Background:
Here in Sacramento, we were very early adopters of DSL as soon as it was offered years ago. Of course there were a number of equipment, speed and price increases over the years. Last month we had HSI Pro with a 3 MB download speed at $38/month after promotional prices ran out.
New developments:
Just before Christmas 2013 AT&T offered me a promotion for internet-only Uverse at 12 Mbps speed for $25/month or 6 Mbps for $20/month on a 1-year contract, with self-install and no charge for the gateway. (I don't want Uverse TV and already have a separate ancient AT&T voice line which I would like to switch to Ooma sometime.)
Obviously they want to get customers off DSL, so I agreed to switch off DSL in favor of the higher speed at lower cost of Uverse.
I installed the gateway and started the service today. There were some hiccups and support calls, but it seems to be working now, except for highly variable speed tests:
2wire.com measures 8.4 Mbps download,
bandwidthplace measures 7 Mbps
att.com speed test says 2 Mbps !!
Questions:
1. The gateway is an obviously used and scuffed model 3600HGV. The sales rep had told me that I could get new equipment supporting 802.11n. Of course this RG only does 802.11bg.
Could I or should I bother to ask for a newer model gateway?
2. Since all the devices here already connect to the old Linksys WRT54G v6 router, I figured I could just plug that into the gateway, and save time changing passwords. Although everything seems to work OK, the gateway started to complain that it had detected "router behind router", until I let it put the Linksys device into "DMZPlus". Was that the right thing to do?
3. If its OK to use the old Linksys router, then I should be able to just turn off the wifi in the gateway, right? Would it be better to connect everything to the new Uverse gateway and give away the old Linksys? I think that "better" here would include range, speed and security.
4. Are there any other tips for setting up an optimal Uverse connection ?
Many thanks for any advice from all the smart folks here at DSLR!
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ACz
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