Uverse AT&T BGW210-700, TP-Link Deco AX3600, lack of ethernet ports, router/switch confusion

I’m confused by cat5 coming from outside the house. Post a picture of the ONT. Is it inside the home in the bedroom or in a box on the outside of the house?

ultimately you need to get the gateway in the family room. I would call for a tech visit for poor wifi signal. Be there when they arrive. Tell the tech what you want and need. They should be able to set everything up correctly and update you on how everything works. 

I was mistaken about any CAT5 cables coming into the house. There are two drilled into our house and I thought they were still being utilized. Brain injury comes into play: I only "remembered" the previous installation and the mess with running such long CAT5 cables throughout the house before fiber optic. I did not remember/realize that the sole source coming from outside is only the fiber-optic cable now. That's on me. 😕 No wonder you were confused! Sorry. 

The fiber-optic comes inside at the basement, up behind my shower access and plugs into the ONT. Quite a distance. Also behind the shower access are two CAT5 cables going into the gateway that are then routed throughout my house to plug directly into the gigabyte switch and security cameras in the family room. 

The ONT is hanging on the wall below the gateway. The WAP is about 5ft away from the gateway and ONT.

As I mentioned, our family room is an addition and my husband said the technicians did not want to put the gateway in there because it has a brick wall on about 1/3 the west side. From the addition, you walk into the kitchen which isn't a good spot because of 2.4 GHz interference. The only two rooms easily accessible from the outside pole would be the room they used and the family room addition. Don't know if they didn't want to run an even longer line throughout the house and put the gateway in a more central room. So, maybe because of the setup of my house, this was the only realistic option??

If I recall an earlier post, you don’t use the wired dvr in the bedroom? You watch tv in the family room? If yes, try this. Disconnect the wap and wired dvr from the gateway. Plug the wired dvr into the the switch in the family room. Since it’s an att provided switch, the dvr should work. Does the dvr work when connected to the switch? Try for several days. If the wired dvr works in the family room, do you need the wireless receiver? You don’t watch tv anywhere else in the house? 

Now for Wi-Fi. In the above setup, do you get good Wi-Fi through out the house? If yes, you are all set and can return the wireless routers. If no, connect the ac Wi-Fi router to the switch. Set it up as an access point. Leave the gateway set up as us with the Wi-Fi on. Do you get good Wi-Fi throughout the house?

After rereading the thread, where is the second wireless stb in relation to the gateway? Connecting the wap to the switch might improve the signal to the wireless stb. 

Thanks so much for the ideas. Only thing is that I do have another wireless receiver in the master bedroom which I do use. A lot.  I will switch it all around tonight and see what happens. Unless, this isn't an option since I do have one wireless receiver in the master bedroom that gets used all the time since I don't sleep at night. 😴

I guess I don't understand the purpose of the WAP. I had originally thought it was to link the two wireless receivers to the gateway only because I had more than one. But, I got that idea from a different forum. I guess that isn't true. Thinking about it, I guess the wireless receiver would still need a wireless access point.

Sorry. Your second message didn't come through before I posted my response. The second wireless DVR is in the master bedroom, in the room next to the Gateway with the WAP.

The wap purpose is to set up a separate Wi-Fi network for the wireless stb’s. That’s all. You need it for the wireless stb’s. Whether it’s one or two. Experiment with the wap connected to the gateway as is. And the switch. The assumption is the switch is a managed one from att that separates the iptv signal from computer, security camera data. 

If you cannot get everything working with the dvr connected to the switch. Do consider having an att tech make a service call to check everything. If you see a tech parked waiting for a job. Politely ask if you can ask about your setup. 

I don't think the switch is a managed one. I think it's unmanaged. I'm going to go double-check.

The second wireless receiver should work fine with the wap connected to the gateway. 

What’s the model number of the netgear switch. If it’s a netgear gs105E, E being the  managed version.