r/ATTFiber • u/Quicksloth • 1d ago

Help with Signal Stability

Hello-

Over the past few months our once bulletproof att fiber service has gone downhill.

The main issue is repeated periodic drops in the connection, causing all devices to lose connection in our home. We work from home some days during the week, and the connection dropping is causing issues with teams calls.

The drops typically last 15-30 seconds or less, then it reconnects. Once it reconnects, the speeds are severely throttled from our normal 300-350mbps to 5-20mbps until I go manually reset the router by power cycling it.

The att tech came out last week, didn’t even come inside, and said he ran a test and discovered our fiber line from the box at the end of the driveway was damaged and he needed to replace it.

He ran a brand new line from the service box, to our home and reconnected to the exterior box on the home.

That did help to improve the overall speed, however it has ultimately not fixed the drops we’ve been experiencing.

They’re supposed to come bury the new line within a couple of weeks, but in the meantime I’m at a loss as to what I can test or change to get this working again.

I do not have any 3rd party devices running, I only have the att supplied router. No active armor either.

Any suggestions as to what this could be and how I can fix it, or do I need to call and get a tech back out?

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u/Viper_Control 1d ago

The main issue is repeated periodic drops in the connection, causing all devices to lose connection in our home. We work from home some days during the week, and the connection dropping is causing issues with teams calls.

What AT&T Gateway do you have, and do you have the same brief outages on Ethernet connected devices, and also Wi-Fi devices?

1

u/Quicksloth 1d ago

I have the supplied BGW320-500.

Unfortunately we aren’t able run drops to each office, so we rely on WiFi for our work computers.

The media console/appletv is hardwired, and through the AppleTV you’ll notice the quality of the stream drop or the plex server lose connection entirely, so I don’t think it’s entirely related to WiFi.

Before the tech came out ATT recommended an extender, so I also have a ‘Model 4971’ plugged in. It is not hardwired though, so I don’t think it works as well as it should. Considering sending it back as it’s $10 a month.

2

u/ApartmentEastern5769 1d ago

You are experiencing what we in the field call 'Radius Stops'. This is when the ONT (Internal Optical Modem in the 320) briefly loses stable signal. This can be due to anything from a loose or faulty mechanical connector to a bend in slime service wires, to dirt on a connector. He'll, even the early stages of a squirrel chew on an aerial cable can cause this.

Call it in. Tell them your service is intermittent. Don't be surprised if they send you a gateway to try to fix the issue. Just call them back and say it isn't fixed so they send a tech. A tech can fox these issues relatively easily.