NAT Loopback on 5268AC

After several phone calls, pages of account notes, several att reps telling me I have to pay for tech connect (pay to fix att's FW bug!?) because they have no skills or idea how to help, and now a case ID ([edited for privacy]) to resolve with again rep with not a clue what NAT loop back or Hairpinning even is, this will be my last post. Bocaboy is right, att has no care to fix this. Now if I can just get att to take back this 5268, I'll rid my self of these att created headaches and cancel this poor attempt at internet service. So long guys and sincerely hope att will eventually get their act together and fix their self-created (200 day old) issue they have chosen to ignore. Until then, they will never get my money!

Good luck, Hcomms. I hope you find the answer with a new ISP!

AT&T just offered to update my old 3801 gateway... I've been a faithful User back in the pacbell days. I got my new gateway the other day and it was so easy to install... Now I have the 5286 AC-FXN and like many of you are very dissapointed that it does not support NAT loopback and therefore my security cameras can no longer be viewed when I am connected to the internet via my local LAN.. I know they are going to claim it is a security issue and tell you to use DZM option.  I'm tired that AT&T's continually fall short of reaching the top rung of the ladder.  I don't even see that they are addressing the issue.

Att, you are loosing customers on this issue. I and two others in my neighborhood cancelled att this past month. That's now three people I personally know you've lost and many others on here wanting to cancel given att refuses to address this issue.[Per Guidelines:  Keep it Relevant and Appropriate]. Is there a manager or someone at att who can do something about this?

 Well, this is a revoltin' development. AT&T solicited ME to "upgrade" my 18Mbps internet service to 24Mbps, which I (regrettably) agreed to. As part of the "upgrade", they swapped my old 2Wire model/RG for a new Pace 5268AC, which has two problems: 1) It drops WiFi periodically. 2) I can no longer access my internal email server using my external IP address. This had always worked fine with the 2Wire (for 4 years), but stopped working with the 5268AC. This is a royal pain, because mobile devices (like an iPhone or iPad) cannot be configured with the external IP address of the mail server because that will only work when outside my home network; when inside, it fails, because the 5268AC does not support NAT loopback. Argggggh!

I could (hopefully) resolve the first problem (dropping WiFi) by replacing the (defective) modem. But based on this thread, there's no hope for the second problem; I'm screwed. So, II'll be calling AT&T to tell them I either want this fixed (not likely) or put me back on my former 18Mbps service with a 2Wire modem.

NAT Loopback (aka "hairpinning" or NAT Reflection) is a "feature" of some (not all) routers that when the external IP (WAN) address of the network is referenced (from the client side of the router), the router recognizes this as a "special case" and loops the request back into the local network, through the firewall. This feature allows one to have a server (for instance) in their local network, and reference that server by the external IP address (or domain name) of the WAN network.

It turns out that I had (lying around) an ASUS RT-N56U dual-band wireless router. I hooked its WAN input to AT&T's Router and put the AT&T Router in "DMZ-Plus" mode. In this mode, the AT&T Router just forwards all inbound traffic from the external network to the attached device (in this case, my ASUS Router). But here's the key: The WAN address provided to the ASUS by the AT&T is the real external WAN address of the network. So the ASUS can recognize attempts to reach this address from inside my local network, and perform its NAT Loopback function, and everything works as desired. 

So, the AT&T is in the loop, but all it's doing is serving as a modem. The real work is all being done by my ASUS Router. This solves both of my problems: Since the ASUS provides WiFi (on both 2.4 and 5 GHz, I don't have to worry about the AT&T Router dropping the WiFi -- it's turned off. And, the ASUS handles the all-important NAT Loopback function, so everything works, now.

Thanks to everyone who posted here. I recently received a Pace 5268AC from AT&T and I didn't realize that the sudden issue I had with accessing my personal web site via my domain name was because of this gateway. After reading these posts, I turned off the WiFi on my mobile phone so I would be on my mobile phone's network and not my LAN and I tried accessing my site again using my domain name and it worked!! All the hours I spent trying to resolve what I thought was a problem with my IIS configuration was a complete waste of time – there was never anything wrong with my IIS configuration. I contacted AT&T support today and they confirmed that the Pace 5268AC does not support NAT loop back. I requested a different gateway that still supports 802.11 A/C at 5.0GHz AND NAT loop back and they agreed to send me a gateway that’ll do that. In fact, they are overnighting it so I’ll have it tomorrow. If not for this forum and these posts, I probably would have never figured out the real cause of the problem. I kept thinking I had something wrong in IIS – even though I could access my site using just the local IP address. I realize I could have setup another router to circumvent the issue, but right now I don’t own a router that supports the A/C mode, only N – and N never worked very well for me unless the router was RIGHT next to the PC that was also using N. I felt I shouldn’t have to purchase my own router that supports A/C and NAT loop back. I had both A/C and NAT loop back with AT&T prior to them switching me to the Pace 5268AC – so I knew they already have a solution to my problem that wouldn’t cost me anything.

I was able to get AT&T to ship me another gateway that suppors both NAT loop back and 802.11 A/C 5.0GHz. - but then I'm only at 18mbps with no option of upgrading to higher speeds because they don't offer high speeds in this area.