Uverse... need the skinny on installation.

[LoyalServant]

So it's now available on my street.
I was greeted by a phone call this morning since I signed up for notification like... 2 years ago

So I jumped on the bandwagon.
Soon, no more 6 Meg DSL

But I have a lot of questions about it...
First, I have read that the 'gateway' device they use cannot be put into bridge mode?
That's an ouch... I have dd-wrt on my routers as well as some special tweaks.
What's the workaround for that?

Second... I just finished pulling Ethernet in the entire house.
There are jacks in each room with ethernet and cable tv.
(RG6 - it's unused at the moment)

All of this runs into a closet that has a louvered door for cooling and has a gigabit switch, current dsl modem, router, UPS, etc.
I ran cat5e from the telco demarcation point into the closet as well.

What cabling will they need to pull in the house?
Will they moan and groan about putting their gear in this closet?
The set-top boxes from what I understand are wired and use Ethernet.. so am I good on my already present wiring?

I am really more interested in what is going to make it easier for the installers to do their thing and have it in place for them, because I am uneasy about letting others pull cable in my house.
Nobody has ever done a good job of it and I am fairly anal about neatness when it comes to cabling.

Any tips for me?

 

[NightHawk877]

Your cables should be just fine. We have U-Verse at our house too and love it. They won't complain about the gear in the closet because that's how we have ours stored. When we had TWC, (evil pricks) they complained.

 

[LoyalServant]

Figured I would update this...
They installed it on Wednesday.

As stated the installer did not care about where it was or the cabling but he did have this look of relief on his face when he saw that it was all pulled into one area that had power, jacks on the wall already and that it was RG6.

They were more stressed about the line coming to the house than what was in it.
First issue is that I was the first 'iNID' install for these guys.
They just started doing them in this area so I was their proverbial guinea pig.
Total time to get me up and running: just over 8 hours.

This may read like a horror story, but it was not that bad..
The first issue is that line 1 was a tad noisy and line 2 was dead.
After visiting a few pedestals between me and the VRAD they found the issue with line 2 and pulled some bridge taps out.
Line quality improved but not as much as they wanted it to, or were expecting.
So they started digging and pulled up the splice in the front yard where it joins the line running down the street.
They checked it there and it was clean.. so naturally it was on the last 40' of cable between there and the house.
They dropped a new line thru the yard and connected it to the iNID but the iNID wasn't happy... just blinking red lights.
They got a second one and that one worked like a champ.
We love this service.... kills TWC in this area.

The result:

And some stats from the iNID...
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

 

[NightHawk877]

The only bad thing about U-Verse is that the Military Channel has no HD feed.