(Instructions courtesy of Former_ATT_TSR, uverseusers.com)

If your RG is not set correctly and you have a power outage (without a UPS/battery backup for the RG), it could be hours instead of minutes before your RG comes back online (meaning your TVs will be out of service, and possibly your Internet as well). Or if your RG gets replaced, make sure you or the tech does this procedure. Some RGs are not set even after installation. This exercise will save you lots of frustration and time.

The Gateway is able to connect using either RJ-11, Coax, or Ethernet. This can lead to some problems where it has a noisy connection and is still trying to automatically select which to connect to. It gives itself a timer of seemingly about 30 seconds to establish a connection across whichever cable it's trying to connect on. After that time has elapsed, if that connection isn't fully established, it will move on to the next cable type, thus cutting itself off mid-handshake with the rest of the AT&T network. This is solved by manually entering what type of cabling your RG is setup with so it looks only to that cable for the connection and won't stop trying until it's back online.

Instructions:  You'll need the System Password located on the sticker on the side of the RG. It's a random ten-digit number, but may also have been set to just 'password' by the install technician.

Look behind your RG. If you see a green telephone line plugged into the back of the RG, you have RJ-11 cabling.

If you see a cable plugged into the Ethernet jack labeled Broadband, you most likely have Fiber To The Premise, and are using Ethernet.

If you have neither, then your signal is coming in across the coax connection, which may also backfeed and give the video signal to your TVs. Just determine which type you have so we can go from there.

Normally if you have all Ethernet, you don't even have to worry about this because FTTP will typically not run into any sort of line noise issues or anything of the sort.

In your computer, visit any of these:

http://192.168.1.254/ 

http://home 

http://gateway.2wire.net/

Any of these should get you into your Management Display Console (MDC) for the Gateway (RG). //(note, you will want to keep these URLs handy for future reference).

Enter your password and it should let you have free roam of the directories.

In the upper left, underneath the Broadband Link category, choose Summary. This page will actually confirm what cable type you have, whether it be RJ-11/ Coax/Ethernet (note this page will only be filled in if you're currently online and operational).

Click Configure underneath the Broadband Link category and if you're RJ-11 or Coax, enter DSL into the Broadband Type box, then click Update over on the right. This should submit the setting and the page will reload, with DSL filled into the top box for you.

Now on the bottom box, choose either RJ-11 or Coax based on your situation, then click on Save. Voila, at this point you're done and you'll be much more resilient to your services going down on you.