We've had Gigapower for a week now. Good news is we're getting 900+ down & up wired into the Pace 5268ac gateway via Cat5e direct connect. Bad news is no matter what I've done in the past week, I can't get more than 100Mbps down & up anywhere else in the home...And that's only on an iPad.
Since 2000, we were chained to IFITL 1.5Mbps. So in a way it seems rather petty to complain about the speeds we're getting now. On the other hand, we're paying for nearly a Gig speed and we're getting nearly a Gig speed through the wall so it's frustrating not to experience that throughout our home.
For anyone else considering a similar ISP upgrade in the near future, I made the mistake of assuming the placement of the gateway wasn't as important as simply having a Gig speed coming through the basement wall. I also underestimated the difficulty of getting that speed throughout our home without it being ethernet wired. I can hook up a router and plug in an ethernet cable, but honestly, some of the networking "solutions" I've attempted in the past week just leave me scratching my head.
I need the most stable connection on my Toshiba laptop, which is normally 1 level up from the gateway, about 20-30 total feet distance. Kind of expecting Wi-Fi wouldn't get me anywhere near the consistent 100Mbps I'd be fully satisfied with, my ace in the hole was a pair of Comtrend G.hn powerline adapters. Our home was built in 97 & I'd already used previous powerline products to get a full 1.5Mbps on our old IFITL, so the electrical wiring seemed feasible. Apparently the faster the speed, the harder it is for the electric to pass that along....At least in our home.
With this new 1200Mbps Comtrend product plugged in 1 level up, I still register anywhere from 20/20 to 40/40. With a 70% wireless signal, I consistently get 45/45, which is the same speed as standing in front of the gateway in the basement with a 73% wireless signal. Plugging the Comtrend pair into separate, unused outlets a few feet away in the basement still only gets around 140/140...Which is much less than I expect from a product that claims a max 1200Mbps throughput. These are the things that puzzle me.
Talked to ATT tech a couple of homes down yesterday (yes, we've only been eligible for a week and the neighbors who abandoned ATT for Xfinity have already started coming back for GP) and he "recommended playing around with the settings" in the Pace gateway. That's dangerous talk for someone like me who is marginally skilled in the ways of data transfer. He seemed to think with an "n" card in my laptop I should be seeing much faster wireless speeds. I'm not so sure since Network and Sharing shows a 65Mbps connection when I click on it. When wired through the powerline upstairs, that ethernet connection shows 1G. So I take those numbers to be absolute maximums for all of the pieces of hardware involved.
Did play around with the positioning of the gateway to get the best wireless signals to the most connections throughout the house. Also changed default channel from "Auto" & Ch 9 to Ch 11 with minimal interference in the neighborhood (if it weren't for one mystery item on Ch 3, we'd all be on 1, 6 or 11). Considering running at least one ethernet cable from the gateway up to the living room where the laptop usually is located. I think I can handle that in a afternoon, but was hoping to avoid.
Haven't fooled around with MTU packet size or any other settings, except disabling IPv6 on the gateway and all connecting devices. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm willing to try. I'm certainly pleased with 45/45 on wireless, and it is pretty consistent. But I was also happy with 1.5Mbps back in 00 when it was first installed...And year after year it became more unusable at times. So I know the 45/45 will need to go up sooner or later. I'd much prefer sooner.
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