Uverse installation questions

[willmatt]

I am moving to a condominium I own and am considering having Uverse installed. I cannot find certain specifications related to Uverse hardware and would appreciate help from anyone that can provide the needed information.

The HOA includes Standard Basic Cable in the HOA maintenance fee. This prevents using the existing coaxial cable, with one exception, to distribute the signal from the RG to locations where I want to install STB's, if I want to continue to receive the Standard CATV service. HPNA is not compatible with digital cable because it uses the same frequency range which digital cable uses for the upstream return path. I want to continue to receive standard basic cable service because it includes certain channels that are not carried by AT&T.

When this building was constructed the builder ran the connection to the CATV outlets in a Daisey Chain configuration rather than a star configuration. I was told by the installer that installed my structured wiring cabinet that a previous resident must have rented a whole home DVR because the Tap Offs are approved for use with MoCA.

There are several CAT5E cables running from the structured wiring cabinet, two of which run to two other locations where I want to install STB's. There is one location in the apartment where a dedicated coaxial cable, not connected to the Daisey chain, which runs directly from the Structured wiring cabinet to an coaxial outlet where I want to install a third STB. It is believed that the dedicated cable was installed for a future to be installed cable modem.

1) Can the installer use the coaxial port on the RG to connect one STB via the dedicated coaxial cable and still use an Ethernet Port to connect the other STB's through an AT&T approved switch.

2) Can 3 set top boxes can be connected to one Ethernet Port on the RG if an AT&T approved Netgear GS108NA 8 Port Switch is used.

3) Can an MoCA adapter be connected at the point where the coaxial cable enters the apartment and the Ethernet Port on the same MoCA adapter be connected to an Ethernet Port on the RG, to provide a bridge to the coaxial cable. Additional MoCA adapters will be installed at locations where a coaxial connection is located but there is no CAT5 Jack, and an STB's is to be installed. Would there be any problem connecting three STB's via three MoCA adapters.

4) Since 1 coaxial cable will be used to connect one of the set top boxes to the coaxial port on the RG, if I connect an HPNA adapter with two Ethernet ports, to that dedicated coaxial cable through a splitter, can the Ethernet Port(S) on the HPNA adapter be used to connect to the other two Set Top Boxes via CAT5 cables?

 

[stevech]

U-verse. Just Say No.

Get a cable modem.

Believe me.
Been there, done that.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Uverse sucks dude read the reviews. My friend has it and is dying to get rid of it.

 

[Samir]

What you're trying to do is quite sophisticated, and in my experience in working with AT&T, there's no way they're going to get any of that right.

Better to either go with a different provider or be ready to handle the networking part of it yourself after they install a box. And once you have that down, you can order additional boxes and install them yourself.

 

[sm00thpapa]

Go with cable or FIOS if you can. U-verse is horrible.

 

[stevech]

Go with cable or FIOS if you can. U-verse is horrible.

And AT&T's outsourced customer billing and tech support is worse than the U-Verse product technology which is just silly-dumb.

 

[sm00thpapa]

U-verse talking about high speed internet and their highest is 18Mbps. LMAO!

 

[stevech]

A tiny percentage of U-Verse regions have fiber to the home.
For the vast majority....
There are VRADs distributed in neighborhoods in urban areas.
A VRAD is about 5 ft. tall, 2 ft. square and sits there burning kilowatts 24/7. It connects to a high speed back-end network service, perhaps via fiber.
The switching gear in the VRAD connects to each home through existing 30 year (or more) copper pair wire to the house. Same as you used for ages to get 4KHz plain old telephone.
U-Verse tries to push VDSL from the VRAD to the home over these copper lines. Most of which are in terrible condition along the route to the house.

They strive for 15-30Mbps down and a few hundred Kbps or so up. In this copper wire bandwidth, they try to push up to 3 HD TV streams, for 3 tuners/boxes in the home. To do that, they have to reduce the video quality with their own compression. In many cases the speed is far less, due to attenuation and cross-talk in the old wires. Especially in neighborhoods with underground wiring that has been flooded many times. Or in the green pedestals atop the ground near your home - that get hit with rain and sprinkler water.

Compare this copper pair strategy to cable TV. COMCAST, TimeWarner, et al, monopolies though they are, have a coaxial cable to you house. It has like 300 times the best-case 30Mbps capacity of the copper pair. The coax can pass about 1,000MHz, though TV uses a fraction of that for their 50 or so HD channels all sent simultaneously. U-verse tries to cope with their feeble low bandwidth by sending only 1-3 compressed HD streams.

