Wi-Fi & connectivity

[AvsGunnar]

@Karenatl 

Well, lets hold off on electricians and remodeling for the time being.

The AT&T Pace 5268AC router has been reported by many on technical forums to have very poor wireless coverage, especially on the 5ghz. (of course, others have had no issues.)

Some of the proposed solutions have been to ...

1. add extenders to the network

2. use seperate, unique SSID names for the 2.4ghz and 5ghz (thereby disabling mesh which may be contibuting to problems). Same password can still be used for both.

3. disable the IPV6 capability of the router, use only IPV4 (router may not handle tunnel capability properly)

4. Add another router to system and use the Pace 5268AC solely as a Gateway (modem).  Basically just connect another router(that has better wireless coverage) into your Pace 5268AC.

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Personally, I would suggest option 4 as probably the best investment. Newer routers on the market are going to have much better coverage than most ISP supplied routers.  They will also let you fully control your network settings as not managed by your ISP.   Of course, you can also add additional extenders into the network as well which will allow you to target coverage.  

Now, the radios in the various Roku devices are fine..they are not great.  Nowhere near the technology of laptops and phones so demand a much stronger, cleaner signal, especially further you get from Gateway/AP.

The different channel numbers you are getting between devices is expected.  Some extenders work better when all are configured to use same channel as the Gateway (your router), others are designed to automatically switch channels in order to find best channel with least interference. 

Your 192.168.x.xxx channel number you are seeing is the gateway/router channel.  The channel 6 is just the extender automatically choosing its own. (try setting it to the same as your router).

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Maybe go down the above list of remedies and see if performing any of the changes will work for you.  2 of the 4 are just playing with settings, so only costs you your time.  Since you are experiencing same issue with the Roku Sticks when swapping them out, most likely a Signal Strength/Interference issue.  Try changing the 5268AC wireless channel of the 2.4ghz (try toggling between different ch. 1 , 6, and 11).  Also try lowering your Bandwidth/Channel Width under the 2.4ghz settings to 20mhz. (this should help to mitigate some interference.)

It is also curious that none of these dual-band devices connected to your 5ghz band, but all are showing up on your 2.4ghz. (Unless you connected them there manually).

If you want to play with settings and need more help, feel free to post back with an update. (Not sure how much you wanted to know/do).

[TrooperDada326]

@AvsGunnar  well said. I still find the best and cheapest route would be to relocate the equipment. No reason any modern modem should not be able to provide enough bandwidth throughout the home. If the modem is an older generation maybe. But your ISP can give you the latest and greatest. Also she has yet to mention what speed she has and what is the speed test result under the Roku check connection. Kudos to your advice AvsGunnar. 

[Karenatl]

@AvsGunnar Thanks for the list of options! As you know, I have done 1, but it might actually be what causes the problem (but without it I don’t think i get minimum speed needed in that location)

I tried #2 as well, but it didn’t seem to make a difference and then I had trouble moving seamlessly through the house!

on #3- will this potentially cause me to lose my connection altogether? I have found the place where it is and can turn it off, but other than knowing ipv6 gave us more addresses than ipv4, I don’t know what AT&T router will do if I turn it off. Don’t want to un-enable it and then be able to get in and turn it back on if I have issues (this is my lack of understanding talking!) - will turning this off possible ,cause some of my devices to not be able to connect at all?

on#4- i think I can get different  modem now from AT&T, as we have fiber coming into the house, so if I try #3 (after you help me with understanding what impact it might have) and it doesn’t work, I guess I go back to AT&T and try to get a new modem! The upgraded router is BGW-320 . Any info on that one you can share?  

[AvsGunnar]

@Karenatl 

For the most part, disabling IPv6 should have no real negative impact for normal users.  I leave them disabled on my own home networks due to some security settings conflicts it causes when enabled.  Having said that, some Windows features actually rely on it being enabled and has been reported to "break" Windows when disabled.  I consider Windows to be broken by design anyway, so how much more can one break it?  There are of course other server and network reasons to leave enabled, but not of any real concern to a home user.  (I can see the lines of IPv6 zealots forming now to tell me how wrong I am.) 

