AT&T ActiveArmor keeps activating itself

Hey everyone,

first post here. I am a fairly new AT&T customer with AT&T Internet 1000 (Fiber) which so far had worked just fine, until a few days ago. It seems that ActiveArmor is tanking my speeds heavily (from 1300mbit down and up to 130mbit down and 200mbit up).

Now using a VPN (NordVPN) I get my normal speeds, which shows me that there is an issue with that Add-on. Now, when I deactivate it, it doesn’t do anything, and only for the first 5 minutes after a gateway restart I have normal speeds. Then it shows in the Smart Home Manager app again, that it is activated.

A customer service engineer deactivated it on the gateway itself remotely through his interface, I had normal speeds for 15 to 20 minutes, and it activated itself again.

Now during my last call with AT&T customer support, they tell me it is a known issue that this Add-On keeps activating itself again automatically and they are working on it.

Y’all have any ideas what else I could do? I don’t want to rely on a VPN the whole time, which is not always 100% stable.

Search here on this sub for Active Armor and you’ll see a recent trend where it gets reenabled after a firmware update. ATT has been trying to roll out a new FW version, and we’re seeing reports here of AA being the cause of trouble for several, same story as yours. I’d keep an eye on things over the next several weeks, check your firmware versions periodically for an update.

Had the same issue but after I had the chatbot deactivate it everything went back to normal.

This worked for me and is holding:

In the Smart Home Manager app, open a chat window.

Enter “disable activearmor”. Confirm when prompted.

My full plan speed came back and has been uninterrupted for 36 hours so far.

Found this in another post on this sub!

Now, when I deactivate it, it doesn’t do anything, and only for the first 5 minutes after a gateway restart I have normal speeds. Then it shows in the Smart Home Manager app again, that it is activated.

Are you using the SHM app on an Android or iOS device to disable ActiveArmor and then restarting your Gateway? They removed the management of ActiveArmor from the AT&T Support site so not much is left to try.

Have you tried a Factory Reset by holding the Red reset button for longer than 10 seconds and the Gateway restarting?

Do you happen to have any P2P apps running? NAT exhaustion can cause issues as well, in addition to Active Armor issues.

Did you ever find a solution to the issues you reported here? Thanks!!

I just checked and i am back to 150mbs. but the virtual assistant says it is already disabled? wtf? rebooted gateway and UDM. no joy

The OP is not having the issue of the Firmware update resetting their Active Armor selection.

The chatbot on the website or integrated into the app?

I will give that a try!

Android and yeah I have tried that, to no avail, sadly :frowning:

Nope, nothing of the likes! Just regular PC usage, meaning Steam running and Netflix/YouTube and Discord. Even if I don’t do anything other than a speedtest, I have that issue.

Well, I ended up being in the hotline with AT&T support based in Eastern Europe who were of great help, because they did in fact try to remotely deactivate that ActiveArmor and they reported that AT&T knew about the issue of ActiveArmor reactivating and that their R&D folks are working on it. I assume this has been fixed ever since then, because my issues have been gone for a while now.

Well you kind of left your UDM out in your earlier posts. So your PC is connected to your UDM and is your UDM in IP Passthrough mode on the BGW320?

When you get the 150 Mbps what side are you using to report your Sptesting to and what does the Diagnostic SpeedTest show on the BGW320?

You can start it from SHM and it will run on your BGW320 or you can start it from your BGW320 Admin Diagnostics page: http://192.168.1.254/cgi-bin/speed.ha

In the top right corner of the Smart Home Manager app.

Someone else just reported that their RG showed Active Armor was off, but they turned it on (waited a few mins) then turned it back off just to make sure it was off. And that fixed their issues.

Something weird is happening with this new firmware rollout with regards to AA.

Only other long shot I can think of is to disable IPv6. Especially if Active Armor is showing not active. Can you search “what is my ip address?” and see when AA is on vs off? The source IP the website sees will likely change.

Please let us know if you figure this one out.

Thanks for the update!

Apologies! My entire win 11 computer crashed. Rebuilding it now. Will report after I’m up.