If you have or are going to get Verizon/Frontier or other ADSL service they will for some reason send you a Westell 7500 modem/router combo. These things really blow chunks. Most people seem to hate them and they just won’t work right… I was one of the lucky ones. Mine somewhat functioned and did not get 100c and melt into a puddle of plastic like many others do. The problem is that thing simply does not port forward at all… I can enter the rules just fine and they appear in the list, they just don’t do anything. Even with DMZ host set to the target PC no ports will open on this router at all. I tried every possible fix and work around and nothing. It seems to be a common problem with these plastic bricks. Instead of dealing with inept tech support people or waiting weeks to pay for another crappy modem I took matters into my own hands. I bought the ActionTec GT701D DSL Modem http://www.amazon.com/Actiontec-GT701D-Ethernet-Routing-Capabilities/dp/B001IYCUM8/ setting it up to work with my existing service was quick and painless. I then hooked my old Linksys WRT54G router to it and set it as the DMZ host in the modems settings, set up port forwarding on that and now all works fine. I have always been confused as to why ISPs almost always bundle the worst equipment with their services… In the early 2000’s I lived with room mates that had Verizon DSL service and they also had these awful little Westell DSL modems that got super hot and frequently dropped out when exposed to any amounts of traffic such as Eve Online or Kazaa… The moral of the story is avoid Westell if you can, and always have your own stuff handy.
As far as I know Verizon has always given specific routers (actiontec actually, well for fios anyway). When verizon started offering television with internet they forced us to use Coax rather then an Ethernet plug for our connection. Well those actiontec routers used to have serious problems with the nat table getting filled which would cause any new connections to fail immediately. (Mainly happened whenever someone was torrenting). Everytime we complained they use to just send us another router, their must be at least 3-4 actiontec routers still lying around my house.
Not really sure what this has to do with what your saying, but in my situation we didn’t have many choices on routers because we were forced to use coax (and still are, i think). Actually it sounds like your room mate had the same problem as I had with the nat table, but yeah. Sucks to be forced to use a specific router 
I pretty much had the same FIOS setup until a few months ago. It was Frontier “The same equipment and setup as Verizon but the area was sold off to Frontier” I had the Actiontec FIOS modem/router with the coax connection. Specifically the Actiontec MI424 WR Rev F. I believe I originally got it in June 2011. I never had the NAT issue or any other problems at all with it. I was able to update the firmware and customize it’s settings pretty nicely too. I still have that router I just can’t use FIOS anymore since I am moving out to the country; hence the need for the ADSL stuff. The service itself is pretty decent for DSL and about half the speed of my old FIOS service. Still not bad for being 50 miles away from the next major city…
Ahh man, i’ve been so spoiled by fios i don’t think i can ever change back lol. Yeah, our problem was fixed by 2011. I think it affected us from 2005 - 2009. For a little bit we used two routers to solve the nat problem, and bridge the routers. Don’t think a firmware update fixed my problem, but god I hated it when verizon would send someone over and fuck everything up and try to convince me it worked correctly. Eventually they sent us one that no longer had the problem (believe it was the one you stated, Rev F) The whole coax thing is definitely a real pain in the ass, but the routers can do pretty much everything except i think it doesn’t support vlan tagging. Oh and the lack of 5ghz wifi sucks too
Nice thread gentlemens.