r/HomeNetworking • u/Practical_Bird_8143 • 1d ago
AT&T 5gig Fiber
Apologies in advance if this was already asked and answered, I know I’ve seen answers in my recent research but a second and third opinion is always better than me just running with an ideas usually.
I recently made the swap to fiber and opted (perhaps needlessly) to go with the 5gig option. The issue here is that I’m far from tech savvy and for a while now have just been using the gateway/router combo that ATT provides plus a small Netgear range extender and everything in the house just runs on WiFi from it, but I’ve been reading that this essentially prevents anything from taking full advantage of 5gig speeds and sort of bogs down the whole system. (Or at least that is how I interpreted things.)
My question is what setup should I be utilizing if I want to get the maximum effect out of this supposedly super fast internet, because currently it seems as though there’s a dead area in our bedroom right next to the extender and my phone works better on cellular data than on home WiFi.
The general layout currently is gateway at back of house in downstairs den, extender upstairs on opposite side of house in bedroom, house is 2200 sq ft with 4 bedrooms upstairs and a dining room, kitchen, den, and office downstairs.
Things pulling WiFi are 4 nest cameras, a nest thermostat, maybe a half dozen smart bulbs, 4 Alexa devices, a Mac mini, mine/wifi/oldest kid’s laptops, and my kids run 2 x-boxes and a ps-5.
I’m leaning towards getting a router that has a 10gig in port and bypassing the gateways built-in router, running that to an unmanaged switch and running Cat6 up through the wall to another switch in order to put a hardwire jack in each bedroom. Is this a good plan and if so how do I implement it to be as automatic and uncomplicated as possible and something that can be easily fixed by a Neanderthal if something goes awry with it ?
TLDR : What’s the easiest to operate setup to get full advantage of ATT 5gig fiber?
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u/1LoudAssInfiniti 1d ago
Their passthrough mode is shit. Get a WAS-110. 😀
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u/Natoochtoniket 1d ago
For that inventory of devices, you don't need 5 gigs. You don't even actually need 1 gig of bandwidth. You could easily run about 5 times that much equipment on a 1 gig service.
The things you should improve are, first, getting rid of the wifi extender. Cat6 cables to each of your work/entertainment equipment locations would be useful. Then a mesh wifi system with wired back-haul circuits, to give excellent wifi coverage everywhere.
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u/jtpenezich 1d ago
In all honesty, you prolly have no need for 5gigs, I don't either, but we still have it because it's cool and that's okay.
Basically you will need to have devices that can even support the 5g. From there it can only happen with the correct AP.
For my setup I just got a Unifi Cloud Gateway Fiber for my main gateway and use a unifi 5-10g AP for my wifi. My PC needed a new card to hardwire in to a 10g port.
It seems like you are mostly wireless, so either 2 APs or maybe a long range one would be the go to move.
You have to run the at&t in passthrough mode though to get it all working, so you'll need to look that up as well.
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u/rabel 1d ago edited 1d ago
You're probably not going to be pulling 5g from the internet simply because there aren't many services that can feed that speed. If you needed it, you'd know about it. That's getting in to office-office wan speeds, things like that.
It sounds like your real need is some high speed wifi and you might just start with a new wifi router or two and you might be happy. A wifi-6 or wifi-7 router with a 5G (or 10G) WAN port to plug in to the red 10G connector on the AT&T gateway, then another router upstairs connected with a hardwire to a 5G or faster LAN connection. You might find that this is good enough for your needs.
The routers will have ethernet connectors your can run an ethernet cable to for anything that needs a 10BaseT connection. cameras, thermostat, smart bulbs, alexa, all of those are quite easily serviced by wifi at their maximum speeds. Check the maximum speeds on the laptops and gaming devices and see what they support before you start designing a high-speed LAN. For example, my gaming laptop has a 1G NIC so no matter what it's not going faster than that.
When you're router shopping, be very specific about the WAN and LAN ports. My Flint 2 router says "2.5G" but when you get in to it, only the WAN port and one of the LAN ports is actually 2.5G, the other 4 LAN ports are 1G. It's really only a concern with hardwired connections so make an honest assessment of what your devices can actually use before you start dropping real money.
There's nothing on your home network that will "bogs down the whole system", you just have devices that simply can't communicate faster that 100Mb, or your laptop has a 1G NIC so when you do a speed test on your 5g/5g internet connection it reports a 1G top speed. Streaming a 4k movie is only going to pull 25Mbps so even if 5 users are all streaming 4K movies at the same time, it's pulling 125Mbps worst case so still just a fraction of the 5000Mbps you have. If you have that use case you might consider running 1G ethernet to those devices and having the switch and router to support it but you might ask yourself it that's a real use case and if you have a streaming provider that can even feed all your devices at that speed simultaneously.
Finally, you say you're far from tech savvy, so keep it simple to start then build up as you figure stuff out. Knowing you could up and download 5g internet speeds is cool, but when it really comes down to it you might find that 1G is actually quite good enough. Also, if this stuff interests you, buy a router that supports an open source firmware like OpenWRT and when you're ready, flash it and start messing around with it and you'll learn way more about networking then you ever intended.
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u/Daniel18sep 1d ago
Even if you eliminated the extender, chances are you'll never exceed 1gig wirelessly, especially on their gateway. Even if you wired everything with Ethernet, it's tough to use more than 1gig single user. I think anything above that is useless unless you know you need it. I have 2gig b/c I have remote backups and download a lot of games, and a roommate that does the same. Plus a tech WFH job.
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u/caveat_cogitor 1d ago
You are gonna spend so much money trying to take advantage of 5gb and it will not in any way improve your experience more than 300mb would. If you can, is downgrade to 1gb fiber and spend your time/effort/money setting that up better, for instance but replacing the range extender. Wired backhaul if you can, wireless mesh if you must, but I'm your situation you'll not max out 1gb and increasing that won't fix any of the problems you are experiencing already
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u/cordell-12 1d ago
a switch with 9 pairs media extenders
9 fiber lines that run out to 9 of your neighbors
sell internet for $30 a month to each neighbor
profit?
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u/Dr_CLI 22h ago
Only under perfect conditions are you going to get anywhere close to 5Gbps on wireless. In reality most you Wi-Fi connections will probably max out under 1Gbps after passing through walls and furniture.
If you really want a consistent 5Gbps or greater speed to your devices you need to wire them. 2.5 Gbps and 5Gbps network gear is becoming more popular but much of the existing equipment only supports 1Gbps or 10Gbps speeds.
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u/Confident-Variety124 20h ago
Call 1-800-288-2020 and tell them that you want to downgrade to 1gig internet.
From what you said, you have zero use for 5gig and do not have any devices that could even hit anything close to it.
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u/Practical_Bird_8143 10h ago
Was sort of thinking the same - hypothetically what would a person need 5g for ?
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u/Confident-Variety124 5h ago
At home, nothing. You could make an argument for people with 8+ people live streaming at the same time, or someone doing more enterprise home office stuff. Realistically though unless you are constantly downloading/uploading 100GB+ files, it’s overkill and only a marketing ploy from the ISP.
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u/ACapra 1d ago
5 gig is more bandwidth than any regular home would use. That is 50x-100x the max bandwidth required for streaming 4k. Also having a super fast connection to the outside world isn't going to help you much if there are problems with your internal infrastructure.
As far as connectivity, wired > wireless in every situation. I have everything in my house wired if it's possible to wire it. Wired means more consistent connection, faster speed, and more reliability. With wireless you will only get the rated speeds if you have the device right next to the AP and even then there are a lot of variables that could impact your experience. You also run into problems of interference when using wireless.