Replacement for AT&T Arris BGW210-700?

[goolieman]

We have FX1 service with Sonic. Tired of the 9.50 rental fee.

I assume I can purchase my own BGW210 on Amazon etc (and have it paid off in less than a year relative to the $9.50 monthly rental), or maybe go with something else entirely.

If anyone has good experience with anything, I'd love a recommendation. The BGW210-700 seems fine. Just curious what those of you who own their own routers for Fusion X1 are doing.

Thanks!!

--Adam

[briancw]

Hi goolieman,

It is actually not possible to replace the AT&T BGW210 which they have installed for your service. AT&T requires that their equipment be the first device directly connected to the AT&T network. They'll not let any other device take that role. However, all is not lost. You can still use your own equipment. There is an important detail for the BGW210 if you are going to use a 3rd party router and that is that you'll need to configure the BGW210 for IP Passthrough; which we have detailed here:How to configure your AT&T modem for use with a 3rd party router

Sadly, the 9.50 and associated rental equipment cannot be removed in this case. However it is possible to use your own router if you so please with the above method.

[bubba198]

At the risk of being labeled as the black sheep here lol it depends on the level of geekery you're willing to undertake, BGW210-700 can be replaced, of course but it does take some work, at&t uses certificate authentication on the payload vlan so one must extract the certificate out of BGW210-700 and implant it into whatever replacement box they wish, that's a lot of work compared to the bridge option. AT&T's architecture decision, imho is inferior to Sonic's and it has to do how they chose to deliver the voice piece. Sonic does that at ONT while at&t does it at the router hence the need to make sure nobody can kick their router off.. I think Sonic did their homework well, many U.S. GPON deployments follow the same principle - voice at ONT so good work guys! Keep it simple and of course - those on Sonic's native GPON plant are one notch above the re-sale customers LOL that's how it should be!

[kintobor]

I'd be interested in going through the hassle of replacing the AT&T equipment even if it doesn't get rid of the fee. The BGW210 is just a terrible device, it's quadruple the size of my more capable router that I am currently using with IP Passthrough and will occasionally require setting up from scratch when someone makes the mistake of disconnecting it from power briefly like I did earlier today (which seems to have triggered an update and disabled IP Passthrough). All I want is a dumb modem.

> one must extract the certificate out of BGW210-700 and implant it into whatever replacement box they wish

How would someone go about doing this?

[kintobor]

I can't do this as a DSL customer, but one option for fiber users that doesn't involve rooting is using an EAP proxy:

https://pyther.net/2020/05/03/bypass-at ... enwrt.html

This is rather involved but it has some advantages over IP Passthrough on the BGW, which isn't a true "bridge" mode.