Question We are finally getting gigabit fiber internet from AT&T

[Shmee]

Installation should be Saturday! I assume they will provide an ONT, but do they also provide any sort of router? It doesn't really matter, as we have a spare router with 802.11AC, but I am just curious what kind of equipment they provide.

 

[RearAdmiral]

Installation should be Saturday! I assume they will provide an ONT, but do they also provide any sort of router? It doesn't really matter, as we have a spare router with 802.11AC, but I am just curious what kind of equipment they provide.

According to a guy I just bought a router from I think you will get locked in to their provided equipment basically. Not sure if it is one device or what.

 

[UsandThem]

When I had mine installed several years ago, they provide an Arris BGW210 modem/router (which you have to use) at least as a modem.

However, the wifi performance/range wasn't good at all in my house, so I immediately added a wireless router and placed the Arris in bridge mode.

 

[JackMDS]

There are differences between Geographical Areas, within the same area there is differences between Apt Installation, Condo, or stand alone private Home etc.

The best way is to find someone in your neighborhood that recently installed in similar enviroment.

In general the ONT or ONT/Modem comes with it, then they add a Wireless Router and charge ~$10 a month for it.

If you do not want their Router, make sure that there nothing in the Router that is essential to whatever system you have at Home.

As a general example - when having Verizon FIOS with TV service, the TV service would not work correctly if a Verizon Router in Not on the Network.

 

[bigboxes]

When I had mine installed several years ago, they provide an Arris BGW210 modem/router (which you have to use) at least as a modem.

However, the wifi performance/range wasn't good at all in my house, so I immediately added a wireless router and placed the Arris in bridge mode.

That's almost what you HAVE to do. I've done that in the past when I was using someone's equipment.

 

[UsandThem]

That's almost what you HAVE to do. I've done that in the past when I was using someone's equipment.

Before I switched over to AT&T, I had Time Warner Cable (then became Spectrum), and with them I bought my Motorola modem from Amazon and used it instead of using their equipment. My TV service through them worked fine as well.

However, with AT&T and their U-verse TV service, I can only use their provided modem / wifi router combo unit. But since they don't charge a rental fee for it, I didn't mind as long as I could disable their wifi, and use the wireless router I bought.

 

[Shmee]

Update here, the fiber internet is up and running! On Saturday the tech installed the fiber drop to the house, and provided us a BGW320. However, he soon noticed that the fiber signal was very weak, and determined that the problem was upstream on the poles. So another team had to come on Sunday, and go through the pole lines to determine the problem and fix it. They eventually fixed it, and then activated our service.

The BGW320 is a pretty good unit I understand, with Wifi 6 / 802.11AX, as well as a 5GbE port in addtion to the standard 1GbE ports. I have not extensively tested the wifi speed/strength/range, but the wired speed is good. Here is the best speedtest result so far. https://www.speedtest.net/result/12618531430

It was run from my desktop, which is connected with a 10GbE NIC, to a 10GbE port on my switch, which is connected with a 2.5GbE port to the router's 5GbE port. As you can see, with this configuration, slightly faster than 1Gb/s is possible due to AT&T getting us slightly more than advertised, which is possible with ISPs.

 

[aigomorla]

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/r1lh8c

Seems like you want to call ATT and ask them you want the new ONT which lets you bypass, but i have not yet met anyone that was able to get it.

If not... be prepared to run into many NAT errors as you can not IP PASSTHOUGH to Bridge Mode that modem. Unless you intend to use that router as primary, which i personally have a hatred for supplied modems / consumer grade garbage. :\

However seeing this you may be able to put it in passover mdoe:

https://help.sonic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360059074954-How-to-configure-your-AT-T-modem-for-use-with-a-3rd-party-router

I also have ATT fiber, but i am lucky to be on a 210 which IP PASSTHOUGH works flawlessly for.
The 210 however does not have a 5g port like the 320 does... but i still get what max i can pull out from that 1gb ethernet lan

Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test

Use Speedtest on all your devices with our free desktop and mobile apps.

www.speedtest.net

Also here is some more stuff on if you want to disable the wifi radio

BGW320 IP Pass Through | AT&T Community Forums

Hopefully someone can assist. Just received the BGW320. I want to put it in ip pass through in order to use my Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro, APs, etc. It looks like i can fairly easily put the BGW3...

forums.att.com

It seems i will probably never want a 320, even if it has that extra speed.
Its a real nightmare to work with compared to my 210.

 

[Shmee]

I don't mind using it as the router, at least for now. I have not tested the Wifi yet really, but I imagine it is still better than the 802.11AC wireless networks we had before. We mostly just use wired connections, but decent wireless should be fine for phones and laptops when needed.

Also, it looks like I have the option to disable Wifi bands under the advanced wifi options, if needed. Maybe there was an update to firmware/admin page? The thread was updated a year ago.

 

[aigomorla]

I don't mind using it as the router, at least for now. I have not tested the Wifi yet really, but I imagine it is still better than the 802.11AC wireless networks we had before. We mostly just use wired connections, but decent wireless should be fine for phones and laptops when needed.

Also, it looks like I have the option to disable Wifi bands under the advanced wifi options, if needed. Maybe there was an update to firmware/admin page? The thread was updated a year ago.

possibly... as i was looking though, it said no ip passover, but sonic webpage says its there.

Most definitely tho, shmee you probably want to set ip passthough, and move your router over to a pfsense, or something a bit more beefy, as well as turn off WIFI and go though access points.

WIFI and using the modem as a full router is a quick way from my experience to kill it, especially if your using all that bandwidth with routing and stuff.

 

[Shmee]

Really? I had no issues with a Netgear modem/router for Xfinity. Still works. And since this is AT&T equipment, wouldn't they just replace it if something went wrong with the unit? Unless there is a major security issue or something, I am not worried for now.

 

[aigomorla]

Really? I had no issues with a Netgear modem/router for Xfinity. Still works. And since this is AT&T equipment, wouldn't they just replace it if something went wrong with the unit? Unless there is a major security issue or something, I am not worried for now.

i lost count how many aris modems i lost on spectrum / time warner. lol...
But then again i was hammering it with a lot of torrents and other stuff.

Seeing how that modem you have is also ARIS.. i hope i didn't jynx it for you by you saying you never lost a modem.

But lastly, you really want smart devices on its own subnet and IoT.
I would never allow any smart devices / Alexa to be on my main network, and always have them on a IoT.

 

[pcslookout]

Did you get the 2 Gbps and 5 Gbps tier available for you as well ?

 

[Makaveli]

Installation should be Saturday! I assume they will provide an ONT, but do they also provide any sort of router? It doesn't really matter, as we have a spare router with 802.11AC, but I am just curious what kind of equipment they provide.

Congrats I switched from cable to fiber myself a few years ago and there is no comparison when it comes to uptime and how stable the connection is plus the latency.

 

[Shmee]

Did you get the 2 Gbps and 5 Gbps tier available for you as well ?

Afaik or can remember, they aren't available here yet.