The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

...apparently affecting at&t internet across several states, and for several days now.
Sites load slowly at first then connection dies completely.  Call center not to eager to acknowledge problem in first 15 minutes of call but eventually volunteered to say "its not nationwide" which was a surprise since it was a question I didnt ask.

https://forums.att.com/t5/AT-T-Internet-Equipment/Springfield-MO-Service-Issue/m-p/5372454#M31575

Cox threatened to cap me and I ended up signing a 2-year with AT&T. I have more outages and slowdowns in any given month with AT&T than I had in 15 years with Cox. Planning on switching to their Fiber, but it's all the same backbone so probably won't help. Maybe they offer a wireless on their fiber plans that can go through a closed door.

I had U-Verse for a time last year, and I signed a contract and it sucked so bad they let me out after six months. AT&T is terrible.

But what's the alternative. No Cox up north here. CableOne's data caps are so stupidly low that it's embarrasing. And besides that. Even at 100 MBPS, my Netflix buffered more with it than it did with the AT&T 6 MBPS. It's a bad joke.

Interesting.  I have Cox 150mbps and no issues with streaming services.  No buffering.  Yes, they cap, but my cap is 1TB (that's 1000 gigabytes).

I barely use a quarter of that a month.  I'm sure those with larger families may fare not as well, but I don't see, even with Netflix, how you could go over that.  Maybe I just don't use a lot of streaming services.

Cox for sure isn't perfect (I dropped their TV service last year) but their internet reliability is tough to beat.  But, if AT&T offers 1gbps fiber like they've been talking about in the near future, I'm done with Cox.

So my experience (take it for what it's worth):

We watch all television over the internet, or I have all of our owned media set up on a server (using PLEX) that doesn't actually use any data. If I had to guess I would say that the home server is only used about a quarter of the time.

We have AT&T DSL. Originally 6 MBPS, then 10 or 11 (I honestly can't recall). The limit has always been a bit over 1 TB. And we generally used about 75% a month. AT&T has outages often, but I never had an issue with buffering, all be it we never were able to stream anything at super high definition.

At one point the outages were driving us nuts, so we switched to CableOne (our Cox in Bartlesville). They had 100 MBPS speed and a cap of 300 GB (less than a third of AT&T). The problem was that all the streaming services were able to stream all the data possible at that speed, so we got to 300 GB in a heart beat compared to what we used to do. 300 GB at that speed is just way WAY too low. Videos on Facebook and Twitter will eat it up at a pretty alarming rate at that speed. And the other thing about CableOne, was the buffering. While we did get near 100 MBPS often, about a third of the time it was more like 1 or 2. Something about other heavy users in the area at the same time is the garbage I get from the help desk. It was just unacceptable. So while AT&T was unpleasant, it was still a better option. Those are the only two wired options in our area unfortunately. BTC is making their way, but for now it is just commercial applications. Bummer.

I think I had the 60mb plan with AT&T, and that was a max I never hit. 25mb was the best I ever saw. And daily there were times where I wasn't getting 1mb and beyond that the modem crashed constantly.

I have the 150mb plan with Cox and regularly get speeds closer to 200mb when I test. I just now tested and got 182mb.

I know they are phasing out U-verse TV, and even rebranded U-verse internet (ADSL2+ or VDSL2) to simply at&t Internet.

I hear good things about BartNet from a friend of mine that direction.  (Really, I just don't hear much grumbling...   He doesn't have many real alternatives.)   No personal experience though.


I had the 300Mbps promotion to $79.99/mo for 12 months.   Once that ended I dropped to the 100 until that price went over the $80 i had been paying as well..    I am currently on their 30Mbps.    

I have 3 kids and a wife at home and typically there is at least one stream going and many times there are 3.    Strangely, except for large downloads (game updates, large file transfers) I can't tell any difference in the speeds and everything seems to work fine.

