Port Forwarding Nighthawk M6

Setting up Port Forwarding on the Nighthawk on the AT&T Wireless network is a little bit more involved (behind the scenes) than your normal run-of-the-mill port forwarding of a home internet gateway.  Normally hotspots such as the nighthawk are assigned a WAN IP that is in AT&T's CGNAT space ( you might want to check to see what the WAN IP is of your Nighthawk ).  This would make port forwarding useless, because there is no way for anyone to route over the Internet to a specific IP in the AT&T CG NAT space.  However, I understand that setting up Port Forwarding on the Nighthawk is supposed to invoke a process to have an actual Public Address allocated to the Nighthawk while it is online.  

Since you seem to have tested this using a public Port Forwarding tester, you seem to have a Public IP address that you think should work.  How did you obtain this IP?  Have you verified that this IP is fairly stable?

On the pc logged into the M6, I went to a public IP page to check what it says.  Also, on the network page of the router it shows a different address that is not part of the lan nor the same as the public IP page.  I tried both, but neither IP goes to the local PC.

Would I be better to use IP Passthrough and a normal, run of the mill router from that point?

Hi there, we understand the importance of your concern. We’re here to help.

If you’re using Nighthawk M6 purchased from AT&T, then port forwarding isn't permitted since it doesn't have its own Public Address to direct traffic through. Only a wireless internet router purchased through the manufacturer could.
Please refer to your device manufacturer’s documentation.

Feel free to get back to us if you have any questions.

Thank you for contacting Community & Forums,
Catherine, AT&T Community Specialist. 

When you say 'Purchased through the manufacturer' you mean AT&T?  or Netgear?

Hi there, thank you for contacting Community & Forums, we’re here for you.
"Purchased through the manufacturer" refers to Netgear.
Hope this answered your question.
Please get back to us if you have any concerns.

Catherine, AT&T Community Specialist. 

The AT&T and NetGear versions of the manual for the M6/M6 Pro are below.  None of them talk about Port Forwarding:

https://www.att.com/idpassets/images/support/device-support/Piranha-and-Aku-User-Guide-final-4-4-2022.pdf

https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/MR6500/MR6500_MR6110_UM_EN.pdf

I'm not following Catherine's logic on where you purchase your M6 mattering at all.  I'd like to think she knows more than just having copied and pasted an eight-month-old Reddit post that contains that information, but... I don't.

Hello,

I have the Netgear Nighthawk M6110 with a business account and I cannot open certain ports to utilize Total Lead Domination software to receive incoming phone calls for my business. I have tried going through the port forwarding process but it doesn't seem to work. I have the actual port numbers the software uses with AT & T.

Is there a work around for this issue?

I have tried the steps to add ports to utilize my dialer platform but to no avail.

I do have the AT&T port numbers that are used on the platform.