Regarding the BGW-320, this is the router I mentioned in the above post.  It is a managed tri-band router that does not allow a lot of user interaction/changes.  And it has that feature of the 5ghz bands and use of DFS channels that Roku cannot use.  As a result, you may find that all your Roku devices will have to gravitate to the 2.4ghz band.  (Users have been calling for AT&T to allow for manual control over 5ghz channels for awhile now.)

However, each network is different and the new router may work just fine for your environment.  Again, my personal preference is to leave the ISP router as a gateway/modem and then bridge a router that allows for network configuration and serves as the router/DHCP server for the devices to connect to. (ie. a Netgear, TP-Link, Motorola, etc). 

The benefit of using an ISP router, however,  is that it will automatically configure and manage your network, and is pretty well configured to be "hands-off".  The negative is that when problems develop, you may be limited to what devices can be used and how the devices can be used on the network . (compatibility issues.)

[TrooperDada326]

@AvsGunnar  Well said again. I have never had any issues using either an xFinity gateway or Cox. The newer generations that is by Technicolor. These are the skinny rectangular pyramid looking ones. You can pretty much do anything using the mobile app. I have 6 Roku’s. I can use either 5.0 or 2.4 on any of them. I have 3 Streaming Stick 4K, 1 Ultra and 2 TCL Roku TV’s

[Karenatl]

Thanks once again @AvsGunnar  I have not been a windows users since Windows 7, so I am good on that front. I will try disabling ivp6 and see if that makes a difference. I am hesitant to go to the new router option as if I can’t sort it out, I know AT&T isn’t going to help!  Since it seems like 2.4 is the channel of choice for roku stick (when it works) and tv,  the bgw-320 would probably work.

[TrooperDada326]

@Karenatl  I have 3 Roku Streaming Stick 4K. All 3 of them can use 2.4 or 5.0. I have 2 of them connected to 5.0 getting around 80 Mbps. The other is getting about 50 Mbps on 2.4. I cannot stress enough that you need to relocate your modem and router. And yes this can be done. You are spending tons of money and time trying to fix the issue wish you may never fix. My uncle had Comcast come out 4x for slow WiFi. No tech could solve the issue. They finally had him put the xFinity Pods. Those did not work. So I went to his home. Mapped everything out. Found a central location to put the modem. Presto. Problem solved. His home is around 3500 sq ft. No extenders or mesh system needed. 

[Karenatl]

@AvsGunnar 

I disabled the IPv6 yesterday and did not have any problems with my connection through the Roku Stick last night (and all my other wireless devices seem to be working still!). Hopefully that has fixed the issue permanently. thanks again for your patient and clear advice. 

Update: The change to disable IPV6 seems to have addressed the problem- no issues since I made the change 4 days ago. 

[Karenatl]

@ReporterARR   Per suggestion of @AvsGunnar I turned off the IPv6 setting on my router, and at least for the time, the problem seems to have gone away. Maybe try that if you haven't done so already. I had also did already have the b/g/n set correctly. which I think you mentioned in a note.

[Karenatl]

@AvsGunnar 

I should have posted this earlier, but got caught up in, well, life. The problem returned but at the same time a friend told me he had a AIR 4920 extender from ATT (they now rent vs sell those extenders for $10/ month!)) that he wasn’t using. I removed the Netgear extender , installed the Air 4920, and after finding the right location (a floor below the Tv, a floor above the router), all the problems were resolved. My conclusion is that for whatever reason, the Netgear extender was not playing nice with the roku stick- I suspect it had to do with trying to move between 2.4g and 5g channels.

I have since cut the cable (thank you roku), added YouTubeTV (already had Prime and a Netflix) and reduced my total bill by around $60/month. I expect the Internet only cost will go up a bit when the contract expires but I still feel like I came out ahead, without missing anything we want to watch.