Hi,
I’m working on soupping up a rural internet solution that my family friend has. The existing setup was a Netgear M1 with an AT&T Business Hotspot plan (basically a legacy unlimited data plan with slowdowns after 50GB). The antennas were small and flimsy, so I replaced them with much a better one. Signal and speed became much better!
However, video sites and CDN’s were still throttled due to AT&T’s “Video Management” feature (previously known as “Data Saver”). For those that are unaware, AT&T artificially throttles video stream speeds to a few megabits, but this can affect other websites as well. The feature is meant for smartphones, so I turned it off from the AT&T account. I waited a couple hours and restarted the Netgear, which solved the throttle issue.
However, the throttle started happening later last night. I restarted the router again assuming that the feature hadn’t fully turned off on AT&T’s side. It became unthrottled again. This morning, speeds throttled again. Has anyone else had this issue and will it hopefully stop doing this?
Thanks,
Luke
AT&T has 2 plans. The old one had video management and the new one doesn’t. When did they get it?
What you’re actually likely running into is the tower throttling users of higher bandwidth in order to not bog that entire tower down. At least that I’m aware of, there isn’t anything you can do about that.
Easiest way around this is to get a VPN
He got it about a year ago. It’s called “AT&T Business Unlimited Performance” on his account dashboard. He said the rep in an AT&T store suggested it for him. His data usage page for this device shows similar to what my phone’s would on my account. Especially the “AT&T may slow speeds after 50GB” part. But I know that in this area that 50GB slowdown never happens for me. That linked page also shows the “Video Management” setting I was talking about.
Nonetheless, it seems I am not having this throttle issue anymore. I assume the setting needed to propagate. I have been using fast.com (CDN speed test from Netflix) to test what AT&T does to the connection. Speedtest.net would show me what speeds I actually get. This is a fast.com speed test after two days without a router restart. It is now at the speed of what any other session gets.
It’s the default APN for the plan, I guess. This is what the account dashboard shows about the line; it looks like all data is funneled through the main APN but both are called hotspot. I have more info here
It seems I am not having this issue anymore, but I don’t think you would be far off considering that this plan “may slow after 50GB of usage”. However, in my experience of AT&T throttling for tower congestion, it throttles everything, not just CDN/video streams.
Until half the streaming sites complain you’re on a VPN and don’t let you watch.
I went this route, it’s a pain in the ass to actually get working properly
Ok well that’s good news. But it does sound like they have a voice plan and not a true wireless broadband plan.
No other way to really get around this and when a site doesn’t allow me to watch the show i have other ways to get it unthrottled thanks to my VPN
Yes, I think you might be right there. I assume that because of this specific plan, as far as AT&T’s tower infrastructure is concerned, this device is a standard 4G LTE smartphone
Right, it is the only way. I was just clarifying it’s not as easy as turning a vpn on most the time. Some services will act like it’s working, but then remove certain shows and movies.
Hulu is the absolute worst, complains of there’s even a hint of a vpn
Yeah. You may want to try switching to try it for a month. You can always go back tot get voice plan or one similar.