Any of you tech savvy people?

[CHCRandy]

My daughter lives in Indy in an older building and has AT&T internet. She got it mainly for Wifi....but recently she tried running her work desktops on it and it is too slow. Her computer is not like a normal desktop. It has a tower and 2 monitors. 1 monitor plugs into the other monitor and then that monitor plugs into the "tower". Then there is an ethernet cable from tower to he ATT router, I guess it is called.

I think the problem is the old phone lines in this building she lives in.....but I can't be positive.

My question is.....will a Wifi booster with an ethernet plug help this at all or no chance? Thought about ordering one from Amazon and trying it but I figured someone on here would know if that would even work?

Any other options to speed it up?

 

[Tombs]

If it's DSL and coming over the phone lines, you should get a splitter. If the splitter doesn't resolve it, rewire the house with cat5 or cat6 cable, replacing all the phone lines.

If it's wireless internet and you don't have good line of sight to a tower, you're kind of hosed and need to look for another internet solution.

Since you said it's a direct connection to the router, it isn't wifi that's the issue.

 

[fullmetaljesus]

If it's a wired connection wifi doesn't come into play.

If it is wifi it's a poor connection. Get something like google wifi so you can have multiple wifi access points for better connection.

If it's wired. The internet line sucks.

Have tech support look at it.
Also make sure it's a good cable.

 

[cburnworth]

If she is dead set on at&t then look @ upgrades to service( At&t does offer fiber internet , but is still nothing like comcast). Personally she should look at replacing with comcast/spectrum(local cable just depends on where she is at)

 

[CHCRandy]

If it's DSL and coming over the phone lines, you should get a splitter. If the splitter doesn't resolve it, rewire the house with cat5 or cat6 cable, replacing all the phone lines.

If it's wireless internet and you don't have good line of sight to a tower, you're kind of hosed and need to look for another internet solution.

Since you said it's a direct connection to the router, it isn't wifi that's the issue.

Man, I am so dumb on this stuff. I think it is DSL over the phone line. Her ATT router plugs into phone line.......it works fine for her Wifi, just when she tries to log in to work from home.....the screens are extremely slow and won't open quickly and her headset is not clear when she speaks to customers.

I am not sure that new phone line is even possible. She lives in a 6 story apartment building that was built in what looks like 1900.......the phone line coming into the phone jack looks old, very old....but I followed the wire and it goes into an elevator shaft, lol.

What is this splitter you speak of and does it sound like it is worth a shot.

Thank you both for your replies.......I hate being so stupid on this stuff.

 

[CHCRandy]

If she is dead set on at&t then look @ upgrades to service( At&t does offer fiber internet , but is still nothing like comcast). Personally she should look at replacing with comcast/spectrum(local cable just depends on where she is at)

We tried that but the only service provider where she lives is ATT....although she did say T Mobile or someone like that now offers some kind of service. She is pretty much downtown Indy......

I called ATT and told them it needed to be faster, they told me it was as fast as they can get it...but that it should easily support Zoom telecalls. They told her to turn off TV, shut down cell phone , etc........none of it helped.

 

[t-squared]

What is the model number of the gateway/modem?

 

[Tombs]

Man, I am so dumb on this stuff. I think it is DSL over the phone line. Her ATT router plugs into phone line.......it works fine for her Wifi, just when she tries to log in to work from home.....the screens are extremely slow and won't open quickly and her headset is not clear when she speaks to customers.

I am not sure that new phone line is even possible. She lives in a 6 story apartment building that was built in what looks like 1900.......the phone line coming into the phone jack looks old, very old....but I followed the wire and it goes into an elevator shaft, lol.

What is this splitter you speak of and does it sound like it is worth a shot.

Thank you both for your replies.......I hate being so stupid on this stuff.

It'd help to know what kind of bandwidth she's getting currently, so we can figure out if the internet plan she has is good enough for what she's wanting to do.

The next step is going to www.speedtest.net and making sure you're getting the speed you're paying for. If you're getting the speed you're paying for and the internet isn't intermittently dropping, it's probably not a wiring problem.

There's ways to know the quality of the line but I have no good way to tell you because it's technical. You need to access the modem/router through an internet portal and check the line stats to see if you're getting a good enough signal to noise ratio. If it's a bad signal to noise ratio, that means there's a wiring problem. A splitter helps that issue up to a point.

A splitter splits your phone and internet into 2 separate lines, and you no longer need to use filters on your phones. This can dramatically improve internet performance if you're getting a bad signal to noise ratio. If all is fine, it won't do anything for you.

It's entirely possible that streaming and voice calling is just too much load for the plan she is on and she needs more bandwidth. DSL has HORRIBLE upload speed performance, which means if she's sending video from her end, she will be severely limited and the whole connection will suffer as a result. You really need internet with equal download and upload bandwidth, like cable or fiber optic, if you want to stream.

 

[CHCRandy]

What is the model number of the gateway/modem?

I am not sure.....it looks like this though Amazon product ASIN B00KXBNGNE
I will try finding out for sure though.

