AT&T U-Verse FIOS not that great

[dmbyer]

I live with my cousins who have AT&T's U-Verse FIOS service, and I'm just going to warn people away from it. First of all, the run to the house is still copper, though its around 20Mbps; Verizon's mid-line is 25Mbps and they aren't using any copper (if these things concern you). The packages benefits are not really the topic though.

The main problem I've got with this service, and from what I can gather most services, is the "gateway" they provide. This all-in-one box is shoddy from a routing standpoint. The gateway provides a wireless connection (B/G... sorry no N), which can fortunately be turned off in lieu of an actual wireless router, but you you cannot turn off the routing functionality in general, meaning that you are stuck putting a router behind a cheap consumer router which you have very little control over. I, for one, strongly prefer a simple bridge for service like they generally do with cable, a la Comcast.

There are also numerous problems they have with this gateway, and likely the majority of these integrated router/gateways out there. Something is up with their implementation of bridging, and I simply cannot get a wireless bridge to work with this gateway with any degree of quality (connection dropped repeatedly at random intervals, difficulty in establishing the bridge). Additionally, it seems like there are other numerous problems such as uploading files to webmail or other sites. For instance, when uploading an attachment to Yahoo mail or a file to Soundcloud, the progress goes almost instantly to 100% and the file never uploads. The issue remains when placing a router behind the gateway and configuring it to be in the DMZ. Port forwarding also works poorly.

In a nutshell, you are stuck either dealing with a bad router, or other network issues by trying to use a different router behind it. If anyone has had some other experiences I'd love to hear them. Shouldn't options be increasing and not decreasing as technology progresses?

 

[xrealm20]

I've had 0 problems from Uverse in two different locations here in Houston -

And your correct, Uverse is an ADSL2+ connection, it's fiber to the dslam - the pipe coming into my house is a 24 mbit connection, then you are alotted a porton of that for internet/video/telephone.

The issues you are having with the gateway may be environmental issues, like how your house/apt is constructed, etc. I've got the gateway in an access panel upstairs, and I have full signal anywhere in my house and even out on my deck as well as in my driveway. So it's covering roughly 4000 sqft without a problem. My wireless N router couldn't acomplish that.

DMZ plus mode will actually bypass all of the "routing" functionality of the gateway.

I guess we all have different experiences though.




That, and I guess ANYTHING would be better than Comcast for me personally. Getting a free static IP address doesn't hurt either.

 

[dmbyer]

Actually, DMZPlus does not bypass all routing functionality, it acts just as a regular DMZ does; passing all unsolicited inbound traffic to the designated device. As evidence, I've got my second router as the DMZPlus device, but other computers in the house still connect via the gateway to the network. If it disabled all routing functionality with DMZPlus mode, that would be impossible as I see it.

I will agree with you about Comcast though... man I hate that company lol. I'll keep plugging away at it and see if there are some other improvements I can make. I'm just north of DFW, and our neighborhood just got the service (it's a brand new development).

 

[xrealm20]

what services are you wanting to run behind the router? are you using uverse tv as well?

 

[dmbyer]

Internet connection, TV, and single phone line. We've got the residential package instead of business which drives me insane because I can't use SMTP and am forced in to webmail

 

[freaksavior]

I think we all hate the crappy 2wire gateway.

Im running the 2wire in DMZ+ mode and using my airport's lan and WLan for everything.

 

[xrealm20]

Internet connection, TV, and single phone line. We've got the residential package instead of business which drives me insane because I can't use SMTP and am forced in to webmail

Cant use SMTP? what service are you trying to connect to? You can hook up to SMTP servers outside of att by using a non standard port. I know gmail offers this - it's port 2525 or something like that...

 

[niko084]

Now that has me thinking here...

Have you put the Belkin routers address to the DMZ in the POS gateway?

 

[niko084]

Cant use SMTP? what service are you trying to connect to? You can hook up to SMTP servers outside of att by using a non standard port. I know gmail offers this - it's port 2525 or something like that...

It's for his companies email servers, they use standard ports.

But exactly what you say there is exactly why they shouldn't block the ports in the first place, it's stupid and easy to sidestep, most email services have already done so.

 

[Black Haru]

yeah, the 2-wire gateways are horrible. also, the wiring that was put into mine is falling apart as well (the Ethernet from the gateway to my comp)

AT&T service is sketchy as well (both bandwidth consistency and the support)
I wish Verison would hurry up and get a wider service area.

 

[dmbyer]

Yeah the services I am using have standard ports

@Niko, yeah, the DMZ is set to the Belkin router, not a particular machine. Technically I am running two networks right now, too, a 192.168.1 and 192.168.2 network, *.2 being the Belkin; my desktop is on the 2 network. I'm curious how setting the DMZ to a machine on a different network would turn out... not that I would keep it that way even if it worked.

Strangely, the gateway seems to provide the DMZ client with the WAN IP instead of using NAT, haven't figured out why that is yet. Maybe some sort of cloning... I don't know.

 

[niko084]

Yeah the services I am using have standard ports

@Niko, yeah, the DMZ is set to the Belkin router, not a particular machine. Technically I am running two networks right now, too, a 192.168.1 and 192.168.2 network, *.2 being the Belkin; my desktop is on the 2 network. I'm curious how setting the DMZ to a machine on a different network would turn out... not that I would keep it that way even if it worked.

Strangely, the gateway seems to provide the DMZ client with the WAN IP instead of using NAT, haven't figured out why that is yet. Maybe some sort of cloning... I don't know.

It might auto disable or have NAT disabled.

As for the pass through on the DMZ, that should not work because they are on a separate network the way you have it setup.

 

[dmbyer]

Durr of course, I should've been able to figure that out immediately.. the U-Verse Gateway would not have a good default gateway to forward information to when it tries to reach an unknown network.

 

[newtekie1]

I was going to come in and bascially say what xrealm20 said, so no need repeating it.

The 2Wire gateways are crap, get a real router, put it in DMZ+ mode and all will be good.

Also, I feel it is worth nothing that every 2wire gateway I've ever had(or dealt with in a customers home), dating back to long before U-Verse, had died after about a year and a half of use. Turning off the wireless seems to greatly extend this time though, I'm guess they overheat and the wireless radio makes them overheat and die quicker.

DMZ is supposed to provide the client with a WAN address.

As for the email, and port 25 being blocked, all the residential services where I am have done this. It is a pain.

 

[xrealm20]

Every residential service normally blocks 25 -- there are services that you can subscribe to that will forward your out of band SMTP requests back to a standard 25 port on the other end. Of course, that does cost extra $$$. From my understanding, ISP's block external 25 traffic to help reduce spam - i could be wrong tho.

 

[dmbyer]

Thanks for the replies. I've got a second router hooked up that's configured for DMZ+, but I still have issues. Since a few people have mentioned that they have success with this set up, I'm guessing it's a problem with the line somewhere; we have issues with the TV, too, and we got the gateway replaced to no avail. At this rate we're going to have to call the damn engineers out to fix it...

 

[xrealm20]

if you are having issues with TV, then it's def an issue with the line --

 

[mrhuggles]

why not just get a vdsl modem?