AT&T DSL Service + wireless gateway settings

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by shooter, Jan 29, 2011.

  1. shooter

    shooter Private First Class

    No longer needing a [slow] wireless broadband service, I recently went back to AT&T for their faster 6.0 Mbps DSL connection (at the same price I was paying for much, much less speed).

    I decided to try and save a few bucks on the setup by reusing the old wireless gateway. I figured if it sucked, I could always pony up and get the newest/latest/greatest gateway, but that it was worth it to try and save around $100...

    So they turned my service on the other day and I connected everything up, but wasn't getting quite the speeds I wanted, so I called AT&T DSL Tech Support. The technician worked me through a couple settings I hadn't thought about, and my speeds increased somewhat.

    So I asked about the wireless gateway... maybe it was too old? I gave the tech the make and model number. It's an AT&T-branded 2WIRE, model 2701HG-B.

    He said this is the current model that they're still giving out. I was a little surprised, because I quit AT&T's DSL service 4 years ago (Jan.2007), but I *started* it 5 years ago... in January of 2006. But whatever. I was happy the model was still current, but surely the firmware must be out of date... right?

    Wrong. Per the technician, ver. 5.29.47 is still current. That's what the router setup screen says, too ("Your system software is current. Check back for future available upgrades."). The router settings page is still SBC-branded, but whatever... rolleyes

    I really just wanted to run the above stuff past the Geeks and see if that sounded right.

    After working with the technician, I got my ~4200kbps connxn (at the router) up to ~4800kbps (on average), and right now it's sitting at 5216kbps... just by changing the channel from 1 to 10 (1=2412MHz, 10=2457MHz) and the power setting from 1 to 6.


    Speaking of router/gateway settings... I also wanted to take the opportunity to ask a couple of questions on the topic:
    1. On the setup I'm transitioning away from (wireless broadband modem + Netgear WGR614 v5), I had MAC address filtering turned on... should I enable it here, and is it faster/slower/nochange?
    2. I have the following authentication options: WEP-Open, WEP-Shared, WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK, WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK. I selected [just] WPA2-PSK, but I just went with the highest... good/bad, smart/dumb, slow/fast?
    3. In addition to going with WPA2-PSK, I have AES enabled.
    4. The gateway will broadcast in the following modes: 802.11b/g, 802.11b, 802.11g. Default is b/g, and that's where I left it. Will I see any performance increase if I dedicate it to g? Any other considerations with this choice?
    5. DTIM Period = 1s... I don't really know what this is (I mean, I can Google it, but still don't really understand what it is/does). Should I leave that alone?
    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. :)
     
  2. Lmason5

    Lmason5 Private E-2

    Although I do not have att part of my family does and to my knowledge this is the most updated hardware, at least to my knowledge. now for the other questions.


    1 the MAC filtering isn't a horrible idea it won't slow you down much but it is pretty useless sense a user can "mask"( I apologize if this isn't the correct term) their MAC address with one that is allowed on the network and moving into you second question at the same time, the one that you selected is one of the best options that are also easy to use, so as long as you have the WPA2-PSK key you shouldn't need to do a MAC filtering unless you really want to, it is just more inconvenient if you need to add a computer to the network.

    4 as long as all your computers that are wireless are not over 4 years old, I believe, they should all have a G card so it won't make much of a difference what you set it at.

    5 I am also not too sure what this is either, sorry, but I left mine at the default
     

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