 

[eldirector]

IMHO: If it is ATT DSL it is crap. We had them for a bit. Claimed 25 Mbps, but we never saw more than 12. Streaming would completely saturate the network. Bad enough I'd drop my VPN connection and even lose voice calls if my wife fired up Hulu.

I spent a bit of $$$ and a LOT of ATT tech time (they must have hated me), and got nowhere. Even with a PERFECT set of twisted pair and good equipment, ping and max download was terrible.

I'm on gig fiber now, so living the dream....

 

[CHCRandy]

It'd help to know what kind of bandwidth she's getting currently, so we can figure out if the internet plan she has is good enough for what she's wanting to do.

The next step is going to www.speedtest.net and making sure you're getting the speed you're paying for. If you're getting the speed you're paying for and the internet isn't intermittently dropping, it's probably not a wiring problem.

There's ways to know the quality of the line but I have no good way to tell you because it's technical. You need to access the modem/router through an internet portal and check the line stats to see if you're getting a good enough signal to noise ratio. If it's a bad signal to noise ratio, that means there's a wiring problem. A splitter helps that issue up to a point.

A splitter splits your phone and internet into 2 separate lines, and you no longer need to use filters on your phones. This can dramatically improve internet performance if you're getting a bad signal to noise ratio. If all is fine, it won't do anything for you.

It's entirely possible that streaming and voice calling is just too much load for the plan she is on and she needs more bandwidth. DSL has HORRIBLE upload speed performance, which means if she's sending video from her end, she will be severely limited and the whole connection will suffer as a result. You really need internet with equal download and upload bandwidth, like cable or fiber optic, if you want to stream.

She does not have a phone on this service....she just has internet and TV. Thanks for your help. Do splitters only help if you have a phone hooked to modem? I remember having one of those when I had ATT DSL or UVerse.

 

[Tombs]

She does not have a phone on this service....she just has internet and TV. Thanks for your help. Do splitters only help if you have a phone hooked to modem? I remember having one of those when I had ATT DSL or UVerse.

Okay so I need to explain a bit further.

You have a box on the back of your house. The telephone line from the pole comes into this box.
Then all the phone lines in your house connect to the box.

Your modem is plugged into one of those phone lines, which gives you internet access.

A splitter will isolate the phone and internet signal, so you can select one physical wire in your house to have exclusively the internet signal travel through. This can help a lot with bad wiring.
But if there's no phone plan and it's only being used for internet, I don't really know if it'd help unless there's significant wiring issues. All the phone lines in your house affect each other as a whole. If any one wire is bad, it will affect every other wire in the house unless you remove it from the circuit.

 

[t-squared]

Check your PMs...

 

[Cameramonkey]

have her go to https://speed.cloudflare.com/ and run a speed test. How much actual speed is she getting, and what is her latency and jitter?

EDIT: changed providers that gives more detailed info since she mentioned needing a soft phone for work.

 

[CHCRandy]

Okay so I need to explain a bit further.

You have a box on the back of your house. The telephone line from the pole comes into this box.
Then all the phone lines in your house connect to the box.

Your modem is plugged into one of those phone lines, which gives you internet access.

A splitter will isolate the phone and internet signal, so you can select one physical wire in your house to have exclusively the internet signal travel through. This can help a lot with bad wiring.
But if there's no phone plan and it's only being used for internet, I don't really know if it'd help unless there's significant wiring issues. All the phone lines in your house affect each other as a whole. If any one wire is bad, it will affect every other wire in the house unless you remove it from the circuit.

So in an apartment building...that main line comes into like a big box that then distributes to each individual apartment? If so, does that mean any of the phone lines going to any of the other 50-60 units could effect your service? Thank you again. You have been a big help in me understanding how this works.

 

[Tombs]

So in an apartment building...that main line comes into like a big box that then distributes to each individual apartment? If so, does that mean any of the phone lines going to any of the other 50-60 units could effect your service? Thank you again. You have been a big help in me understanding how this works.

No, they should each be their own thing to each apartment.

I highly doubt the building is doing a party line in 2021 lol.

 

[Cameramonkey]

ATT will tell you that comcast does it, (sharing) which is correct. But I have never seen that shared cable bandwitdh suffer much like it theoretically can.

But in this case the old copper wires just cant deliver much speed. My neighborhood copper was just abandoned by ATT. They pulled fiber optic throughout and if you order new service, its only fiber. No more crappy copper lines. (I could only get 3mb/s at my house on those lines)


And of course I'm happy to help since I'm local. (and you've always taken care of me with your professional help)

 

[fullmetaljesus]

Also for what it's worth the screen thing seems odd. Typically both monitors plug into the computer not each other. That won't impact the internet just seems odd

 

[Cameramonkey]

Also for what it's worth the screen thing seems odd. Typically both monitors plug into the computer not each other. That won't impact the internet just seems odd

There are some brand new screen setups that do that. Kinda blew my mind.

 

[radar8756]

USB C / Thunderbolt are "daisy chain" connections for Monitors & other devices now