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Comment by reaperman | Hacker News Reader

Yeah AT&T, being the #1 fiber provider in the USA, does not allow customers to supply their own fiber modem. You can put it in a sort of passthrough mode and use your own router though. But AT&T owns everything up to the ONT - and what exactly the "passthrough"/"bridge" mode does is not exactly fully verifiable.

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> what exactly the "passthrough"/"bridge" mode does is not exactly fully verifiable.

How much does this matter? If your own router gets WAN IP addresses, it can route and firewall everything behind it.

AT&T's IP passthrough isn't a true layer 2 bridge. It's a NAT hack that allows the same public IP(v4) address to be used by the ONT/router and your router.

As such, you're limited to the resources of the ONT/router. For example, the number of hardware-accelerated flows is limited (~8000 I believe? I can't find a source right now).

They don’t allow it, but you can work around it fairly easily. You have to order a programmable fiber sfp from AliExpress. ATT doesn’t enforce 802.1x auth of the hardware in my area any more so all I had to do was clone my modems serial number to the sfp.

Thank you. I have a bone to chew with AT&T about not following the spirit of the Television Viewer Protection Act (TVPA), the law prohibits TV and broadband providers from charging rental or lease fees for modems when "the provider has not provided the equipment to the consumer; or the consumer has returned the equipment to the provider."

If you can provide a link to one that works for 5Gbps (symmetric, obviously) service I’d be much obliged.

https://pon.wiki/guides/masquerade-as-the-att-inc-bgw320-500...

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