Do you have a complete list of features for a budget router?
Do you have a complete list of features for a budget router?
Another update. I spent a few hours trying to fix things, but even though the netgraph was working and everything seemed set, the gateway wasn’t talking to the ONT. I ran tcpdump on both ports and saw the EAPOL Start request coming from the gateway, but nothing from the ONT. The traffic was tagged correctly as VLAN 0, and I could ping the default gateway, yet I couldn’t reach anything outside. It looked like packets were being dropped by the ONT after authentication failed. I tried power cycling the gateway and checking logs, but the only visible thing was EAPOL Start sent to an unknown MAC that didn’t appear in my ARP table (not the ONT’s). From there, it vanished and never reached the ONT. After a long night of digging through the docs, I’m exhausted from staring at IPs, interface names, and MAC addresses. The troubleshooting guide helped a bit, but I need to dig deeper to find what’s blocking the connection. I hope it’s a simple fix I missed, though—even with a couple of more experienced folks, they couldn’t spot anything wrong. I’m starting to suspect the firmware update might have changed the authentication method, making this script ineffective. I’m also thinking about exploiting the AT&T gateway’s root access to grab its certificates, since I’ve heard a lot of talk about that lately.
It's clear we're not in agreement about this on the forum—it seems the discussion might be pushing boundaries. I don't understand why such complicated security measures are needed. I appreciate that in the UK, major providers use ONT as a substitute for traditional phone sockets, marking the end of their network setup. With competition from ISPs that aren't tied to infrastructure, things tend to be straightforward. Hopefully, they'll keep this approach and avoid the past when every provider had separate gateways and shared login details, which was much easier. My friend on AT&T in Texas recently changed his LAN IP range overnight, causing a conflict with my VPN connection. Now his IP overlapped, forcing me to adjust everything just to fix it. It's puzzling why this is being treated as their responsibility.
It’s enough to stop using AT&T for ISP or phone services going forward. I’ve moved to Verizon for my plan and it’s significantly improved. If I still face problems, I might have no other option but to set up the gateway in passthrough mode and use pfSense as a backup router. This approach probably won’t solve my connection issues, but with some adjustments, it could work.
He doesn't rely on anyone else since he views them as inferior. I don't recall who's available nearby, but it seems cable might be the best alternative—his AT&T only offers DSL. It's quite bold of you to attempt a workaround, but the gateway will likely stay red, indicating pfSense is managing the connection while technically disconnected. You might manage to bypass the first login, but if the gateway assumes full connectivity, it could become much more complicated. It's just annoying because the ONT should handle all initial checks, and this extra step feels unnecessary.
AT&T is transitioning to a gateway-only approach. Recent installations generally lack independent ONTs, according to my knowledge. The devices they offer seem compatible with all their services, likely because AT&T maintains a significant DSL customer base. They aim to streamline technical support operations.