Wi-Fi & connectivity

[patricka02]

Sure.  Thanks for your help.  Here's the status page and the advanced settings.  Any ideas?

[AvsGunnar]

[EDITED]

Had some suggestions for you then was kind of wondering why I was seeing an automatic 5gz low band and high band channel settings selection. (52 low 100 high) Thought I saw you had 80gz-only BANDWIDTH selected.  Searched around and came up with these two links from ATT forum regarding your router.  ATT&T "may" have broken it either with software or firmware update and are working on it, supposedly.  Somehow, your triband router is now a merged dual band router.  The two seperate 5gz networks(which initially at release you could manually assign channels) somehow merged into one 5gz network with an automatically assigned low and high band channel selection. (you can no longer manually assign channel numbers), for now until fix is released.

Some have claimed to have some success selecting the CHANNEL SCAN to assign channels , others rebooting the router from within the UGI, and some have disabled the 2.4 (which is why the channels changed when we did it before)

******So until they have a fix, I think you should try renaming the 5gz SSID (add 5G or something to end of your SSID).  REBOOT ROUTER.  Then you should have seperate dual band 2.4 and 5gz.  Then see what channels are assigned to 5gz.  You need channel 149 or higher. If so, great, will operate like 99% of other routers out there.

See if that works for you and post if you need some help/results.   Otherwise, I think you need to use the 2.4gz for Roku until AT&T fixes their software/firmware. A little debate going on which is to blame. Seems to have occured in December.  Kind of head-scratching since different devices need different channels to operate on (bands) and simply disabling/replacing manual channel selection with an automatic channel scan appears to be their temporary(maybe permanent) fix.  Unless someone else has an update on this, I think this is where you are.

If it were me, I would prob just bridge another router to the ATT router and just use the ATT router as a modem. That way I really wouldn't care if they ever fixed it. As long as it connected me to the internet, so be it. Let my new router manage the network.  (Of course, you are the one paying for the service, not me.)

Here are the links for you if you want to do some reading.

https://forums.att.com/conversations/att-fiber-equipment/missing-5ghz-wifi-channel-selection-on-bgw3...

and

https://forums.att.com/conversations/att-fiber-equipment/second-5ghz-radio-disabled-on-bgw-320500-32...

[patricka02]

Thanks so much for taking the time to research and reply.  I'll try what you suggest and see if I get anything different.

[renojim]

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@AvsGunnar wrote:

If it were me, I would prob just bridge another router to the ATT router and just use the ATT router as a modem. That way I really wouldn't care if they ever fixed it. As long as it connected me to the internet, so be it. Let my new router manage the network.  (Of course, you are the one paying for the service, not me.)

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I vote for this; that's what I do.  I have the BGW210 which allows manual selection of 5GHz channels, but I want full control over my network, not some crippled AT&T device.

[AvsGunnar]

@renojim wrote:....

I vote for this; that's what I do.  I have the BGW210 which allows manual selection of 5GHz channels, but I want full control over my network, not some crippled AT&T device.

Yes, I think so for a satisfactory fix and network control, (that is what I would do) unless just seperating the 2.4 and 5.0gz SSIDS allows those 5gz channels to automatically reassign some usuable numbers that @patricka02 can use for his needs.  (at least for Roku, need either low band channels 36-48 not 52; and high band channels 149-165 not 100 as far as I understand from specs).  Really just need to get that ch100 to change to ch149 and would be in good shape.

  The ch100 is fine for many devices and many will connect to it.  The rub of this is @patricka02 would not of known of the router problem if he had not tried to connect his Roku to it.  How many ATT customers are right now wondering why a particular device is no longer working and getting the run-around or jiggling wires.

Technically, I guess it still is a triband router, it has a working 2.4gz network, and as you put it nicely, "a crippled" dual-band 5gz network since you cant connect "everything to it", or customize it to work with devices you already own.  

Could just be a conspiracy theory but Google products and Amazon Echos work fine on ch100. 

[patricka02]

Hi all,

I didn't make any changes today. But I did exchange a few messages on the AT&T community and I do have a couple questions based on your most recent posts.

Unfortunately, the router doesn't support an Auto option for the bandwidth. What is the impact of changing to 20 MHZ on the speed of my other 5 GHz devices?

At least one person on the AT&T board said that they deliberately removed the ability to manually set the 5 GHz channels because this is “a planned change to reserve the High band 5 GHz radio for Mesh client support”  Not sure what to make of this.

What would be the impact of changing the 5GHZ radios from N/AC/AX to AC/N?

[AvsGunnar]

Keeping it simple ax is wifi6 (newest standard from a couple of yrs ago). ac is wifi5 (this is the dual band 2.4/5.0gz network).  wifi6 is supposed to replace wifi5.  Gets a little technical with device compatibility, backwards compatibility, supported speeds, etc. AX=Gbbs, Ac=Mbps.

