Is it better to place a wireless n router behind my Uverse

[Creston]

Just wonder if adding a router would help in any way the router is a Cisco wrt310n v2. Thanks for any info pros or cons.

[Computer-Joe]

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Creston wrote:
Just wonder if adding a router would help in any way the router is a Cisco wrt310n v2. Thanks for any info pros or cons.

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Depends on whether the added local network speed is worth the extra work configuring the setup. An additional router wil do little if anything to improve your actual internet speed unless you have a lot of devices connecting wirelessly and you have the 18 or 24 Mbps packages.

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“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[Creston]

I do have a lot a devices 2 iPods and iPhone most of the time a notebook as well. Just trying to figure out when I'm on my Xbox and the kids are play with there iPod like facebook not videos and the wife on Facebook with the notebook I seem to be lagging out out my games and get high ping. Just don't know what to do that's for the reply

[Computer-Joe]

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Creston wrote:
I do have a lot a devices 2 iPods and iPhone most of the time a notebook as well. Just trying to figure out when I'm on my Xbox and the kids are play with there iPod like facebook not videos and the wife on Facebook with the notebook I seem to be lagging out out my games and get high ping. Just don't know what to do that's for the reply

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Do you have any other Uverse services besides internet?

Are you using wireless for your Xbox?

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[Creston]

I have 4 tv's and I have the Xbox wired in.

[Creston]

Could it be because the other boxes for the tv's might be on?

[Computer-Joe]

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Creston wrote:
Could it be because the other boxes for the tv's might be on?

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It could. It would depend on your connection profile. The TV will take precedence over internet if the bandwidth is required.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[Creston]

I just got 3801 black box hooked up feels like I should my old one I'm about to give up? Went to speed test.net and just got 1.87Mbps all tvs off new cat5e cables to house from AT&T box to the 3801.

[hpmsrm]

#1.  What download speed are you signed up for?

#2.  Using a PC connected via Ethernet (not wireless) run the speed test and see if you are getting what you are paying for.  Then check speed with your PC connected via wireless and see what that speed is.

#3.  The AT&T wireless router built into the RG is only one frequency (2.4 gHz) AND does not have "N" capability.  Is your separate wireless router a dual band unit?

Here is OUR story regarding our problem which was similar to yours: 

We subscribe to 18 mbps speed for Internet.  Our RG is the 3801.  My desktop PC was connected to the RG via Ethernet.  Two laptops, my printer, my wife's iPad and her iPhone were all connected via wireless.

Every evening our Internet download speed would drag down to a crawl......sometimes less than 1 mbps.  But other times earlier in the day it would run very close to the speed we are paying for.  However. the desktop PC, which is connected by cable, always ran at very near the subscribed speed.   So that told me the problem was in the wirelss set up.

I ran a quick survey of what was happening wirelessly in the neighborhood and WOW.....I discovered 10 to 15 other U-verse neighbors showing up on my screen with their 2-Wire gateways.  Some very weak.....but quite a few were moderately strong signals.  ALL those systems were using the "G" protocol on the 2.4 gHz frequency.

I went to the store and purchased a Netgear N600 dual band wireless router.  It also has 4 Ethernet ports on it and a USB port.  I installed it behind the RG and turned the wireless function in the RG off.  We are now running all the wireless devices (except the printer) on "N" mode on the 5 gHz frequency band.  We are the only ones in the neighborhood who are using this frequency.  WOW.....the difference was amazing.  We get nearly full subscribed download speed on the wireless devices at any time of the day.

I did two other things.  First.....There are six walls between the router location and our living room which were significantly dropping the 5 gHz signal strength.  So I also purchased a Netgear dual band wireless extender and set it in the living room. It picks up the signal from the router at the other end of the house and retransmits it.  But that was primarily for my wife's iPad 3 which isn't very sensitive at that higher frequency.  By the way that extender also had 4 more Ethernet ports on it.  Now we are very happy.  It has not cured the slow AT&T/Yahoo mail speeds but the rest of the Internet snaps right along quite quickly.

Secondly.....One other interesting feature of the Netgear N600 dual band router is that it has that USB port.   We have a 1 TB external HDD which had been connected to the desktop PC.  Unfortunately, if that PC was turned off.....so was the external hard drive.   I now have that drive plugged into that USB port on the Netgear router and that gives us full time access to that drive from any PC or laptop on our home net.

We don't have any game consoles etc.  But, perhaps our story will give you some ideas of what you might do to solve your speed problems.  I sure hope so.  By the way....the Netgear equipment was just darn near plug and play.  Never had anything so easy to set up.  No software on a disk to be loaded onto the computers. (except for dual band adapter for my laptop).   Good luck.

[Creston]

Wow thanks for the info. I have check the signal for other wireless signals and I use channel 11 that's not being used by others I have had Uverse for almost 2 years with little problems but the last 6 months have been bad the good news is I have a tech coming to the house today I will post back what they find.

