[colug-432] Comcast and connectivity alternatives

[Robert Grimm]

There is what appears to be a Cat-5 cable that goes to a box that has a
RJ-11 and an RJ-45. That is the only RJ-11 jack in my house. All the wiring
from the pole to the gateway and TV are new. There is no old wiring for
them to blame. I've had other people tell me they have exactly the same
problems I'm having with U-verse recently and they were close to the node
too. It makes me think that AT&T can't handle sustained data transfers at a
consistent speed.

At this point, it doesn't really matter if they get it working well. I
don't like the gateway and none of the other options are any better. It
isn't configurable enough for me. I've been thinking about putting in a
caching web proxy and trying to figure out how to get a forward error
correction gateway on my network. None of AT&T's gateways are configurable
enough to let me decide what default gateway address the DHCP server hands
out. I can't even decide what DNS servers it uses.


Robert Grimm
Voice only: (614) 212-4625
http://www.datablitz.net
http://www.grimmphotography.com


On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Richard Hornsby
<richardjhornsby at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> On Mar 1, 2014, at 23:11 , Robert Grimm <robertgrimm at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm closer than that. It can't be more than 400 feet away, yet the
> installer found no signal at the pole when he started. I asked questions
> about the gateway device before the install started and got incorrect and
> confused answers about it. I should have taken that as a sign and cancelled
> the installation right then.
>
> Do you have the RJ-11 line filters installed on other devices in your
> house? Landline phones, alarm system, fax machine, etc. do you have a
> filter (plugged into the DSL side) on your DSL modem? If not, try using
> them. If you do have the filters, try removing them.  I've occasionally
> seen the filters actually cause problems.  Using ethernet, if you wire a
> device like a laptop directly into the switch on the back of the DSL modem,
> does that help the Netflix issues at all?
>
> Beyond that, I'd call AT&T first thing Monday morning and make them come
> back out. Tell them you want someone competent, and none of the "we'll be
> out sometime Thursday 10am-6pm" nonsense.  That close to the DSLAM chances
> are you have a bad pair or some other correctable issue. The issues you
> describe should be immediately obvious to the tech, even if the solution
> isn't.  Frustrating they didn't check for or catch it during the
> installation.
>
> Watch out though - if they decide to blame the problem on your house
> wiring (everything past the gray box on your exterior wall), AT&T may want
> to charge you big money to diagnose and fix it.
>
> Before they come out, run a few speed tests to different places if you can
> to get some quantifiable data to compare after the fix.  Obviously speed
> (bandwidth) isn't everything, but it is something.
>
> If they give you any grief, it might not be worth putting up with. WoW was
> always good to us.
>
>
>
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