Verizon FIOS is utopia today in multimedia / phone to the home. Fiber to the home. But FIOS exists only in new construction areas, and in some older areas where Verizon (and the ex-GTE users) have conduit in the ground that the fiber can go through with an easement from the City/County. This is a slow go, but in the end, Verizon will win, and wind up with a good customer base. That's Verizon's SOP - slow and steady.

AT&T started U-Verse to get into the TV business on the cheap - instead of building fiber to the home or even coax to the home. And that's the root cause. Their salesman tell prospective customers that U-Verse is fiber. Well, it is, to the VRAD that's probably 1,500 ft from your house - as the crow flies. In many undergrounded utilities neeighborhoods, the actual copper wire pair length for that 1,500 ft. is more like 2,500 ft due to the way it was trenched by the builders. This causes a no-service or slow data rate situation. Or too frequent loss of modem sync.

So U-Verse, IMO, is 98% marketing baloney.

 

[fistv]

U-verse talking about high speed internet and their highest is 18Mbps. LMAO!

Yea, Verizon in my area is the same, touting their 'high speed' internet over phone line. In a way it is, their old service was a 5600dialup, this is high speed adsl for sure from their point of view, imagine the increase from 56K to just under a meg. The sad part is the slic is on the corner of my property an acre away and that is fiber 12 miles back to the CO, they could offer VDSL to certain customers but they won't. As for FIOS, Verizon would never invest in the infrastructure in my area, too much underground to the houses and not a fast enough ROI, heck they won't even do it in the towns around me but they will fight in court any muni that tries to run their own infrastructure. We discussed it at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, we had verizon and cable reps at the next one telling us of the horrors of a muni run service. First time I ever saw the telco and cableco go in lock step... LOL

 

[azazel1024]

A tiny percentage of U-Verse regions have fiber to the home.
For the vast majority....
There are VRADs distributed in neighborhoods in urban areas.
A VRAD is about 5 ft. tall, 2 ft. square and sits there burning kilowatts 24/7. It connects to a high speed back-end network service, perhaps via fiber.
The switching gear in the VRAD connects to each home through existing 30 year (or more) copper pair wire to the house. Same as you used for ages to get 4KHz plain old telephone.
U-Verse tries to push VDSL from the VRAD to the home over these copper lines. Most of which are in terrible condition along the route to the house.

They strive for 15-30Mbps down and a few hundred Kbps or so up. In this copper wire bandwidth, they try to push up to 3 HD TV streams, for 3 tuners/boxes in the home. To do that, they have to reduce the video quality with their own compression. In many cases the speed is far less, due to attenuation and cross-talk in the old wires. Especially in neighborhoods with underground wiring that has been flooded many times. Or in the green pedestals atop the ground near your home - that get hit with rain and sprinkler water.

Compare this copper pair strategy to cable TV. COMCAST, TimeWarner, et al, monopolies though they are, have a coaxial cable to you house. It has like 300 times the best-case 30Mbps capacity of the copper pair. The coax can pass about 1,000MHz, though TV uses a fraction of that for their 50 or so HD channels all sent simultaneously. U-verse tries to cope with their feeble low bandwidth by sending only 1-3 compressed HD streams.

Verizon FIOS is utopia today in multimedia / phone to the home. Fiber to the home. But FIOS exists only in new construction areas, and in some older areas where Verizon (and the ex-GTE users) have conduit in the ground that the fiber can go through with an easement from the City/County. This is a slow go, but in the end, Verizon will win, and wind up with a good customer base. That's Verizon's SOP - slow and steady.

AT&T started U-Verse to get into the TV business on the cheap - instead of building fiber to the home or even coax to the home. And that's the root cause. Their salesman tell prospective customers that U-Verse is fiber. Well, it is, to the VRAD that's probably 1,500 ft from your house - as the crow flies. In many undergrounded utilities neeighborhoods, the actual copper wire pair length for that 1,500 ft. is more like 2,500 ft due to the way it was trenched by the builders. This causes a no-service or slow data rate situation. Or too frequent loss of modem sync.

So U-Verse, IMO, is 98% marketing baloney.

A fair amount of verizon if fiber on the pole. I can speak for experience as my neighborhood is fiber on the pole. No idea on their backhaul, but my neighborhoods is one of the last they feed in the rural direction before the they stopped their build out in my area. Supplies roughly 200 homes over a several square mile area with fiber on the pole.

They also mostly stopped a build out as a no-compete deal with other telecoms, that and they are trying to starve their wireline employees as that is the only portion of the company that is unionized. They are hoping to get the union crushed to reduce overhead and then they might work on build outs again.