Internet air connection to remote building

Hi jackbonham,

Thank you for reaching out to us! We understand that you're facing issue with AT&T Internet Air's connectivity.

As the concern is with the AT&T Internet Air, the best team to assist you is our AT&T Internet Air team. 

We recommend that you contact our AT&T Internet Air customer service team at 800.288.2020. They are available from 10am to 7pm Central, 7 business days a week. 

Let us know how it goes.

For further assistance, we are always here to help!

Thank you for contacting AT&T Community Forums,

Jennifer, AT&T Community Specialist.

I thought I was in the Internet Air forum where members could view the questions and offer solutions.

Yes, I've contacted the "Internet Air team" and they had no clue whether there was a solution.  I thought perhaps another user could advise me since your support either didn't know the answer or didn't understand the question.

Jack

Whose service did you have before? What type of router did you have in your original house? What type of "another wire went to a separate AirBnB"?

I currently have ATT Internet with their Gateway and Uverse TV.  All pretty much quit working in the last two weeks and 3 separate service guys have come up with nothing.  No fiber in my area.  Switching to Internet air and DirecTV stream.  The IA seems to be good although I will need multiple extenders.  The house is 110 years old, brick, and about 6000 sf.  They have made me start with Air only until I prove that I need extenders.  (I can already tell that I do.) 

The current configuration has the line coming into a telephone type box in the basement and one line goes up to the gateway.  Another line goes out to the AirBnB with it's own router and wifi id and password.   I think this was done to avoid burying a new line to the AirBnB from the pole.

The simple question is can I hardwire up from one of the ports on the back of the IAir or can I daisy chain enough extenders to make it to the AirBnB?  I'm not sure how extenders work...do you lose signal each time you pass through one?  ATT tells me the extenders for Internet Air are different from the ones I have now from ATT.

Thanks for any help.  Sorry for the length of this post!

I don't have any experience with your current AT&T Internet and Uverse setup, but I have been trying out the AT&T Internet Air Hub for several months.

The Air Hub contains a cellular gateway and router in one unit.

If you were able to place the AT&T Internet Air Hub by a window in your house that was closest to the BnB, you could take your phone over to the BnB and see if there is a usable Wi-Fi signal to the Air Hub. If so, you could enable the guest network on the Air Hub and maybe you are done.

If not, the Air Hub has two Ethernet LAN ports on the back of the unit. I was able to run 75 ft of Ethernet cable (CAT5e) from one of the Ethernet ports on the Air Hub to the WAN Ethernet port on my existing router. There may be some configuration options to consider on the second router.

I don't have much experience with Wi-Fi extenders so can't comment on that.

> 3 separate service guys have come up with nothing.

That in itself is suspicious. There is either a DSL signal to your house or not. The signal is either good or not. It sounds like they do not want to figure out or fix the source of the problem, which is an issue with telco wiring these days and manufacture discontinued equipment.

> The current configuration has the line coming into a telephone type box in the basement and one line goes up to the gateway.  Another line goes out to the AirBnB with it's own router and wifi id and password. 

Your information is a little vague. What is a telephone type box? Do you have a picture? What type of line is thr line to the AirBnB (e.g., Ethernet cable, telephone cable, etc.).

You mention you had a Gateway. Is that the telephone type box? If not, how does the wire in the basement get to the old gateway?

It almost sounds like you have two accounts with two lines.

Assuming you do not, if the telephone type box is a Gateway and an Ethernet core runs to the AirBnB, then you should be able to just connect that cable to your Internet Air gateway.

I don't want you to spend more brain cells on this than necessary but thanks.  When I call ATT support they verify that there is a problem and schedule me for service.  The problem has been totally intermittent.  Works for many hours, then it doesn't for several hours, then it comes back.  One outside guy said all the wiring to the house was ok.  Two separate inside guys said the signal was good in the house, until it wasn't.  Replaced Gateway and DSL cable.  Working for an hour or so and then crapped out.  After two weeks and lots of hotspotting from my phone I've given up and am trying Internet Air.  Speed has been good but it's like pulling teeth to get extenders.

"Telephone type box" is actually a "Telephone Network Interface" - a gray box with a zillion old fashioned telephone wires.  Most are unused.  The buried cable terminates here and then a small wire goes inside the wall to the closet with the Black big ATT Gateway.  The wire from the basement terminates in a wall box with an ethernet jack that has a green data cable to the DSL input on the back of the gateway.  

The wire from the Telephone Network Interface exits to the BnB.  This is coax and splits in the apartment with one signal going to the Uverse Receiver and the other to a Motorola box that then feeds an ethernet cable to a small gray ATT modem.

If I can either hardwire or Daisy Chain extenders to the apartment I should be ok.  Could I simply get a long wire and go from ethernet port on the IA to the ethernet in the BnB?

Thanks for the read if you made it this far!

Your DSL problems sound alot like my experience a few years ago and a few years before that. It took 3 visits on each occasion to fix and they went thru the same process, blaming everything under the sun.

In the first case, on the third visit, the tech was smart, looked at the end of the cable at my house, the end at the nearby terminal, realized they were not the same and that someone had used two different cables, spliced them in the ground and that the splice was probably bad. The fix was a new cable run from the terminal to my house.

In the second case, again on the third visit, the tech looked at the wires at the terminal (why the first two did not, I have no clue). They had been fried from a surge or lightening strike. In addition, the insulation was eaten away by some insects or rodent. The wires were not connected to the posts in the terminal but were "leaning" against them. So the connection would come and go.

Funny.  When I went out to look at the wires I noticed about a 3/4 inch area on the main feed to the house that looked like the insulation had been chewed off.  I wrapped it in electrical tape, but had the problem again today.  I'm praying for good signal from the wireless because I'm giving up on the "buried" cable.  (you can see most of laying on the ground.)

That's like pulling teeth also.  I know I will need multiple extenders but I had to receive the IntAir before they would allow me to order one extender.  Each order has taken 5 days to arrive and I have to get a single extender before I can order another.  We're now over two weeks since the start and I expect it will likely be another week.  Do you suppose ATT will refund my last three weeks of service?  Yeah, neither do I.

jb