I have been moved to CGNAT

[igordik]

Since late February, my router, which is connected to a Nokia ONT, has been assigned the IP address 100.84.xx.xx. This makes me believe that I have been moved to CGNAT (Carrier-Grade NAT). As a result, I am experiencing multiple issues, including:

• Inability to access my router and home network services from an external address

• Unstable DNS connections

Unfortunately, the customer service representative I spoke with was neither helpful nor knowledgeable—he did not understand the difference between public and private IP address ranges.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on how I can convince Telus to move me off CGNAT.

My plan: PureFibre Internet 250 (BC)
My router: pfSense, connected directly to a Nokia ONT

This setup has been working for the past five years without any changes on my end.

[asdfasdfasdf]

I'm having the same issue since yesterday. I spent 130 minutes on the phone with Telus support, I spoke with three folks from "loyalty" who shuffled me between three different tech support representatives. Nobody knew understood IP addressing or knew what CGNAT or DHCP was so it was impossible to explain the issue and how to resolve it. They kept telling me; they weren't trained on this, there was no information about it in their knowledge-base, nobody in their department can help me, and there is no person or department to escalate it to. It's wild to me that nobody in Telus's support staff know what NAT is.

What worked best was explaining that if I have a server, like a website or I'm hosting a video game to play with friends, they cannot connect to me because I don't have a public IP address for them to connect to that routes to my router.

They still weren't able to help me. But after spending an hour trying to explain NAT to three different support representatives, I found the above to be the most succinct "prompt" that convey the issue I was having.

I'm also on the 250 Fibre plan in BC. And I'm using the funny Nokia media converter thingy that it sounds like OP is using. I've had this equipment for like seven years and this is the first time Telus has put me on CGNAT.

I expected some resistance from them about how a public IP isn't guaranteed as part of the plan. I expected I'd just explain to them that the only reason I'm with Telus is because of Fiber and, if I'm behind NAT, all the benefits are lost so I'd have no reason to use Telus. It's incredibly straightforward. I had no idea that after being on the phone for more than two hours across six agents I wouldn't speak with a single human being who understood the issue or could do anything about it.

[asdfasdfasdf]

My guess is that none of the agents at Telus have the capacity to solve this. None of their residential support or sales can do anything.

It might be that their business services are set up differently and a business plan is the only way to avoid getting put under CGNAT with Telus. But my call was dropped while being transferred to someone from the business services. And when you first call in, they have an automated system that will SMS you a link to support.telus.com and then ask if you if you got the SMS, and if you read the SMS, and then if you clicked the link. Finally, if you are uncooperative enough it might transfer you to a department that isn't the one you're trying to reach. It's so frustrating.

[asdfasdfasdf]

I finally got through to business support, I explained my situation and she wanted to send me back to residential support. I explained to her I did not want to be transferred -- that I'm inquiring about business services because I have a problem with residential internet that might be solved by switching to a business plan and I needed to speak with someone from their business services to confirm that one way or the other. After hearing this, she abruptly transferred me to residential support.

[igordik]

Quick update - I was finally able to get a public IP. I guess I got lucky—the last agent I spoke with was a former Cisco employee, so he knew what CGNAT is. According to him, regular agents do not have the knowledge or access to this system, so he had to speak with a network technician over another phone line and convince him to make the change.

The process on Telus’s side involves two steps:

1. Removing CGNAT from the line

2. "Cleaning" the carrier-assigned IP address (whatever that means)

After that, they remotely restarted my Nokia ONT, and I was able to release and renew the DHCP lease on my WAN.

I also asked him to leave detailed instructions on my profile in case this happens again, and he promised to do so.

After more than 2.5 hours on the phone (combined from multiple sessions), I’m a happy customer—waiting for another provider to become available in my area. 🙂

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[asdfasdfasdf]

Hell yeah dude. Their support really seems like a lottery, unfortunately.

It makes sense that not all staff will be trained on everything. But at the very least I wish Telus ensured everyone can at least be able to figure out how to transfer you to someone who can. The first few people I spoke with were just like "Oh yeah we're not trained on this. Nobody is trained on this. I can't escalate this anywhere. I can only send you to our "loyalty" department." Even "loyalty" claimed they were sending me to talk to an expert, but the "expect" ended up as clueless as the rest. It's wild.

The guy who fixed this on my account, Ayush, also left notes for other support duders to look up. I'm not sure how it will help other customers with the same issue, but if I end up on NAT again maybe it'll help me speed run Telus's support hellscape. I should asked him for his personal phone number to post here to save time for everyone else who runs into this problem!

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@igordik wrote:

After more than 2.5 hours on the phone (combined from multiple sessions), I’m a happy customer—waiting for another provider to become available in my area. 🙂

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🤡

[asdfasdfasdf]

I finally got this this resolved by Ayush, the Telus tech support legend.

He understood private addressing, he understood port forwarding, and he understood it wasn't a dynamic vs static IP issue. I clarified it wasn't a NAT setting my router. That my router does NAT when it receives an IPv4 address from Telus and it leases private addresses to my devices on my network. That's normal. But on top of that, the address my router gets from Telus is "private", in the 100.84.xx.xx range, due to carrier grade NAT. He understood this double NAT stuff. Eventually he came back to me and said that he can disable "CGNAT" and after about twenty minutes later I reset my router and it got a public IP lease.

I asked Ayush if someone else calls in with this issue, what they can say to the support to help them find what setting to change or whatever. He said something like:

"CGNAT to be removed from the main Telus box so once it is removed and refreshed from provisioning it will be a public address."

He said "The right term for this is CGNAT". He spoke the letters "C" "G" "Nat". (The way you would normally pronounce the abbreviation. As opposed to saying "Carrier Grade NAT". Maybe if they search for that in their internal stuff doesn't show anything but "CGNAT" does? I have no idea.)

I'm not sure how much that will help as it seems like their support in general doesn't know how to direct you to someone who knows how to solve your issue.

Maybe the lady from the business support was doing me a favour by not hearing me out and just forwarding me. Maybe in her mind she thought "This guy has problems, we've tortured him enough by bouncing him around to every call center we have. We'll let him through to Ayush."

Good luck to anybody else having to navigate the cosmic horror of Telus's support labyrinth. There is an Ayush out there for all of us if you believe.