If you're only subscribed to Internet broadband via U-Verse, and you aren't paying for the television part of the package, you shouldn't have any special issues with it.
What I was talking about was the fact that AT&T U-Verse streams their television content as though it was additional Internet traffic, over a specific range of IP addresses. Unlike your typical "unicast" type of TCP/IP traffic though, their IPTV data is "multicast" - meaning it doesn't have a specific "destination" IP address that's supposed to receive it. Multicast traffic flows to ALL devices capable of listening on your network. That way, any and all set-top boxes you have attached to your network will receive the traffic, and decrypt the encrypted content according to the paid TV subscription you've got, allowing you to watch your channels. (When you press the arrow buttons on your U-Verse remote or on the front of one of the boxes to change the station, you're really telling it to decode the next higher or lower IP address in the range it knows contains their TV streams.)
Now, the thing is, U-Verse can be wired up two different ways. They support the coaxial cable that cable TV providers typically use, to connect the set-top boxes to the main "residential gateway" modem, AND they support CAT5e ethernet for those connections. With the installation they did at my house, they used ethernet for everything. (I don't know for sure, but I suspect that when the coaxial wiring is used, it may keep all of that multicast IPTV traffic limited to the coaxial wires? That would be nice, if they didn't re-broadcast all that traffic over your Internet-connected devices using the 4-port switch on the back of the gateway.... but it would have the downside that you couldn't add more set-top boxes anywhere on your home network, just by plugging them into an available ethernet port someplace.)
Anyway -- when everything's going over ethernet, you have to find some way to filter out that multicast IPTV traffic so it only flows to actual set-top boxes plugged into your LAN, and not to all your computers or networked printers. Otherwise, you'll see really poor performance copying large files over your network and things like streaming Internet video will be unreliable.
Thanks for the post, (detailed) appreciate it.
Called Netflix this weekend, I am getting between .30mb and .98mb stream speeds. She told me it requires a min of 3.0 mb.
I'm fricken lost on this one. I have 24mb package down w/3 up. Tests confirm on my devices I get about 18-21 down and consistent 2.75 up. iStumbler shows my appletv as having a very week signal, and very slow data transfer speeds on my 5GZ band; yet it sits about 15 feet in line of site from my apple router.
I simply cannot make sense of it. Even changing my DNS servers on apple tv to OPEN DNS settings matters not. Honestly, I am tired of trying to rework my entire home setup (which btw functions flawlessly) just to get netflix to stream on this device.
Lastly, PS3 and a Panasonic plasma stream perfectly- without a hitch. They of course are in the media room, not my living room.