider’s network. Instead, the ONT deciphers pulses of light and translates them into electric pulses delivered over Ethernet.

The Metronet contractor installed the Nokia ONT XS-010X-Q. Here are the specifications:

• 1x SC/ACP PON port
• 1x 10 Gigabit Ethernet port
• 1x Reset switch (recessed)
• 1x Power connector
• 1x Power button

So, the end of the line entering my house still needed a way to connect—you can’t just insert the glass line into a hole and be done with it. In my case, the installation required an SC/ACP adapter.

Just like he did outside, the contractor cut angles on the incoming line and the adapter’s glass end, fused them together, and applied a heat-shrink wrap to the merged section for durability and protection.

After that, he mounted the ONT to my wall, plugged in the adapter, and connected my Deco unit’s Ethernet cable to the ONT’s Ethernet port.

Installation complete!

940Mbps is not a full gigabit

The noticeable difference in upload speed was instant. Before the installation, I was lucky if my upload speed reached 30Mbps with Spectrum’s cable internet. I benched around 940Mbps on my first test with Metronet.

Previously, my download speed was close to 700Mbps on Spectrum’s Ultra plan.

With Metronet, I saw roughly the same 700Mbps download speed after installation. Now that it’s been a few days, I get around 940Mbps both ways, which matches the speeds disclosed on my plan’s rate card.

But wait! Hold up there, captain! Doesn’t the ONT have a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port? Why aren’t you getting the full gigabit?

Yes, the ONT does have a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port, and for a while, I thought the 60Mbps loss was due to the Gigabit Ethernet switches I still use in my home network (time to upgrade).

Why? Because networking requires data (overhead) to define your usable data, so a Gigabit Ethernet port normally caps around 940Mbps. In contrast, a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet or “faster” port gives you the full gigabit. And because I was testing my speed further down my wired network line, I assumed my switches were bottlenecking my speed.

But then I ran a test straight from the ONT’s 10Gbps port using a 10Gbps Ethernet adapter and saw the same 940Mbps cap. That said, I suspect Metronet is deliberately throttling the 1G/1G plan’s speed because most wired devices still use Gigabit Ethernet. So, if you ever see a 940Mbps plan and wonder why it’s not a full gigabit, there’s your answer (well, most likely).

Theoretically, fiber is a better connection

On a network design level, fiber uses less energy. It’s mostly passive technology delivering data using light beamed through glass. In contrast, cable internet uses more electricity to boost and broadcast radio signals that carry your data across copper wires.

On a performance and reliability level, I can’t sit here and tell you one is better. My connection is still new, so I will give it some time as the network “settles in” and more locals sign up. But I can tell you Spectrum’s reliability was mostly spot-on when I had it, but many people on social media will say differently.

Still, I’m not keen on the lack of a local Metronet office. I’m not happy Metronet doesn’t provide a mobile app for paying my bill, chatting with customer support, or restarting my equipment. Spectrum has both. But I guess it’s a tradeoff for having a cheaper bill and probably more upload and download speed than I’ll ever need.

FAQ about installing Metronet