AT&T Fiber Internet

[rickca]

AT&T is busy installing fiber in my community.  It's great because Comcast will have some real competition for the first time in 20 years.  Has anyone got some experience with AT&T fiber internet?  It's only been rolled out in a limited number of cities so far.

[daverich4]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

AT&T is busy installing fiber in my community.  It's great because Comcast will have some real competition for the first time in 20 years.  Has anyone got some experience with AT&T fiber internet?  It's only been rolled out in a limited number of cities so far.

 

They’re right in the middle of tearing up our neighborhood to put it in right now. So far they’ve broken the main water line twice and cut the Charter cable once. I don’t have experience with AT&T fiber but plenty of experience with AT&T Uverse. Terrible is the most positive thing I can say about it. They’re advertising 300Mbps with their fiber service but I already get 200 from Charter so have no reason to even consider going back to them. 

[rickca]

Oh yeah, AT&T Uverse was absolutely horrible.  I tried it.  

[n2it]

AT&T ran fiber through our backyard in May and just started offering it last month.  Comcast contract was just about to expire so I switched.  I have the gigabit and I've been very happy with the performance:

 

The gateway device doesn't work as well with my existing router as my cable modem ... you have to go through some hoops to get it set up (it is a similar/same gateway as what is used for uverse).  It is nothing like uverse ... it is very fast, very low latency ... fiber is run up to the house, with a very short run (5 feet in my case) of twisted pair ethernet to the gateway.

[Kilauea50]

We have had AT&T fiber for nearly 2 years and there is just no comparison to anything else we have had. It is outstanding. You will love it

[beerandmusic]

have had it over a year here in san diego...i actually have both att and twc spectrum...that way when one goes down, i can just renew my nic settings and switch to the other...has happened a few times...i don't like it when internet down@!

[Bob Stern]

I've read that the gateways provided by AT&T to fiber customers can be from Arris, Pace or Motorola.  Any experience with which of these gateways permit turning off their WiFi and NAT router functions so that you can use your own WiFi router?

[Kilauea50]

10 minutes ago, Bob Stern said:

I've read that the gateways provided by AT&T to fiber customers can be from Arris, Pace or Motorola.  Any experience with which of these gateways permit turning off their WiFi and NAT router functions so that you can use your own WiFi router?

I have had 2 Pace modems and hated them. The wifi was terrible.   After spending some time on the forums, I got a Motorola BGW210 and find it superior to the Pace in every way. The smart connect seems to work great.  You can use your own router (Netgear provides a tutorial) but it is a bit different than dealing with Spectrum modems.  I had ethernet run in wall so I just use the gateway wifi for phones, tablets, etc.  The tutorial I saw was pretty straightforward but i haven't tried it.  Fiber has been another world for us over Spectrum broadband.  I would not go back

[look&listen]

15 minutes ago, Bob Stern said:

I've read that the gateways provided by AT&T to fiber customers can be from Arris, Pace or Motorola.  Any experience with which of these gateways permit turning off their WiFi and NAT router functions so that you can use your own WiFi router?

AT&T Fiber (100Mbps) just installed here today!

I have Pace gateway.

First reset most wifi devices for new Network Key (using old SSID) from new gateway.

See Enable/Disable control for both 2.4, 5ghz, Wi-Fi Interfaces in Settings page.

Is "NAT mappings" other thing you need?

[Account Closed]

The BGW 210-700 is the one to get but make sure they push the latest firmware (currently 1.7.15). You can use another router behind for better WiFi or you can just turn the radios off and use access points.

[Bob Stern]

On 11/24/2018 at 6:03 PM, Kilauea50 said:

I have had 2 Pace modems and hated them. The wifi was terrible.   After spending some time on the forums, I got a Motorola BGW210 and find it superior to the Pace in every way. The smart connect seems to work great.  You can use your own router

 

Thanks for the warning about the inferior WiFi in the Pace 5268AC!

 

 

On 11/25/2018 at 7:50 AM, bobflood said:

The BGW 210-700 is the one to get but make sure they push the latest firmware (currently 1.7.15). You can use another router behind

 

Did you actually try using another router behind the gateway?  Users on various forums have been unable to get "IP Passthrough" to work on the BGW210-700, but maybe the latest firmware solves that problem.  Alternatively, perhaps the "Cascaded Router" setting works without turning on "IP Passthrough".  This is quite confusing.

