I finally, after three activation dates, managed to get online with Verizon DSL. To make things more challenging, I brought my Bellsouth Westell Wirespeed which I thought I’d repatriate to Verizon’s network. However, there are two very important items to be aware of when signing up for Verizon DSL in Tampa, Florida with respect to modem and email configuration.
First, and most important in hindsight: Verizon will prevent you from sending any outbound email via outgoing.verizon.net that does not have a From: message envelope of @verizon.net. Yes, this maddeningly sucks hard freaking core. Verizon has been doing this under the false assumption that this does anything for spam since 2001 when the policy went into effect. While you can use the reply-to: header, for some applications this won’t work very well, if at all. Verizon, you suck.
Second, Verizon DSL in Tampa, Florida uses bridged mode and not PPPoE (yet). While Verizon intends to move everyone on the former GTI network to PPPoE eventually, right now you must be in bridged mode to fly. Normally, this wouldn’t matter, but if you’re using an existing DSL modem from a different provider that uses PPPoE, your modem won’t work without being reconfigured!
Third, Verizon’s DSL in Tampa will lock your connect onto a specific Ethernet card’s mac address until you allow your DHCP lease to expire or your expire it yourself. This is useful to know if you accidently obtain a DHCP lease on a machine you do not want to be your router for access to Verizon’s network.
To address these issues in order, first you may be screwed. If you can relay through your company’s SMTP server via VPN or SMTP AUTH, learn how to do that. If you cannot, but host your own domain on a server that supports SMTP AUTH, start using that. For example, my domain, edseek.com, is hosted on a server that allowed me to configure SMTP AUTH for Sendmail. I can now connect directly to a SMTP server other than Verizon’s obviously broken, braindead outbound SMTP server for sending mail with a From: address other than verizon.net.
Second, well, if you brought your own modem, as I did, hopefully you know how to kick it into bridged mode. With my Westell Wirespeed from Bellsouth (still using Bellsouth’s firmware) all I had to do was go into the Web interface and change the configuration from PPPoE to bridged Ethernet. Then, you merely hit the modem for a DHCP lease as you would under PPPoE, but you will get a public IP address just as if you were using IP pass-through mode on the Westell in PPPoE mode.
Third, well, it’s easy to release a DHCP lease. On a Linux box with pump, merely perform the following.
# pump -i eth0 --release
Done. Now plug the DSL modem into the Ethernet card you really intend to use and proceed as normal. Otherwise, you have to wait anywhere from eight to twelve hours for the DHCP lease on the old mac address to expire.
2 Comments
Why anyone would CHOOSE to get Verizon DSL is beyond me. I set up my new telephone service and internet long before I ever moved. Once I moved in, I was told it would be another two weeks before my internet service would be available (not told to me initially). They’ve done nothing to expedite it.
If I had another choice, I’d cancel all of their services… in a heartbeat.
We have to subscribe to Verizon. Unfortunately in my area it is the only option. I hate Verizon. I’m sure there will be other internet options available in the future, and I’m sorry for verizon since it would be too late for them to try to retain old customers.