How I Accidentally Speedran Getting Blocked from ATT Fiber (for an hour)
Here's a story for you all, I hope you enjoy my panic. A few weeks ago, I finally decided to pull the plug on an internet upgrade, and I was looking forward to getting 500 up and 500 down via ATT Fiber. The scheduling process was easy, and the day of install finally comes. The guy got here two hours early, and was very kind and communicative. Overall, the install went great.
I am by no means a network engineer. I went to engineering school for a few years, and never finished. I remain to this day a very techy person, and I love networking as I host my own server to serve tools and share my large storage pool with friends and family. I call myself a "network monkey," since I know enough to interact with most networking on some level. Because of this, I have a Unifi Dream Router 7 that I got recently. It has an SFP+ port on it, "perfect!" I thought to myself.
I plug it in, and... nothing. Ubiquiti Web interface cant see a single thing. I cut my losses and decide I'll just use the supplied modem in bridge mode. I switch the connection back to the ATT modem... and nothing? What the f*ck? I log into the ATT admin panel @ 192.168.1.254, and the entire broadband connection is down. Now the panic starts to set in.
After a few calls to the tech, restarts, and factory resets he recommended, I still had no connection. Luckily he's still in the area and swings back around. He tries installing a new modem, with no luck. It's now like 3:30 pm, and we started at 10 am. I really don't care since this is my fault, I'm just hopeful it'll get fixed at all after he's been down there for ~30 min. He goes back to the truck and calls his boss.
He comes back with the original modem for one last reset and test. His boss calls him back, and the tech says "She said she plugged the SFP+ adapter into her own router" and I just hear the single most exasperated sigh come through the other line. Turns out, the authentication credentials for ATT Fiber Modems lives on-device, not on the SFP+ module like many other providers. When my router tried to authenticate without those credentials, ATT's Network assumed it was a breach and blocked the entire service line.
The tech was a great support about it, and told me it was a learning moment even for him, since he's never seen this happen. Once it was back online, I thanked him profusely and promised to never touch the fiber line ever again, and everyone went home with a smile.