[Account Closed]

3 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

 

Thanks for the warning about the inferior WiFi in the Pace 5268AC!

 

 

 

Did you actually try using another router behind the gateway?  Users on various forums have been unable to get "IP Passthrough" to work on the BGW210-700, but maybe the latest firmware solves that problem.  Alternatively, perhaps the "Cascaded Router" setting works without turning on "IP Passthrough".  This is quite confusing.

 

I did get it to work with the 5268 but have not bothered with the BGW210. I have seen the same posts. Some have gotten it to work, others not. I am just going to use a couple of the ATT extenders and see if that does the trick. ATT does not officially support another router behind any of their gateways and you can't easily eliminate the gateway because it is necessary for authentication, TV and phone. I would avoid it unless you are very good at network management. BTW, you may have to hunt for a link to the 1.7.15 firmware and manually install it. It is very much better than the prior ones but ATT is not pushing it yet.

[rickca]

On 11/20/2018 at 12:39 PM, daverich4 said:

They’re right in the middle of tearing up our neighborhood to put it in right now. So far they’ve broken the main water line twice and cut the Charter cable once

They finished digging and burying conduit today.  Good job ... no disruptions to existing services!  Tomorrow, they will begin entering the townhouses here to do something.  The entire complex is prewired for Comcast, so I'm not sure what AT&T needs to do inside each unit.  They still need to run the actual fiber through the conduit they've installed, but apparently that isn't difficult.

 

I'm really looking forward to getting half decent upstream bandwidth.  My Comcast is 150/10 Mbps.  AT&T is offering 100/300/1000 with symmetric upstream/downstream.  Lately Comcast speeds have been all over the map.  It used to be pretty consistently good.

[vortecjr]

I had several guys from Comcast come out to see what was going on with my slow internet speed and they could not fix it. They changed a bunch of connectors, ran a home run from the exterior to their router and nothing worked. I was paying for 150 Mbps and was getting +/- 20 Mbps wired to my computers. So I had AT&T come out install fiber. It's fiber all the way into the house and then converts to Ethernet at a white box which then connects to their modem. My wired connection speed was 995 Mbps the last I checked it:) 

 

BTW one of the Comcast guys came with a digital meter to check for noise on the incoming line and it was full of noise! He tweaked some things and improved it, but the graph was awful looking with lots of low frequency noise.

[rickca]

Anyone with AT&T fiber tried their Uverse TV service?  The old non-fiber Uverse was horrible, awful compression on HD channels.  I haven't had cable TV for quite a while.

[vortecjr]

I ended up keeping Comcast for TV:) However, I'm thinking of going with something like Google TV next.  

[cjf]

If you live in an area like myself who has had ZERO other choices but Commie Cast for the past 20yrs and thus had to put up with their arrogance and total lack of concern for anything customer related I would jump ship in a heartbeat if the option was there to do so. Even if it cost me more money!

 

Being able to finally flip them the bird and prove that Karma is indeed a bitch would be worth every extra penny. The grass may not be any greener on the other side but that is a gamble I would gladly take ?

[rickca]

49 minutes ago, cjf said:

If you live in an area like myself who has had ZERO other choices but Commie Cast for the past 20yrs and thus had to put up with their arrogance and total lack of concern for anything customer related I would jump ship in a heartbeat if the option was there to do so. Even if it cost me more money!

That's the plan.

[Bones13]

If ATT would actually have that product available, I would try it. Currently I keep getting ads for fiber, but the website tells me - nah, we can offer you 30 at your location. I tried that when I moved in, worse 2 months of my life.

 

Comcast is commonly 75-90 here, plenty for streaming a couple of devices and gaming, etc.  Costs a fortune for 3 TVs, “fast” internet, and the landline (yeah, the wife still thinks she will get a call on the landline if one of our, out of state living, children gets in a car wreck, and the police will somehow find our number here. I’m pretty sure our grown up kids both don’t know the landline number, and don’t have it listed in their phones)

 

Supposed to be getting fiber at the beach house, with some TV channels (I have not seen all the details, as this is a community wide project)for $75, half of the current Mediacom bill.

