AT&T Wi-Fi ACTUALLY fixed

Last night after I wrote the post our WiFi calling stopped working again for me. It was quite disappointing.

This morning We got maybe half a mile away from the house as I started to drive to the AT&T store yet again and I turned around. Each of the phones by themselves works just fine. In the AT&T store both of the phones were working just fine. Something else very well might be amiss.

So I got home and unplugged all of the Google WiFi access points that were around my house and I re-turned-on the Comcast router's WiFi. Both of the phones seemed to work for longer than they typically were working in the past.

Then I searched online for "AT&T WiFi Calling Google WiFi".

It turns out that this is a common problem with just the Google WiFi access points.

What the actual fuck?

Google has known about this for years but isn't doing anything to fix it. There are some theories that Google is trying to play by the letter of the law by following the various RFCs that specify the protocols in play. But even with that said, it doesn't explain why literally everything else works. The short version is that it doesn't handle port forwarding like everything else, especially with regards to IPsec and tunneling which is the technology that AT&T's implementation of WiFi calling uses.

The solution?

I went to Costco and picked up a Netgear Orbi system and replaced the Google stuff.

And it worked the first time around.

I'll have a longer post about the Orbi, but suffice to say that is seems to be better than the Google WiFi system in every possible way except the price. The price from Costco was $320 for three of the Orbi-s, one router and two satellites. The same three Google WiFi pucks come in at $250.

To save us from changing phone carriers and everything else I think this is worthwhile. The Google WiFi works fine in general, but it falls flat on its face for this use case.

Now to put the old system up on Craig's List.