[Computer-Joe]

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Creston wrote:
I just got 3801 black box hooked up feels like I should my old one I'm about to give up? Went to speed test.net and just got 1.87Mbps all tvs off new cat5e cables to house from AT&T box to the 3801.

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What were you using to run the speed test. was it hard wired to the 3801 or wireless?

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[Creston]

Both wired and wireless anywhere between 2.5Mbps and 6. I used two sites speed test.net and AT&T speed test. The system worked great on install and just craped out after that

[hpmsrm]

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Creston wrote:
Wow thanks for the info. I have check the signal for other wireless signals and I use channel 11 that's not being used by others I have had Uverse for almost 2 years with little problems but the last 6 months have been bad the good news is I have a tech coming to the house today I will post back what they find.

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It's my opinion that receiver and transmitter selectivity is poor enough that your neighbor who is set up over on a channel below or above your channel 11 is still possibly causing interference.  The 2.4 gHz band is fixed width so there is only so much room.  I blieve that, in our neighborhood, there was so much activity on that band and it was so cluttered....it was causing our system....and probably others also....to slow way down.  The clue was that speed drop was most severe during peak use times......first thing in the morning,  during the period right after folks got home from work and, later on in the evening.  Then...after normal bed times the speeds returned pretty much to normal.
I tried different channels that were not in use and it did not help.  But when we switched to the 5 gHz band our problems were solved.

[Computer-Joe]

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Creston wrote:
Both wired and wireless anywhere between 2.5Mbps and 6. I used two sites speed test.net and AT&T speed test. The system worked great on install and just craped out after that

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Since the problem is on both hardwired and wireless connections, it would seem there might be more going on than wireless interference. Download and install Uverse Realtime ( http://www.uvrealtime.com/download.aspx ) and post screenshots of the IP Profile, Bit Loading, Error Table, and HPNA/Coax tabs. Someone here might be able to spot something.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[Creston]

Sure thing I will when I get home. Really mad right now the tech comes out yesterday breaks out his iPad and tell me that I'm getting what I'm paying for that tv were eating my net up. Ran a test while the man is there got 1.76 with everything off in the house and tells me he seen worse. That he was going to vouch my ports and for me to watch it over a few days that what he did should help and if it don't to call back

[Creston]

I'm thinking your right last night I counted 17 wireless signals now some as low as 3% and as much as 60% . A lot of 2wire out there now didn't use to be as bad didn't really see any n's out there would putting a n behind mine help?

[Computer-Joe]

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Creston wrote:
I'm thinking your right last night I counted 17 wireless signals now some as low as 3% and as much as 60% . A lot of 2wire out there now didn't use to be as bad didn't really see any n's out there would putting a n behind mine help?

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Only if you get one that does 5GHz. Standard "N" and "G" wireless share the same 2.4GHz frequency. As I mentioned though, if you're having the same problem on a hardwired connection I don't think your issue is strictly wireless. You could test it though by turning off the wireless in the gateway and see if you still have problems on the hardwired connection.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[Creston]

10-4 sorry I have to wait till 3 I will turn off wifi and give it a try thanks for all the help. I'd you think of anything else let me know. It's crazy

[hpmsrm]

Creston, what the other guys are saying that you need to check both the wireless and wired connections is absolutely true.  In our case the PC that was connected to the U-verse RG via Ethernet cable did not have the speed slow-down problem.  Only our wireless laptops and my wife's iPad were having the problem.   So that pretty much gave me the clue as to what I needed to do.

On one of my calls to AT&T CS I was told that AT&T guarantees 80% of the speed you are paying for....at the wired output of the RG.  If you ever mentioned what speed you signed up for I have missed it.  But I believe U-verse download speeds now are 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 mbps.  So if you have subscribed to the 6 mbps speed and you get 4.8 mbps you would be within their tolerance range.

[Computer-Joe]

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hpmsrm wrote:

Creston, what the other guys are saying that you need to check both the wireless and wired connections is absolutely true.  In our case the PC that was connected to the U-verse RG via Ethernet cable did not have the speed slow-down problem.  Only our wireless laptops and my wife's iPad were having the problem.   So that pretty much gave me the clue as to what I needed to do.

On one of my calls to AT&T CS I was told that AT&T guarantees 80% of the speed you are paying for....at the wired output of the RG.  If you ever mentioned what speed you signed up for I have missed it.  But I believe U-verse download speeds now are 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 mbps.  So if you have subscribed to the 6 mbps speed and you get 4.8 mbps you would be within their tolerance range.

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Uverse is different than DSL?

Dsl packages are actually ranges. The 3Mbps package is actually 1.5 - 3, and the 6Mbps is 3 - 6  same for the 1.5Mbps and 768Kbps packages. They expect you to shut up and be glad if your getting half of what your paying for.

And their speeds are only "guaranteed" (and I use that term loosely, because AT&T does not have that word in their vocabulary) from your modem to the first piece of gear you hit, like the CO, RT, or in the case of Uverse, the VRAD.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell