BGW320/AirTies Mesh Network for ATT Fiber?

Internet access discussion, including Fusion, IP Broadband, and Gigabit Fiber!
10 posts Page 1 of 1
by chris.w » Tue Jun 07, 2022 11:45 am
A friend is thinking of ordering AT&T fiber for her home, either resold through Sonic or directly from AT&T. She’d like to use the AT&T-provided gateway and their optional smart extenders to create a mesh network with Ethernet backhaul (her house is wired for Ethernet), similar to what’s suggested here by js9erfan.

My questions are the following:

a) Does anyone out there know whether AT&T is currently installing the Arris BGW320 gateway and the AirTies 4971 extender? If not, what hardware do they currently use?

b) Has anyone had experience with this or a similar setup?

c) If so, do you have any words of wisdom/encouragement/caution to offer on the subject, based on your experience?

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.

Chris
by syntaxsid1 » Wed Jun 08, 2022 4:01 pm
Hello!

The equipment AT&T provides our customers does vary. The Arris BGW320 is one of the more common ones installed in the setup yes. Our tech support reps do have experience in setting up mesh networks. In fact, we do have our own mesh setup that we can provide you powered by eero. If you need assistance setting up any of this, our staff is here 7 days a week from 8am to 10pm to help you get the right initial setup. We hope to hear from you soon. Have a great day!


Jeff - CES
Jeff M. with Community Escalations @ Sonic
by chris.w » Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:10 am
Thanks. My friend definitely plans to check in with Sonic technical support.

As I understand, implementing an Eero mesh network would require putting the AT&T-provided gateway into pass-through mode, installing an Eero gateway behind it, then adding satellite Eero units to create the mesh network. Rather than doing that, she’s hoping to build the network around the Arris (AT&T) gateway itself, since she’d be stuck with it anyway.

AT&T offers rental satellite units from AirTies that appear to do the job. Are these also available to Fusion IBPP-F customers? Has anyone used this configuration, and if so, what’s been their experience?
by ngufra » Thu Jun 09, 2022 10:22 am
>mesh network with Ethernet backhaul

How is that a mesh? It looks more like multiple access points on the same switch.
The interesting part is using a single SSID and managing the handover so clients switch from access point transparently.
by chris.w » Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:42 pm
ngufra wrote:How is that a mesh? It looks more like multiple access points on the same switch.
The interesting part is using a single SSID and managing the handover so clients switch from access point transparently.
I might be a little loose with my terminology, but as you note, it claims to use a single SSID and to manage the handoff between access points, and that’s really what my friend is after. The AirTies satellites don’t require Ethernet backhaul, but the cabling is already in place, so why not?

I’m mostly interested in what sort of performance it provides in real life (coverage, handoffs, other issues) and whether it’s available to Fusion customers with AT&T fiber.
by ngufra » Thu Jun 09, 2022 4:14 pm
I have been using Engenius wifi access points.

They can be powered with a small power adapter or with POE, so only one wire goes to the device.
They look like smoke detectors and the LED can be turned off if desired.
They can be managed locally with a web interface, through a phone app, and some with cloud management.
You can set multiple SSID per access point.
It supports band steering (to push users from 2.4GHz to the 5GHz band if the client supports it), client isolation, VLAN isolation, traffic shaping (separate TX and RX max bandwidth), block and allow listing by MAC address, wide and extrawide channel width, fast roaming (with adjustable threshold), various authentication including radius.

You can usually score some for fairly cheap on ebay.

If you don't need mesh and have whole house wiring already installed this type of product may work well for you.
by js9erfan » Thu Jun 09, 2022 9:34 pm
chris.w wrote:Thanks. My friend definitely plans to check in with Sonic technical support.

As I understand, implementing an Eero mesh network would require putting the AT&T-provided gateway into pass-through mode, installing an Eero gateway behind it, then adding satellite Eero units to create the mesh network. Rather than doing that, she’s hoping to build the network around the Arris (AT&T) gateway itself, since she’d be stuck with it anyway.
If your friend wants to utilize an ATT gateway that’s compatible with those AirTies the question is are those extenders even available on Sonic’s resold ATT service? If not, then it would seem direct ATT service might be the best option as much as I hate to say that… ATT (I assume) would provide a gateway compatible with the AirTies should she decide to add them. As you mentioned they support ethernet backhaul and per ATT’s site look very simple to configure and deploy using their Smart Home Manager mobile app. And if privacy with ATT is a concern she could always use a VPN service.

That said I have never used those AirTies and have no idea how they perform nor what the rental costs are. Personally, I prefer wired APs for performance, features, etc. but not everyone has the patience, desire or experience to set them up with proper coverage, overlap, etc. Mesh kits are much more plug-n-play in that regard with less user management so there's that too.
by chris.w » Sat Jun 11, 2022 6:53 pm
@ngufra and js9erfan Thanks for your suggestions and insights.
ngufra wrote:I have been using Engenius wifi access points.
.
.
.
If you don't need mesh and have whole house wiring already installed this type of product may work well for you.
These look like a steeper climb up the learning curve than what she’s interested in right now, but she may want to look into them in the future. Speaking for myself, I definitely plan to investigate them when I get around to replacing my router hardware with something more modern (currently, Apple AirPort Extreme on native Sonic fiber). Thanks for the suggestion.
js9erfan wrote:If your friend wants to utilize an ATT gateway that’s compatible with those AirTies the question is are those extenders even available on Sonic’s resold ATT service?
After more investigation, I suspect the answer is no. If they were available to Sonic customers, I’d expect them to come up in discussion in the Access forums, but the only prior reference I find is this, a Sonic FTTN customer who purchased an older AirTies extender from ATT in 2018.
js9erfan wrote: If not, then it would seem direct ATT service might be the best option as much as I hate to say that… ATT (I assume) would provide a gateway compatible with the AirTies should she decide to add them. As you mentioned they support ethernet backhaul and per ATT’s site look very simple to configure and deploy using their Smart Home Manager mobile app. And if privacy with ATT is a concern she could always use a VPN service.
I hate to agree, but yeah. I’m guessing that’s the route she’ll take. We’ll see how it works out.
by chris.w » Wed Jun 29, 2022 1:43 pm
As expected, my friend opted for direct ATT service. The vendor-supplied gateway (Arris BGW320) and two “smart extenders” (AirTies 4971, $10/mo) were installed last Friday. Now that we’ve had a chance to try them out, I thought I’d share my impressions.

The gateway/extender combo certainly behaves like a mesh network: a single login for access, automated handoff between units, wired or wireless backhaul between units, including daisy chaining from one extender to the other. The extenders come with two Ethernet ports which can support wired backhaul (including daisy chaining from one unit to the other) and/or connect to a nearby, wired device.

Installation was quick and easy, both to set up the gateway and to add the extenders. The gateway was installed on the first floor, with extenders on the second and third floors. The ATT installer wasn’t really interested in Ethernet backhaul, telling us that “Nobody connects them with Ethernet. It’s all WiFi. Wireless is the wave of the future” (i.e. “You’re living in the past, Boomer. Get with the program.”). We let him set them up that way, but made sure all units were positioned near data jacks. To be fair, the data rate after the install wasn’t bad, even on the third floor, especially compared to what my friend had before, but it wasn’t close to what she was paying for.

After the installer left, I plugged a laptop into an Ethernet jack on each device and saw that the connection speed at the extenders was well below the speed at the gateway, confirming my suspicions about wireless backhaul. I then “reconfigured” the network for Ethernet backhaul (literally just plugged the cables into the jacks—props to the designers for that one) and repeated the speed tests. This time, I got virtually identical speeds at the extenders and the gateway: >600 Mb/s up and down (on a 500 Mb/s plan). WiFi speeds were lower, of course, but still in the 300-400 Mb/s range, a big bump up from what we saw with wireless backhaul. My friend was happy with the result. She’s set for now, until native Sonic fiber comes to her corner of Contra Costa County.

FWIW—Sonic might want to consider offering AirTies extenders as an option to their Fusion IBPP-F (resold ATT fiber) customers. ATT already provides the BGW320 gateway as part of the package, and adding extenders would be a simpler (and probably less expensive) way to set up a simple mesh network than setting the gateway to pass-through mode and installing an Eero network behind it. Maybe Sonic and ATT could split the rental fee, or work out some other arrangement. Just a thought.
by js9erfan » Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:21 am
Right on, good to hear those AirTies worked out.
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