I've got AT&T Fiber (1000 Mbps) with the Arris BGW210-700 Gateway. When I run a Speedtest on my laptop (new Dell XPS 13 with Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650) I'm getting 202 Mbps down and 60 Mbps up. I'm getting about the same results on my phone (iPhone 6s). When I run the Speedtest from the Diagnostics page of the Gateway (192.168...) I'm getting 954 Mbps down and 902 Mbps up.

So do I need a router to get better speeds across my devices? We run a lot of devices on our WiFi and do a lot of streaming and some light gaming (son plays Fortnite and I play COD occasionally). Really I just want to make sure I'm getting my money's worth out of the 1000 Mbps Fiber we're paying for. If I do need a router to get better speeds, does anyone have any recommendations for something that is easy to setup with the AT&T Gateway?

Your speeds seem way too slow. The modem/WiFi combos are notorious for poor WiFi performance. I have 300mb service and get 260-280 of that over WiFi using the Netgear Orbi + 1 satellite that I went with based on the recommendations from this board. I have the larger RBR50 and 1 satellite and get those speeds almost everywhere in my house.

AT&T Arris routers are crap but are required since they are a modem/wifi combo. Buy a mesh system and disable the Arris router Wi-Fi and just use that as a modem.

Shoot for a Wi-Fi 6 system so you're good for like 5-10 years.

Teddy Perkins said:

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I've got AT&T Fiber (1000 Mbps) with the Arris BGW210-700 Gateway. When I run a Speedtest on my laptop (new Dell XPS 13 with Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650) I'm getting 202 Mbps down and 60 Mbps up. I'm getting about the same results on my phone (iPhone 6s). When I run the Speedtest from the Diagnostics page of the Gateway (192.168...) I'm getting 954 Mbps down and 902 Mbps up.

So do I need a router to get better speeds across my devices? We run a lot of devices on our WiFi and do a lot of streaming and some light gaming (son plays Fortnite and I play COD occasionally). Really I just want to make sure I'm getting my money's worth out of the 1000 Mbps Fiber we're paying for. If I do need a router to get better speeds, does anyone have any recommendations for something that is easy to setup with the AT&T Gateway?

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Your WiFi speed is never going to be as fast as your wired speed.

Your phone and laptop has a max theoretical speed of 867Mbps. Realistically, you should be getting around 500Mbps. Getting only 202Mbps makes me think you're connected to the 2.4GHz band instead of the 5GHz band. From your laptop go to WiFi settings, click your WiFi connection and see what network band you are using.

I'm on the 5GHz network. The more I'm reading about the Arris modem/router combo the more I'm convinced that's the issue. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will be this easy thing of just setting up a new router and I'll have to bypass or bridge it somehow. Ridiculous that the AT&T equipment can't deliver the speed you pay for.

Thanks for the replies thus far. Bumping for the work week crowd. Any additional recommendations for a router that is compatible with AT&T Fiber 1000 and suggestions on the easiest way to get it setup (bypassing, bridging, etc.)?

When I first got fiber I thought the same thing, that I would get gigabit speeds over wifi but it is not the case. it's improved since i've gotten it but no router can give you 1 gbps speed. The theoretical speeds that routers list are laughably inaccurate and entirely useless. You'll need to look at reviews and see what speeds actual humans got with the routers you look at. I have an 4-5 year old Netgear Nighthawk router and about the best I can get on the 5g band is 280 mbps but usually im around 100 mbps throughout the house. Routers have gotten better and it looks like if you go top of the line you might be able to get 600 mbps but i'd imagine that in best case scenario only.

Even at very fast speeds you'll find that the service you are using can also be the limited factor. Things like Netflix work great and I can stream HDR almost instantly. PS4 downloads still take me hours sometimes even though i'm hardwared in. Playstation servers are the limited in this case and no internet speed can overcome that. I've found similar issues with other websites and services where even with the fastest speed on my end things can be sluggish.

