AT&T U-Verse Data Setup Convention

Thu Jul 30 19:18:32 UTC 2015

I have AT&T u-verse small business connection at my office with a  
static IP setup, and my experience matches with the AT&T tech said.   
We have a separate router behind the AT&T router.  The AT&T router is  
an Arris (former Motorola) NVG595.  Our router has a static IP out of  
our subnet and does NAT for the office network.

As far as I can tell, the u-verse supplied router cannot be replaced  
with something less sucky.  The problem is getting the 802.1x  
certificate needed to authenticate on the wan port.

I dislike AT&T's hardware as it has more limitations than just this,  
but some of those limitations can be worked around with an additional  
router downstream of it.

Quoting Keith Stokes <keiths at neilltech.com>:
> I’m wondering if some can share their experiences or maybe there’s  
> an AT&T person here who can confirm policy.
>
> I work for SaaS provider who requires a source IP to access our  
> system to businesses.
>
> Normally we tell the customer to request a “Static IP” from their  
> provider. That term makes sense to most ISPs.
>
> However, we’ve recently worked with an AT&T higher-up tech who told  
> us that every U-Verse modem is locked to an address even when set to  
> DHCP and will not change unless the unit is changed. Ordering a  
> “Static IP” from them means your devices will individually get  
> public addresses, which isn’t a requirement for us, isn’t quite as  
> easy to add multiple devices and costs our customers more money.
>
> Here are my questions:
>
> 1. Is it really accurate that the customer’s address is tied to the  
> modem/router?
>
> 2. For my curiosity, is this done through a DHCP reservation or is  
> there a hard coded entry somewhere?
>
> 3. Do all U-Verse modem/routers behave the same way? This particular  
> unit was a Motorola but the friends I’ve seen with U-Verse use a  
> Cisco unit.
>
> ---
>
> Keith Stokes
>
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