 

still looking at cutting the cord options.

[rickca]

AT&T is finally accepting orders in my community.  My installer is coming on Feb 21.  I ordered 300 Mbps fiber internet service for $70 a month.  Comcast currently wants $80 a month for 150 Mbps.  Buh bye, Comcast!  Gigabit service is only $90 a month but I don't think I need it.  I don't watch TV much and I don't even have a cable subscription.

 

AT&T also threw in a free 4K Apple TV which I'll probably sell because I have a Panasonic 4K Blu-Ray player and an LG OLED TV.  I doubt I also need a 4K Apple TV ... but Apple is about to announce their new TV service, so we'll see.

[Ralf11]

Congrats on getting rid of Commie-cast!!

[AudioDoctor]

In Minneapolis with a good signal I get over 100Mbps on my phone over the AT&T network. I have been a customer of theirs for decades and never once had a problem of any sort dealing with them or their service, customer or otherwise.

 

At home I am still on Comcast though. For now.

[Bones13]

Mediacom installed fiber throughout my beach house community over the past few months.

 

In my building there are 6 residential units over 2 commercial ones.

 

I too was wondering how the fiber would get up to my unit as the building was built with cable to each unit, then some cable, Ethernet, and speaker cables, run in the unit itself. As I followed the progress, I found out that there is a box, that converts the fiber to the original cables that run up to the units, in the utility closet now, instead of the cable splitter that was there previously.

 

I did not have to change any of my hardware (Arris DOCSIS 4.0). Having issues measuring speed though. I am streaming (1080p) and gaming fine, but Speedtest measures very low. The Xfinity speed test fared better, but both get seemingly random results when run sequentially. This stuff is brand new, I’m going to let them finish “balancing” the system before I start complaining. On the other hand, the new service adds HBO to my previous cable lineup and costs half as much as I was paying previously. Apparently, collective bargaining works. The organization was shopping fiber, and for the community size, there was competition.

[rickca]

OK I'm up and running on 300 Mbps fiber internet.  The install went fine, but the tech was clueless about how to use my own RT-AC3100 Asus router and just use the provided BGW210-700 gateway as a modem only.

 

There's a lot of inaccurate information about this on various internet forums.  Since I don't follow them, I don't know which contributors have a track record of correct advise.

 

A supervisor on the phone said they don't recommend using their gateway in bridge mode.  I need to find out why.  So the tech just turned off the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios on the gateway.  There's no way this is optimal, but I need a networking guru to tell me the right way to do it ... and I'm not sure AT&T is going to connect me with such a resource.  I'm pretty sure I still have double NAT.

 

Interesting ... a speedtest with just the gateway easily does 300 Mpbs upstream and downstream.  With my router in the picture, I get 300 Mbps downstream but only 130 Mbps upstream.  Obviously, I need to change something on my router but I'm not sure what to change.  I think this can be done without resorting to QoS.  Any ideas?

 

This was weird.  My router IP changed from 192.168.1.1 (the default) to 192.168.2.1!  How did that happen?

 

The fun part of the day was calling Comcast to cancel my internet.  Of course, they wanted to look up their 'best offers' but I told them I'd already given them a chance to secure my business and messed up by not offering me a good deal.  Buh-bye.

 

Hey @austinpop PhD could you help me with this? 

[Bob Stern]

I did some investigation of this 2 months ago because I'm interested in switching from Comcast to AT&T Fiber.  I held off because of the difficulty in using your own router.

 

The software configuration documentation for the BGW210-700 seems to be a closely held secret.  All I could find was a 29-page "Install and Operations Guide" that merely describes the ports and lights.  On the AT&T Community forum, turning off the router in the AT&T Gateway is referred to as "passthrough" mode.  Most users seemed unable to accomplish this with the BGW210-700.

 

An alternative approach that also has met with mixed success is to completely replace the AT&T Gateway with a router that can be configured to spoof the MAC address of the WAN port of the AT&T Gateway.  Ubiquity routers are popular for this.

 

https://medium.com/@mrtcve/at-t-gigabit-fiber-modem-bypass-using-unifi-usg-updated-c628f7f458cf

 

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32198537-AT-T-Fiber-Bypass-Hardware-List