Older routers would have the 5gz set to a/n/ac Mixed or ac/n Mixed setting.  This is example of the wifi5.  These are the ones I own and use.  You can try selecting that option but supposely ax is compatible. If it were me, this would definitely be in my troubleshooting steps.

Kind of assumed it had something to do with mesh network planning.  Oversimplifying, these are just automatic/app-configurable wifi extenders in a nutshell.  They are mostly designed to be plug and play (although configurable somewhat, a lot of it is automatic assigned to ensure the mesh router devices work together to blanket wifi throughout house).  A lot of it is app driven, no need to get into your router's admin panel to configure settings.  And as you are finding out, they are getting designed so minimizes user setup/configuration.  If, indeed, "planned" then one of their automatic settings will trigger a broader selection on channels, even if not a particular desired channel. (ie. one that works for our needs)

Lowering the bandwidth will give greater access to number of channels of that frequency.  It of course though decreases speed. (whether noticeable or not)  Normally have 2.4gz at 20, and set the 5.0gz to 40.

Generally speaking, the lower the setting in 5gz say 20mhz, you are going to get more non-overlapping channels/less interference. At 40mhz, less non-overlapping channels, but probably faster performance, and 80mhz and above least number of channels/more interference. This is channel bonding.

This was going to be one of the suggestions i was going to give you when I saw the 80mhz setting in your screenshot yesterday but detoured after seeing problem with your router "degradation".  If router isnt going to be fixed to allow manual channel configuration, then try lowering 5gz to 40 and see if you get channel 149.  If not lower to 20.  It should be discoverable at 40 though.

Post back what you do.  One of these things will work for you.  After you find out which changed setting will give you the result you are seeking, then can optimize from there.  Again, reboot after every change.  Just change 1 thing at a time though.  

[patricka02]

Starting condition:  Router at 52 and 100 with N/AC/AX and 80 MHz

Changed the option to AC/N and did a software reboot, the 5 GHz radios came up on channels 56 and 100, but still unable to connect the Roku at 5 GHz.  Did another software reboot.  Router came up again on 56 and 100. (There was a post on the AT&T site that said a software reboot has a 50/50 chance of coming up on a non-DFS channel, but I’m not seeing that behavior.)

Changed back to N/AC/AX and software reboot again.  Still came back on 56 & 100, and I’m back to the starting condition.

Test 2: changed from 80 MHz to 40 MHz.  Before any soft reset the radios changed to 64 and 112.  All my devices moved to the 2.4 GHz band.  Software rebooted the router.

After the reboot, the router would not connect to the AT&T network.  Everything was still on the 2.4 GHz band, but the router would not connect to the AT&T GPON network.  I’m guessing that this is not due to the change to 40 GHz, but more of a port flapping problem.  (guessing rebooting the router too often makes AT&T unhappy.)  Error code NAD-3302 – Network outage.

After about 10 minutes, I changed it back to 80 MHZ and power cycled (hard reset) the router.  Router came back up and I’m back to the starting condition.

It’s looking more like I have 1 of 3 options:

1. Wait for AT&T “fix” to make 5 GHz channels manually assignable.  (Need to verify they are working on this.  There seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether they are “fixing” this.)
2. External router
3. Put non-Roku 2.4 GHz devices on the guest network, turn off the 2.4 GHz radio, which will reboot the 5 GHz radios in the non-Mesh configuration

[atc98092 · Accepted solution]

The Roku will never connect on 5 GHz as long as the router insists on using a DFS channel. My suggestion is to add a separate access point on your network for 5 GHz. I have a UniFi WAP as one of my access points. By default it too uses DFS channels, so I manually assigned the channel and all my 5 GHz capable Roku players can connect.  I didn't need to add it for the reason you need to, but it's still a valid choice. 

[AvsGunnar]

And i take it toggling that BEST CHANNEL box did nothing? It did not cycle your channels?

I think you stated your 3 options correctly.  Although the 4th would be to contact ATT and ask if they can give you the router @renojim uses, the BGW210 which is still an ATT router that still allows for manual configuration of the 5gz.  (or to see if they can provide you with one that allows manual config)

I mean, your Roku will run fine on the 2.4gz channels.  I keep my RokuTV on the 2.4 even though capable of 5.  My Ultra is ethernet.  I also have a Premiere that has to operate on 2.4.  Sure, maybe a little slower in loading a channel, but once it does, runs great.  We are talking seconds here, not minutes.  I am also limited to 25Mbps broadband where I am, so I am not paying for or expecting fiber speeds.

Keep us posted what you decide and if they ever do revert that capability back.  They definitely have some angry users over there so maybe they will do something about it.

EDITED: Yes after reading @atc98092 , you could also buy and add a seperate configurable access point, which is another good option/workaround.