Dumb Question about AT&T DSL & Routers

[Road Guy]

My parents have AT&T DSL for internet, I bought them a wireless router for christmas and they cant seem to get it to work. I havent gone over to check it out myself yet, but they said they called AT&T and they have to use an AT&T router to get it to work and that "off the shelf" products wont work.

I know its probably different in every area but for those of you that have AT&T do you have to buy/rent a router from AT&T to get wifi? that sounds increddibly stupid, but for AT&T probably true???

 

[mudpuppy]

Back in the day I had an off-the-shelf router with AT&T DSL. That was about 7 years ago though. I'm sure AT&T won't support a router they didn't sell you, but I think you should still get it to work.

 

[snickerd3]

I just set up my Linksys WRT54G router to connect to ATT/Yahoo DSL with help from this forum.

1) Keep the ATT modem configured as default (mine is Motorola 2210 and its default is to run PPOE on the modem itself). This is the way the Windows DSL account installation utiliity leaves it.

2) Set the router to "Automatic Configuration - DHCP"

3) Set the "Local IP Address" to anything but 192.168.1.*. You can use 192.168.2.1 and it works fine.

4) Save your router configuration changes.

5) Turn off modem, router and PC (unless you know your way around the ipconfig /release command.

6) Restart the modem and wait for the green light to go solid.

7) Restart the router and wait for it to come up.

8) Restart your PC. You should be good to go.

 

[snickerd3]

^ from a trobble shooting website about the same issue your folks are having. an ATT tech basically said the same thing mudpuppy just posted. They wont support anything but an ATT router.

 

[engineergurl]

I think we ran into this problem and ended up just getting the ATT modem with wireless built in... but I think it was because we have a whole network with printers and gaming systems and what nots and those were causing more of a headache then the cost was...

 

[Road Guy]

thanks snic, I will give that a try 1st!

 

[OSUguy98]

what snick said...

Most modems are also routers... so the easiest thing to do it what snick said, make your off-the-shelf router use a different subnet (192.168.X.Y, I'd use 2 or 3 for the X... could be anything you want up to 254... some routers default to 192.168.2.1 rather than 192.168.1.1, so just add 1 to whatever your modem/router is set to...)

One tip for any home network.... Use DCHP for all your PCs/laptops/etc, but use static IPs for your printers/etc... I usually set my router to give out DCHP IPs starting at 192.168.X.50... that way any printer or other device that needs drivers to refer to IP addresses,etc can be manually set to use 192.168.X.2 thru 192.168.X.49... makes troubleshooting printer drivers alot easier

 

[R2KBA]

I have ATT DSL (but of course you already know that ) and a Linksys router that I purchased, not from ATT . I log into the ATT DSL modem and select the "pass through" option, or whatever it is called. Basically I put my ATT login and password into my Linksys router which also handles the DHCP. The ATT DSL modem only acts as a modem. The login, firewall, NAT, etc is all done in the router. I also flashed my router with DD-WRT although that is not necessary. If you plan on running applicatons that require port forwarding, I believe you have to do it in this configuration, otherwise you will have a NAT nightmare. If not, you could probably use the other suggested configuration just fine.

ETA: I am not currently logged in at home, so maybe you didn't already know that...