I've thought about downgrading to lower speeds but I'd have to drop to 100 mbps before the savings seem worth it. the drop from 1 gbps to 300 mbps only saves like 10 dollars a month. Plus with AT&T there are caps on all internet service that isn't fiber.

I just got ATT Fiber installed last week. I don't have the same model gateway that you have though it is an Arris NGVsomething-something. I've ran several speed tests since install and have never seen it below 500Mbps, mostly in the 800+ range. Maybe ATT can get you a newer gateway?

EDIT to say I agree with above statements regarding wireless vs hard wired.

I get that I'm not going to get 1Gbps down over Wifi but I should be seeing better than 100Mbps down, which is where I'm at today on my laptop. This is after installing a brand new Arris router that AT&T sent me thinking that was the issue.

Here's what's weird. On my kids' iPads they are getting 250 Mbps down, on mine and my wife's laptops we are only getting 75-100 Mbps. On my iPhone, I'm getting 208 Mbps down. On my hardwired Xbox, it's pulling 850+ Mbps. So there's a pretty wide variation depending on the device.

How and what # did you get in touch h a someone w ATT to get the new router?

I just did the chat feature at att.com telling them I was getting slow speeds on some devices. They claimed to do a line test on their end and claimed the firmware was out of date and that they'd send me a new router/modem for free.

I just want to say thanks for this thread as it got me on a tangent to relook at my WiFi today. Previous owner had put in Luxul switches and access points. Been incredibly busy since we moved in and essentially just got everything working without checking each individual component.

So my Frontier 1GB router was feeding a 100mb switch to a couple of access points only throwing out N.

Fortunately, I had a Nighthawk from the old house, a couple of TP link switches I had not used, and another fairly new TP link WiFi router / AP to deploy.

I had moved us off the Frontier router previously to the Luxul stuff in an ill fated move that was giving me anywhere from 2-3mbps to maybe 20. Now on the Nighthawk at 100-200 up and down almost anywhere in the house.

It's almost midnight now and I just ate dinner. But this thread delivered a much needed rethink of our WiFi at the house,

I had similar issues when moving to AT&T fiber a couple years ago. While I still don't get advertised speeds, adding my own 3rd party router and reducing the Arris to bridge / passthrough mode improved speeds across the board. If I remember correctly, it wasn't very difficult at all. Just had to enable the setting on the gateway and change a default IP address due to conflicts between the various products.

While not true gig speed, the performance is far better than I was getting previously with cable with little incremental cost so I'm generally satisfied with the performance:cost ratio. Now if the installers, landscapers, critters, et al could do their job to prevent / avoid physical disruption to the exterior fiber line, I would be completely satisfied.

1 - I highly recommend using your own separate router instead of relying on their combo unit.

2 - it's easy as pie to disable the wifi part of those units and the rest doesnt matter unless you need or want specific settings.

3 - if you live in a house you didnt wire and are getting less than advertised speeds on wired, check the wiring. Our apartment we lived in 2 years ago was brand new and I was limited at like 400Mbps on fiber. Turns out they wired the ethernet ports in the wrong order and I was getting half throughout.

We've had AT&T Gigabit Fiber since we moved into this house. First year or so I never got more than around 500mbps on speed tests (even though their gateway reported near 1000mbps...I'm convinced it does not actually test throughput to the Internet) and we'd have outages every month. Then Harvey cane through and flooded a lot of ATT's equipment in the area. Once they replaced it we consistently get 900mbps+.

So, if you rule out everything else, perhaps try to get ATT to check their garbage in your area. You can also try accidentally cutting the fiber line coming into your house to make them run a new one in case that's the issue.

Walmart is running deals on a bunch of routers in-store only. They have the Netgear Orbi RBK30 for $99 near me but it's not WiFi 6 capable. Itching to pull the trigger on it though.

