Microcell won't activate with Apple Airport Extreme Base Station

[squishyray]

I've had a microcell for several years and it worked pretty well.  It was connected via an Airport Express Base Station.

Months ago it abruptly stopped working.  All lights were green except the 3G light, which slowly flashed green.

After many calls to AT&T, and escalation to their engineering team, the verdict was my unit was faulty and I'd have to pay to replace it.

I was dubious but dropped the matter.  

This week a friend gave me a new-in-box microcell.  When I hooked it up it showed the same problem.  AT&T says they cannot see my device trying to activate.  It is clearly on my network (the ethernet light is on and my log files show it got an address from the DHCP server).

As an experiment last night I hooked the microcell up in "priority mode", plugging it in directly to my Road Runner cable modem.  Within minutes it activated.

Unfortunately in that configuration the rest of my network is unusable.  AT&T only provides the most minimal description of the device, I suspect they limit information to avoid confusing people, but since I don't know what services the device provides I cannot integrate it in my network in an upstream fashion.  For my purposes, I really need the microcell to be behind my AEBS router.

I have tried forwarding the ports listed in the manual directly to the microcell but it does not help.

With no diagnostic tools provided to me other than flashing lights and the AT&T support people unable to provide any diagnostics from their end I am at an impasse.

If anyone has encountered similar problems with AT&T + AEBS + Road Runner and found a solution I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks,

Brad

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

Could there have been a change on the RoadRunner side resulting in a "double NAT" if you go RR -> AEBS -> MicroCell? I have an AEBS setup in the nominal configuration, DSL gateway -> AEBS -> MicroCell, with port forwarding to a staic IP address (based on the MicroCell's MAC address) and it works just fine, even thru the ocassional AT&T middle-of-the-night updates.

[Peter 123]

Hello, I have a similar issue using my AT&T MicroCell with a new Apple Airport Extreme which I got to replace a different wireless router (Motorola Netopia 2247) which had failed. Generally the change over went smoothly (I used the same wireless network name and password as before) but the MicroCell would not connect ... the 3G light only would flash ... for hours. The Microcell had been working fine with the other router. 

My network has a DSL modem wired to Airport Extreme wired to MicroCell.

The Airport Extreme is set to give network addresses to devices on the network (DHCP) and to use NAT. This is a common but by no means the only way to configure an Airport Extreme (another way would be to operate it in "bridge" mode where another router on the network is doing DHCP).

  Edit > Advanced > DHCP and NAT

  - DHCP Reservation
    Description: AT&T Microcell
    Reserve by:  MAC address
    MAC address: ??:??:??:??:??:?? <-- Whatever ... on the Microcell label

    IPv4 address: 192.168.??.?? (use a number in the DHCP range e.g. 192.168.1.5)
  - Default Host: 192.168.??.?? (this is like a DMZ setting ... same number reserved above e.g. 192.168.1.5)

The DHCP reservation ensures that the MicroCell always has the same IP address.

The "Default Host" (mysterious term) appears to create an IP passthrough type situation for the MicroCell.

Hope this helps someone ... the few minutes it took to write this was nothing compared to the hours spent trying to get the MicroCell to work with the Airport Extreme.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

That's sort of how I have my AEBS setup as well. But I also do port forwarding:

AEBS Port Settings:

                                    DHCP is on

                                    TCP/UDP Ports:

                                                            123/UDP: NTP timing (NTP traffic)

                                                            443/TCP: HTTPS over TLS/SSL

                                                            4500/UDP: IPSec NAT Traversal

                                                            500/UDP: IPSec Phase 1

and I use the Apple assigned address for the MAC address: 10.x.x.x (which makes more sense to me).  I also made sure that my DSL gateway was not configured to do NAT (which it wasn't) because both devices can't do NAT or the MicroCell will never work.

[Chitown1060]

Hi, you write Extreme in the subject line but then mention you have an Express in the text.  If you have the older Express maybe there is something about it no longer supported for some reason?  I have the newest version Extreme that is a worst case being double Nat'd, and no specific port forwarding setup, working fine so far for 2 months with my Microcell connected to it.  I only noticed the 3g light blinking once so far, just last weekend when we had really bad weather here in Chicago - figured maybe the other end was down or something.  Are you filtering on specific MAC addresses?  Maybe try to turn that off and see if it works then?

My setup:  External Public IP<=>Internal Private IP(10.x)<=>2nd Internal IP(168.x)<=>Microcell