We are stuck with 12MB DSL via Centurylink at our B & B so I ventured out and got Hughesnet Gen 5 last summer.  It. was. awful.  It would show 40MB on speed tests but performed much slower than the DSL would.  Their "no cap" on a 75 gig plan was BS. They would shut it down to 1MB after you exceeded the limit but we could always purchase more data al carte for what I thought was an outrageous fee.  Their supposed video optimization never worked.  From people we talked to in the know, they said our data consumption for streaming Netflix was excessive.

Needless to say, they have been kicked to the curb and their customer service was atrocious.  They figure since their competition is limited in rural areas most people will just take it.  On our new venture in the village, we are next to the Centurylink switch building so we will get 20MB there.

I don't get that fast but typically I do get more.  Just wish their upload was a little less asymmetrical.

(http://www.speedtest.net/result/7146153332.png)

I run UVerse for everything.  TV and Internet.   Wife and I both work from home when not travelling.  She regularly does video conferences with EMEA, LATAM etc.   She's hard-wired and I work wireless.  The occasional outages are rare, but do happen.   Wired speed generally matches our plan.  I do have issues regularly with wireless speeds.  I've played with the channels and such and have improved it, but think I need a better router to make significant improvements.   Can stream movies fine wired, not so much wireless.  Overall though, we are happy with it.

The wireless router that came with the service was garbage. I didn't use it.

You can get a symmetrical connection, but it will cost. I don't know that Cox has that option except for business service.

No they don't.  But other markets have residential uploads at 30 or 50.  Why do we have just 10?

Thought about that.  Did you completely replace it, or just create wireless subnet using a better router?

The wifi router AT&T gave me was integrated with the modem and they locked me out of the admin console, so I had to do a subnet.

Another nice thing with Cox, I don't even use their modem. The only thing I rent from them is a cable card for $2 a month.

FWIW, the current at&t gateway (modem/router/wap) is the BGW210-700 that has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios.

https://fccid.io/PGRBGW210/User-Manual/User-Manual-3205221

I turned the AT&T router wireless off. I have three Access points, connected via Cat-5, at three places in my house (It's a long house with some materials that don't do radio any favors). Just plugged that setup into the AT&T router. I get great wireless signal, just can't access anything outside my house 1-2 a month.

I have their TV service for almost free, two of my boxes are wireless and run off of a different AT&T access point. That one can't see through a closed door.

Thanks for these replies.   I have a pretty decent wireless router sitting idle.  I'll set up a subnet and see how that works over time.  If I get noticeably better wifi, I'll look to move completely off the ATT router and move everything to the subnet.

You can turn the routing off on almost any router and use it as just a wireless access point. No need to add a second layer of address translation.

Sometimes its as simple as plugging a crossover Ethernet cable into a port (rather than the input) after turning off the routers DHCP.  Be aware that I once had a situation where the router-turned-AP decided to reinstate its DHCP after a power failure.  Your mileage may vary.

I will note that the newest at&t gateways have better radios than before (so much that I was able to decommission a repeater) and  one of the IT guys at work turned me on to the Ubiquiti APs that seem to handle traffic quite well.

AT&T wouldn't give the admin password to the router and it wasn't any of the common ones.

I was talking about turning routing off on YOUR router, not theirs.

Also, on all the AT&T routers they are giving out today, the passwords are printed on the side.

Yeah,  I have the password to my ATT router.    And the spare one I have has specific instructions for setting it up as a subnet.  Travelling yesterday and today.  I'm going to mess with it later this week.

I may also look into getting ATT to provide me with one of their newest routers.  If that is free or nominal cost, and fixed the wireless issue, it would be the preferred option.

Chances are they will only do that if you get a house call from a tech with one on his truck.  Mine told me it was a one-for-one-swap at no cost, but a new $7 equipment fee showed up on the next bill.  Granted the new BGW210 was much better than the old NVG (Not Very Good) gateway but you have to get everything in writing now.  The new one also has an Optical Network Terminal fiber optic connector but its RJ-45 meaning it takes an optical adapter when you eventually go fiber.