Engine Swap
Poster Extraordinaire
Let me see if I can tunnel in….
Thinking about switching to AT&T fiber for internet - anyone here using it?
- Thread starter Engine Swap
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Engine Swap
Poster Extraordinaire
OK - I got tge Xfinity app. I can test the signal throughout the house. Basically, if I get more than 20 feet away from the router, the signal goes to poop.
I live in a compact 5-level, 1400 sq-ft house. Until recently, I git a good signal through out the house, in the yard, garage, and parked in front of house.
Could the be limiting the transmit power of the Wifi? They are touting “booster pods” starting at $119 to fix the problem. We’ve been here 5 years and it worked until about a week ago. Still works great within 10 feet of the router.
I live in a compact 5-level, 1400 sq-ft house. Until recently, I git a good signal through out the house, in the yard, garage, and parked in front of house.
Could the be limiting the transmit power of the Wifi? They are touting “booster pods” starting at $119 to fix the problem. We’ve been here 5 years and it worked until about a week ago. Still works great within 10 feet of the router.
Engine Swap
Poster Extraordinaire
So I signed up for ATT - I’m eligible for a self-install (free, instead of $99) since the house is wired for fiber.
Got the modem in the mail and discovered the previous tenants took the ATT ONT module - grrrrr.
On the plus side, I was able to get a real person at ATT within a minute and a tech is coming out Monday at no charge.
Got the modem in the mail and discovered the previous tenants took the ATT ONT module - grrrrr.
On the plus side, I was able to get a real person at ATT within a minute and a tech is coming out Monday at no charge.
johnb
Tele-Holic
Never had a complaint about my ATT fiber. I get close to the 300 MBS all over the house (split level 1900 sq ft).
The only issues I've had is their billing. It gets me constipated at times!
The only issues I've had is their billing. It gets me constipated at times!
Engine Swap
Poster Extraordinaire
Just wanted to check in....
We've had ATT fiber for about a month now. Speed is great, coverage is poop. If I'm more than 15 feet away from the modem, I get marginal connections and lots of dropouts.
So, to that end, I called tech support today. Here's how it went down:
Me: I'm getting poor coverage
ATT: Let's run a test - yes, you're getting poor coverage. We suggest that you sign up for extenders for an extra $15 per month.
Me: Its a 1400 square foot house, I shouldn't need extenders. I suggest you send a tech out right away to fix the issue.
ATT: Hold on - there's an "adjustment" we can do on our end to your modem to improve coverage. Would you like us to try this?
Me: OK, let her rip.
Long story short, they throttle the range on their end to try to get people to sign up for extenders. I now have strong coverage in the entire house. Cost to me $0/tech visits 0. Just putting this out there for anyone else who might run into this "issue".
We've had ATT fiber for about a month now. Speed is great, coverage is poop. If I'm more than 15 feet away from the modem, I get marginal connections and lots of dropouts.
So, to that end, I called tech support today. Here's how it went down:
Me: I'm getting poor coverage
ATT: Let's run a test - yes, you're getting poor coverage. We suggest that you sign up for extenders for an extra $15 per month.
Me: Its a 1400 square foot house, I shouldn't need extenders. I suggest you send a tech out right away to fix the issue.
ATT: Hold on - there's an "adjustment" we can do on our end to your modem to improve coverage. Would you like us to try this?
Me: OK, let her rip.
Long story short, they throttle the range on their end to try to get people to sign up for extenders. I now have strong coverage in the entire house. Cost to me $0/tech visits 0. Just putting this out there for anyone else who might run into this "issue".
corliss1
Poster Extraordinaire
Interesting - I have about the same house size and my coverage has been amazing from day 1.
1stpitch
Tele-Afflicted
AT&T jerked my daughter around with that extender crap for months. She finally relented and put one in. Still got crappy coverage.
Engine Swap
Poster Extraordinaire
We bought (and returned) a 3rd party extender. It was useless.
They were probably running the wifi at the lowest power setting by default, definitely affects range.
We have a mesh wifi system in the house, so when we got fiber, we just had them install a modem and we plug our router into that. Our home is about 2500 square feet over two floors and I have 2 satellites to extend the main router's range.
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That doesn't make sense in total but I understand it all more in tech terms.
In lots of posts here some of us have advised get your own router/firewall/bridge most call a "router". No one should buy extenders in the year 2023. A meshed system is superior.
Not doing well as you move around or at all with WiFi can easily be radio congestion, the WiFi type, and the quality of antennas. Where you live - how many WiFi radios near - can have a big impact.
@getbent who I think we can all trust has espoused his version of the Ubiquiti Amplify that is WiFi 6 and often one unit will suffice. In my house with the way 3 floors are I'm still happy with their still sold 3 pack meshed system. The deal with Amplifi is they are a consumer line of Ubiquiti who makes high performance enterprise stuff. You have their chipsets instead of something generic. Their management app is good and they have a great schema for remote/VPN. They patch vulnerabilities faster than many.
For a simple to use system Amplifi has a feature called band steering that lets you use old and new stuff. They have a simple schema to give a particular device priority.
There's other good stuff but not all of it has the enterprise grade lineage and support. My department has to support around 150 people who work from home. This or something really expensive called Cisco Meraki stands out as a good way to go.
I"m not going to say some popular brands and what Amazon and Google own are bad as much as the Ubiquiti really keeps our associates happy and me too.
Meraki requires annual or 3 year licensing for all their products to operate.
Marc Morfei
Poster Extraordinaire
Fiber people: what was the hardware install? Do they have to dig up your yard, drill holes in your house, etc? Once it gets to your house does it utilize the coax already in yours walls?
corliss1
Poster Extraordinaire
@Marc Morfei - it's direct fiber to the home. Tiny hole in the house, just like you would for cable, then fiber directly to the router. Mine was a one piece tv/router/wireless access point, so only one box, one wire. They do dig up your yard, usually twice - once to install fiber access in your neighborhood (a small square foot green box is what our neighborhood had in front of every other house), then once for your personal installation from that box to the entry point.
Can't speak to AT&T although it is probably similar.
First step for our neighborhood was running the cable up our road and putting in a pole at every other home. The installation in our neighborhood was not simply fiber to the curb, but fiber into the house.
From that pole they ran the fiber into our crawl space and terminated it in a single gang box in the wall next to our entertainment center. They ran a patch cable from the wall to a Fiber modem, the best term for it as it is a box that supports all the services they offer.
I plugged our Wireless Mesh router into the box and voila network throughout the house.
My daughter is completely wireless, but I have one of the satellites in my son's room with a 4 port hub on it so he can plug his gaming desktop into it. There is also a satellite downstairs where my home office is and my desktop is plugged into that one. Other than those two devices, everything else is wireless. If you look at the first image below, there are currently 22 devices active on our network.
The coax in our home is in shambles from multiple Satellite TV installations over 20 years. One day, I do want to go down into the crawl space and identify where each cable goes, label it and put in a hub just to clean it all up. It bugs me that it is such a mess. With wireless connectivity, we have no use for the coax. Same goes for the phone lines in the house, we haven't had a land line in years.
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it will vary. They break the cable out to Cat6 at the street here... which is no big deal, you can easily run gig speed over cat6, so, you would never know a difference.
if you look at the back of the router (or somewhere on the router) it will give you the info you need to log into your router and turn up the wifi, and do lots of other things that can be helpful (like increase your dhcp range) change the wifi password etc.