LostInLA07 said:

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We've had AT&T Gigabit Fiber since we moved into this house. First year or so I never got more than around 500mbps on speed tests (even though their gateway reported near 1000mbps...I'm convinced it does not actually test throughput to the Internet) and we'd have outages every month. Then Harvey cane through and flooded a lot of ATT's equipment in the area. Once they replaced it we consistently get 900mbps+.

So, if you rule out everything else, perhaps try to get ATT to check their garbage in your area. You can also try accidentally cutting the fiber line coming into your house to make them run a new one in case that's the issue.

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The speed test on the router is going to test your link to some point on ATT's network which is all they're going to guarantee, if that.

Once you start connecting to servers on different networks or that are farther away, you're going to get lower numbers in general. On my fiber connection, I've hit sustained download speeds over 100MB/s which is close to the max once you factor overhead in. Speed tests are useful, but the results can be messed with easily.

That said, I'll always run my own router behind what the telecom provides, because they're almost always garbage.

I'd look into your laptop then and see what the issue is, maybe your network driver is out of date or something or maybe that is the max you'll get out of that type of laptop?

I thought that too but the drivers are up to date and I've pulled speeds over 500Mbps on this same machine over my work WiFi. I think it just comes down to AT&T's modem/router combo is junk as a router and you're better off using a third party router.

See if you can change the router's Wi-Fi channel width to 80MHz.

1. Reset Arris to default factory settings.
2. Set it in bridge mode.
3. Put a UniFi Dreammachine or Netgear Orbi system behind it.

FWIW, I get 980 up/down on my non-ATT fiber using a pretty average linksys router. So it's possible to get the speeds if you can get around the modem issue

Over Wifi? If so, that's impressive. I'm getting a cheap ($50) used Linksys EA8500 router to see what kind of speed increase I can get bypassing the AT&T router. I plan on upgrading to WiFi 6 mesh once the prices on those come down over this year.

Unfortunately I don't have any real applications that can use that much bandwidth, everything is limited on server-side

The white box on your wall is the "modem", not the black router.

You can ditch it by using a switch and spoofing the MAC address.

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32094182-

Ok, I've hooked up a Linksys EA8500 Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router. I put the AT&T junk modem in bypass/pass through mode and turned off the WiFi on it. Now I'm pulling 400Mbps+ across all my devices. Not sure how to get any higher than that over Wifi, or if that's even possible. Confirmed, the AT&T router is junk.

Teddy Perkins said:

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Ok, I've hooked up a Linksys EA8500 Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router. I put the AT&T junk modem in bypass/pass through mode and turned off the WiFi on it. Now I'm pulling 400Mbps+ across all my devices. Not sure how to get any higher than that over Wifi, or if that's even possible. Confirmed, the AT&T router is junk.

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400Mbps on Wifi is solid

Naveronski said:

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The white box on your wall is the "modem", not the black router.

You can ditch it by using a switch and spoofing the MAC address.

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32094182-

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Does this still work with the present-day stuff? IF so, I will try this weekend to get rid of the Arris and only use my orbi.

Yes, I'm using it currently.

Naveronski said:

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Yes, I'm using it currently.

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Awesome thanks!

Naveronski said:

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Yes, I'm using it currently.

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What kind of customization/benefits does this offer? I've thought about it, but it would be mostly academic for me. Leaving the gateway in the chain isn't hurting me much from what I can tell.

Does this offer some additional benefit to just putting the AT&T modem into bypass mode?

With the ATT box in bypass, using my nighthawk as a router, my internet speed was severely throttled.

I would get full speed when using only the ATT box, but by adding my own router, the speed went to crap. So I removed it.

Naveronski said:

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With the ATT box in bypass, using my nighthawk as a router, my internet speed was severely throttled.

I would get full speed when using only the ATT box, but by adding my own router, the speed went to crap. So I removed it.

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I'm going to try it this weekend. I've been seeing some lower speeds lately, so hopefully this will help... Cause I really need to download at 100MB/s+ haha.

I just called AT&T today and they bumped me from 100mbps to 1 gig and gave me $20/mo off for a year.