M

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Wednesday, July 8th, 2020 7:26 PM

Does the WAP need to be directly connected to the gateway? See explanation below,

Sorry if this is a long description; with any luck, people here enjoy reading such things and solving problems.

 

I have my gateway in my basement.  I have a wired receiver for the basement TV, and I don’t seem to have any issues here.  I also have a WAP directly connected to the gateway, and this is paired to a wireless receiver for the upstairs TV.  I occasionally have severe reception issues with the upstairs TV, and I suspect that the wireless connection is the culprit.

 

Given that the WAP is somewhat far from the wireless receiver, I sought to move it closer.  My house is wired for ethernet, so I decided to connect my gateway to a nearby hub and then connect the WAP to the appropriate ethernet wall jack that was still in the basement, but much closer to the wireless receiver.

 

Things seemed promising at first.  The “link” light on the WAP flashed green, which seemed to indicate that it was indeed connected to the gateway.  When I turned on the upstairs TV, I was prompted to re-pair the wireless receiver and the WAP.  When I did this, I got the “connection success” message, and all the applicable lights on the receiver lit up.  However, when I tried to watch TV, I received the message “U-verse is not available at this time.”  The only option was to restart the wireless receiver.  However, upon restarting the wireless receiver, I was once again prompted to re-pair the receiver and the WAP, and this seemed to continue ad infinitum.

When I reconnected the WAP directly to the gateway and restarted the wireless receiver, I got the “connection success” message without having to go through the pairing process, and everything worked fine again.

 

So, what gives?  Does the WAP need to be connected directly to the gateway for some bizarre reason?  I have no reason to suspect that the ethernet wiring in my house is bad, so this should effectively be the same thing.  I did one get the “a network setting has changed” message on my upstairs TV (and even once on my downstairs, wired TV) during the process, but it was usually just “U-verse is not available.)

 

Anyway, thanks for reading!

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Official Solution

ACE - Expert

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34.6K Messages

4 years ago

You stated that you connected the WAP to the Gateway via "a nearby hub."  Could you be more specific about exactly what piece of equipment this is?  Manufacturer name/model number wouldn't hurt.  A "hub" is a rather loose term for a repeater, a device which has not normally been used much for the past 15 years.

I would expect that a WAP connected via a Gigabit or better Ethernet Switch would work fine, as long as you don't have any other Wireless Access Point / Router connected to that switch.

 

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6 Messages

@JefferMC

 

Thanks for the response.  The "hub" is an ICC brand 12-port cat5e vertical patch panel.  I don't know the specific model number, but it was almost certainly installed about 10 years ago.

 

I should also note that I have my gateway already connected to a different jack in that panel so that I can use a wired connection for my desktop computer upstairs.  This works fine.

 

I am nearly certain that I have actually identified the correct jack on the panel, but I guess I need to do some more experimentation.  This has been difficult since it's hard to fine devices that actually have ethernet ports these days.

ACE - Expert

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34.6K Messages

From your last post, I'm picturing a structured cable installation where there's a single Cat5e cable run from each wall outlet to a centrally located patch panel.  If you have connected a port on your Gateway to a PC in another room via the patch panel, how did you connect another port from your Gateway to the patch panel so that it could be connected to the WAP?

[ Be advised that you've posted on a community forum primarily peopled by other customers.  I am not an AT&T Employee.  An AT&T Customer Support rep may or may not ever reply to your post. ]

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*I am not an AT&T employee, and the views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

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"From your last post, I'm picturing a structured cable installation where there's a single Cat5e cable run from each wall outlet to a centrally located patch panel."

 

That is an accurate description.

 

"If you have connected a port on your Gateway to a PC in another room via the patch panel, how did you connect another port from your Gateway to the patch panel so that it could be connected to the WAP?"

 

The Gateway has four Ethernet ports on the back.  Currently, three are in use: the wired receiver for my basement TV plugs directly into one; another contains the cable which attaches to one of the jacks on the panel so that my desktop can be connected to the wall jack upstairs; the third contains the cable for the WAP.  In my experimentation, I unplugged the WAP and its cable from the Gateway and moved them to a wall jack.  I then used at Cat5e cable to connect the Gateway to a jack in the panel which I (am almost certainly sure) corresponds to the appropriate wall jack where I placed the WAP.

ACE - Expert

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34.6K Messages

So you have multiple wall jacks near your Gateway and have multiple cables running from the Gateway to the different wall jacks.  Yep, that should be okay.  The structured cabling is "just" a "long cable" and should not exceed the 100m limit for 1000baseTX over Cat5e (unless your house is huge).  Unless there is some problem with the termination.  I don't suppose you have a cable test set?  You could try switching the wall outlets you use for the wires from the Gateway and switching the corresponding connections in the patch panel and seeing how well your PC works and if the Wireless TV works on that connection.  

[ Be advised that you've posted on a community forum primarily peopled by other customers.  I am not an AT&T Employee.  An AT&T Customer Support rep may or may not ever reply to your post. ]

Award for Community Excellence Achiever*
*I am not an AT&T employee, and the views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

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6 Messages

It's good to know that I'm not overlooking something.  Unfortunately, I don't have a test set, so I will have to gather more data using other methods.  I likely won't get to this for a few days, but I'll report back so as not to keep you in suspense.

 

Thanks again.

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4 years ago

Well, in the "I really should have tried this first" department, I tried other wall ports in the house, and they all worked, so it seems that I just have a bad connection with one of them.  It's a real shame, as the one I wanted to use is essentially directly below the TV and out of the way.  I think I'll just have to be satisfied with the second-best location.

 

I checked out the wiring at the patch panel, and everything seems to be in order in the sense that there aren't any missing connections, so I imagine that the problem is somewhere between the panel and the wall port.  Given that I'm not about to attempt to pull cable out of the wall, I guess we're done here.

 

Thanks again for you help!

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6 Messages

4 years ago

By the way, I accepted your response as the answer for my question.  In some sense, we didn't really solve my problem, but at least you helped me get over my wishful thinking on this one.

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