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4 Messages

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 8:55 AM

Intermittent buffering problems with Pandora & YouTube since NVG589 installation

Hello fellow customers,

 

I recently asked AT&T to come out and replace my 2Wire router-gateway after it had spontaneously rebooted in the middle of phone calls a couple times this year.  The new device is a Motorola NVG589.  I live in southern California.

 

I've had the following intermittent problems since this change:

- In the middle of playing a track, Pandora downgrades me from "high quality" to "normal" and claims that I have 0 KBps bandwidth the Internet 

- Youtube HD videos will buffer 20 or 30 megabytes of content, play through the buffer until it's dry, and then spin endlessly waiting for the buffer to fill up again

- All the while SPEEDTEST, which seems to be AT&T's favorite troubleshooting tool, and file downloads from MSDN.MICROSOFT.COM, which are my favorite troubleshooting tool, show download speeds of 23-24 megabits per second (although it might drop down to half that from instant to instant).

 

All this testing has been done on wired devices.  I've also tried multiple machines to rule out any workstation problems.  These are Windows 7 boxes running IE11 for the most part.

 

I suspect the configuration and/or technologies in use by the new router-gateway are a lot different for some reason.  Six years of completly reliable service on the 2Wire device & never any problems with Pandora or Youtube.  Any suggestions are welcome.

 

-BGU

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Tutor

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4 Messages

8 years ago

I am posting the solution to my problem for other users who might be having issues with Pandora and the NVG589.  The work-around is to disable IPv6 in the router-gateway's Web interface.  I haven't had any Pandora issues since making this change 10 or 15 days ago.  I have to give credit to the AT&T technician who was on site for making that suggestion.

 

Anyone's guess why that would make a difference.  I had the impression that this router-gateway setting only affected the internal part of the home network, which makes it even harder to fathom.

 

My Internet experience seems to be back up to the quality level I had with the earlier 2Wire gateway.  Let's hope it stays that way.

 

-Flash

Community Support

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6.7K Messages

8 years ago

Hi @flash0,

 

Sorry to read of your experience. If you have not already, check out this link. It is a graphic that illustrates the best modem environment. Wired can be affected the same way depending on what is near it.

 

If you still experience trouble, we can look further into this. Send us a detailed message by clicking here. Be sure to include your name, account number, phone number, and the best time to reach you.

Keep an eye on the envelope.png at the top right corner of your screen for a response.

In the meantime, let us know if you have any other questions or concerns!

 

-ATTU-verseCare

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Tutor

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4 Messages

8 years ago

I'm having trouble accepting your thesis.  All the CAT-5 cables here are shielded and any "interference" would also have existed before the replacement of the router-gateway.  Recall that these buffering problems coincided with the installation of the NVG589 earlier this month.

 

If you can document your theory better, I might be willing to act on it.

 

Thanks,

Flash

ACE - Expert

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34.7K Messages

8 years ago

AT&T is implementing IPv6 for its U-verse customers by tunneling it over IPv4 from your gateway to some border relay server.  This means that the entire IPv6 packet has to fit inside an IPv4 packet.  There seems to be an MTU issue that means fragmentation is necessary.  IPv6 handles fragmentation differently and not as seemlessly as IPv4 and packets are getting dropped as a result.  The data then has to be retried, etc.

 

And some of the gateways have a firmware bug that causes them to crash and reboot when IPv6 is turned on.  

 

So, the advice from this forum is TURN IPv6 OFF on your U-verse Gateway Router.

 

Contributor

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1 Message

7 years ago

How do I cancel pandora subscription?
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