This was originally posted to comp.dcom.telecom.tech in error, it was intended for cdt, so reposting to proper place with some followup added.
During the recent FIOS discussion, I had nothing to add, so I didn't. Its been fine since it was installed 2+ years ago.
Just recently, I had some issues, and I wanted to pass along what I encountered for the benefit of the group.
At first, both wired and wireless went dead. A power cycle fixed it, and the wired connections had no furthur problems. The wireless was not working. The first time or 2 the Verizon "In Home Agent" fixed it but then it became intermittant and Agent could do nothing. [I] found a bug in their online diagnostics and a related bug in Agent. The online diagnostic was reading my userid and passphrase, spelling it out phonetically. My passphrase is several words with spaces between the words, and the diagnostic ignored the spaces. Later, Agent asked me for the passphrase and wouldn't allow me to enter the spaces.
Later, I called FIOS tech support and reported both bugs. I then described the problems and asked what would it take to get a new modem. He responded that he would send me one and it arrived the next day. Aparantly they have decided that the modem I have is obselete because they don't want it back. I will trash it after resetting it to clear the passphrase. It will be installed tomorrow and I will follow up if anything unusual happens.
One oddity in the old modem, its too slow to copy/paste the admin uid and password. They must be hand typed. I will see if the new modem has the same oddity.
Followup:
If it wasn't obvious from the above, the Verizon "In Home Agent" is a PC program. The new modem accepted the spaces in my passphrase but rejected it because it now requires at least one alpha and at least one numeric. I added some numbers and its happy. Reconnected the PCs with the new passphrase and they are all happily chugging away. The new modem allowed me to paste in the logon password.