U-Verse Install

So we got AT&T; U-Verse installed last Saturday. As anticipated, the install took 5 hours. He first had to do some outside prep work, and also some work at the box down the street. Then, he routed the U-Verse VDSL signal in through the coax cable that my cable TV used to come in on. I was a little annoyed with this once I found out (I think he misunderstood me), but everything worked out and I was able to cancel all my cable services on Monday, so I wasn’t unhappy that my cable wire we re-used. The technician installed the residential gateway, and then re-did all the wiring.

I have to say, that while this may not be the case, if I ever wanted to go back to cable TV, it would be very difficult to do so, because of the way the existing wiring and splitters were re-used. The skeptic in me thinks that this is probably done somewhat intentionally.

After that, the set-top boxes were installed, and there was an issue because of “bootstrap code” that was not properly loaded. The technician was on the phone for about 1-2 hours trying to get the problem fixed. It wasn’t his fault. The problem is that because this is an Internet Protocol(IP) based service, there are several servers that the programming changes need to be “pushed” through. The time was spent trying to get these changes through.

The DVR installation went very well. This, and the optical output for audio, are really what sold me on the service. When I had digital cable, I got frustrated because only some channels came though the optical connection, forcing me to have to play games with the audio receiver everytime I changed between digital channels and analog. The U-Verse boxes are 100% digital, and this was great. I can also use the remote controls that come with the set-top boxes for U-Verse to control most of my gear in a maner that makes sense, so there are less buttons to push.

The only real problem I encountered was trying to get it working on my home network. I have a server and other business machines, and the server has a DHCP server running. I changed the residential gateway to have the same IP subnet as my home network, and disabled the DHCP server. This caused havoc several hours later, and I ended up deciding to make my network play nice with the residential gateway’s default settings. I’m not thrilled about this, but everything is working and happy now.

A few days later, I decided to upgrade from the “Pro” speed (3mbps/1mbps) to “Elite” (6mbps/1mbps). The order somehow got cancelled, and I had to call and ask for it again. This time it went through, and when I came home from work, the changes had already been pushed through.

One drawback to the internet service is that while it was no problem for me to get the “Pro” speeds, running a speed test to verify, the “Elite” speeds seem a little harder to get. Sometimes, I actually get about 5800/986 up, which is very good, but more often than not, it is about 4000/900 up. While they don’t guarantee that your speeds will always be this fast, when I had cable internet, rated for 6000mbps/2000mbps, I was able to get close to 6000 mpbs more consistently. I wonder if the AT&T; network is more overloaded. This did happen back in 2000, when I was an early adopter of DSL when it became available in my town. Things got VERY slow, and they eventually corrected the problem. I’m hoping that more bandwidth is added soon, as I hear rumors that in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2008, elite speeds may increase to 10mpbs downstream speed.