David L. Farquhar, computer security professional, train hobbyist, and landlord
Is gigabit Internet worth it? I want gigabit Internet. I wanted it for a really long time before I was able to get it. And not everyone can. Here’s why I want gigabit Internet and how I can justify it. If you can get it, it’s worth considering. Here’s why it might make sense for you.
If you’re working from home and have a modern enough home network, gigabit Internet can make a lot of sense. But a lot of home networks aren’t up for it, so you may be wasting money.
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AT&T home gateway devices don’t have a true bridge mode that you can use if you want to use your own router with their service. But there is an acceptable substitute. So here’s the closest thing you’ll find to AT&T U-verse bridge mode and how to enable it. This also works with AT&T Fiber and everything else AT&T calls AT&T Internet.
Is your upload faster than your download with your Internet connection? This is a fairly obscure problem that seems to have started happening again. Here’s how to test to see if you’re actually having a problem, and how to fix it.
If your upload speed is slightly faster than your download speed, it’s not worth worrying about. On a symmetric Internet connection where the two are supposed to be the same, I expect to see them within about 10 percent of one another, and if download slightly outpaces upload, it’s not hurting anything. But if upload is faster when it’s supposed to be slower, something weird is going on.
Last week I traded some tips with a neighbor who signed up for AT&T Gigabit on my recommendation. His speeds just weren’t as fast as mine. Is your AT&T Gigabit not fast? Here’s some advice that may help.
I’m able to consistently get speeds in both directions above 900 megabits on my AT&T gigabit connection, at least on my best hardware. Some of my older hardware lags behind that a bit, but still does much better than 500 megabits. So I’ll share my secrets.
Right now the only consumer OS that supports DNS over TLS is Android Pie 0r newer. But that doesn’t mean you can’t run DNS over TLS yourself to protect your DNS privacy. Here’s how to implement a local DNS server that uses TLS to talk to upstream DNS servers to keep your ISP and other hostile third parties from seeing your DNS lookups. As a bonus, it caches your requests to speed up your Internet connection, and you can filter out malware domains with it.
There’s a lot to like with this setup.
I was in St. Louis near the Washington University campus when a billboard caught my eye. It was advertising apartments, and the key feature it touted was “fiber wifi.” What is fiber wifi? Isn’t that kind of like saying “metal wood?”
The residential gateway that AT&T provides with its U-Verse, Fiber, and AT&T Internet packages doesn’t have a logon button or logon screen like most other routers you’re used to. That can be confusing. So here’s how to log into an AT&T router.
I’ve had high speed Internet for about as long as anyone in my ZIP code–as soon as DSL was available, I signed up and paid through the nose for it. It took a while for fiber optics to become an option, but I switched once I did. I’ve been a Southwestern Bell/AT&T customer for a good 17 years. Over the years I weighed AT&T vs Spectrum Internet. And for a while, I switched.
I switched to Spectrum in 2016, then back to AT&T in 2018. There are pros and cons to each of them, so I thought going through them might be helpful. Keep in mind Spectrum encompasses several legacy companies. Charter Communications started re-branding itself as Spectrum soon before it acquired Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Of the three, only Bright House Networks had a good reputation. Hence the use of the new name.
AT&T provides a residential gateway when you subscribe to U-Verse or AT&T Fiber. It’s pretty easy to use, but lacks a lot of features we expect in routers these days. So you may be wondering: Can I use my own router with AT&T U-Verse? Yes. Yes you can. Here’s how to use your own router with AT&T U-Verse or AT&T Fiber.
AT&T’s default wi-fi passwords aren’t the worst I’ve seen, but they aren’t super-secure either. So here’s how to change an AT&T U-Verse wifi password. The same trick works with AT&T Fiber, since it uses the same residential gateways.