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AT&T Equipment only works when plugged into RG (won't work when plugged into router or switch)

RG has four ethernet ports. I have two wired TV's, the Wireless Access Point and the DVR AND a 3rd party router. The TV's, WAP and DVR all have to be plugged into the RG for some reason or they won't work so I have no port for my router. If I plug the TV into either the router or a switch (tried both just for kicks) it stops after 5 seconds of play. If I plug the WAP into the router or switch the wireless TV's stop and start. If I plug the DVR into either the router or switch it just says that no recordings are available. All four pieces of AT&T equipment only work well when plugged directly into the RG.

Responses

ApexRon

Professor

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2.2K Messages

7 years ago

@mlesquire

Say you have four TVs using U-verse TV, if all four are watching the same channel you're bandwidth requirements are 1X. However, if each are watching a different channel then you're bandwidth requirements are 4X. This characteristic is because U-verse uses multicast. I believe the U-verse TV limits are 3HD + 1SD. Should you use all the U-verse bandwidth allocated then your data bandwidth could suffer. Consider your connection as if it was a train track. U-verse TV data packets have priority to use the tracks which means your data packets may have to be delayed by sidetracking them to allow the priority packet to get through. Also, remember that the internet does not start outside your premise. You have to go through your neighborhood's AT&T infrastructure first.

From an AT&T perspective should you have an U-verse issue in the future removing one cable connection would remove all non-AT&T equipment from the equation and isolate your home network. We have worked some recent issues where in one case a switch went bad and in another where a new switch's Ethernet negotiation was causing connections to drop periodically

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JefferMC

ACE - Expert

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35.2K Messages

7 years ago

You CANNOT plug the Mesh into the Switch unless NO U-verse TV Gear is plugged into that Switch. That will not work and will cause many problems unless the switch does IGMPv2 peeking (which the specs for your switch do not indicate). What will happen is that the U-verse TV Gear will solicit a multicast stream, and the multicast stream will then be seen by the Mesh, which you do NOT want. Wireless Access Points and Routers do not handle Multicast well.

And yes, you have one connection from your Gateway to the U-verse network that runs at a fixed profile rate (you can look it up if you want to on the TV menus or on the Gateway). Your High Speed Internet bandwidth is going to be less than that rate, which will normally give you 1 HD TV stream before impacting your bandwidth. If you use the (non-Gigapower) maximum 4 HD TV streams, you could start your High Speed Internet bandwidth down to as low as 8 Mbps while you're using all 4 HD streams.

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