Getting the cable modem to work

This issue has been irritating me for a while and I wonder if anyone has
any guidance. I have helped some friends set up their wireless routers.
Invariably, as soon as I unplug the cable modem from their computer and
into the router, and the modem into the router, they lose the Internet. I
know you have to wait a few seconds for the modem to get a new IP address
-- I have heard 15 seconds, one minute, 5 minutes, and up to an hour or
more as the correct wait period.

Anyway, I've always had good luck with a Belkin Pre-N router that seems to
work right away every time, usually after 15 seconds of having everythign
powered down, turning on the modem, waiting 10 seocnds or so, and then
powering on the router. With a Buffalo SRG router, these steps never
worked. I had to clone the IP address of one hard-wired computer before
the router would let anyone else connect. But last week with a Linksys
WGT624, none of those tricks worked. I had my friend call the company
figuring maybe the modem had to be re-provisioned, but I'm not sure why
it would need that. I cloned the IP address. And now, I've left it off for
an hour. None of these things have worked.

Anyone know the fool-proof method for getting this to work?

- JB

JB wrote:

> This issue has been irritating me for a while and I wonder if anyone has
> any guidance. I have helped some friends set up their wireless routers.
> Invariably, as soon as I unplug the cable modem from their computer and
> into the router, and the modem into the router, they lose the Internet. I
> know you have to wait a few seconds for the modem to get a new IP address
> -- I have heard 15 seconds, one minute, 5 minutes, and up to an hour or
> more as the correct wait period.
>
> Anyway, I've always had good luck with a Belkin Pre-N router that seems to
> work right away every time, usually after 15 seconds of having everythign
> powered down, turning on the modem, waiting 10 seocnds or so, and then
> powering on the router. With a Buffalo SRG router, these steps never
> worked. I had to clone the IP address of one hard-wired computer before
> the router would let anyone else connect. But last week with a Linksys
> WGT624, none of those tricks worked. I had my friend call the company
> figuring maybe the modem had to be re-provisioned, but I'm not sure why
> it would need that. I cloned the IP address. And now, I've left it off for
> an hour. None of these things have worked.
>
> Anyone know the fool-proof method for getting this to work?
>
> - JB

So, what you're saying is that you cloned a MAC into the router and when you
did that everything worked. Why don't you give the ISP the MAC of the
router and have the ISP provision the MAC of the router instead of using a
wire NIC's MAC and cloning it as you should be able to do that? You can
then eliminate that MAC issue from the scene period I would think. You may
want to check the MAC of the modem too and see if it is still viable for
the account with the ISP.

Duane

On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:41:31 -0500, JB <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>This issue has been irritating me for a while and I wonder if anyone has
>any guidance. I have helped some friends set up their wireless routers.
>Invariably, as soon as I unplug the cable modem from their computer and
>into the router, and the modem into the router, they lose the Internet. I
>know you have to wait a few seconds for the modem to get a new IP address
>-- I have heard 15 seconds, one minute, 5 minutes, and up to an hour or
>more as the correct wait period.
>
>Anyway, I've always had good luck with a Belkin Pre-N router that seems to
>work right away every time, usually after 15 seconds of having everythign
>powered down, turning on the modem, waiting 10 seocnds or so, and then
>powering on the router. With a Buffalo SRG router, these steps never
>worked. I had to clone the IP address of one hard-wired computer before
>the router would let anyone else connect. But last week with a Linksys
>WGT624, none of those tricks worked. I had my friend call the company
>figuring maybe the modem had to be re-provisioned, but I'm not sure why
>it would need that. I cloned the IP address. And now, I've left it off for
>an hour. None of these things have worked.
>
>Anyone know the fool-proof method for getting this to work?
>
>- JB

I irriates the hell out of me, too. What makes me maddest was
that I was told (by Time-Warner, who was my ISP at that time) that
there was no need. The cablemodem would take whatever MAC address
your equipment gave it.

Not true. Once it reads the MAC address, it will only accept
requests from that MAC address until the cablemodem loses its memory.

To do that, power down the cablemodem for thirty seconds (or
sixty seconds to be sure) that the MAC address is dropped from the
cablemodem's memory.

Once you do that, power the cablemodem back up. It should
take it.

I first solved the problem the same way you did. I have a
Cisco 831 SOHO router. I cloned the MAC address of the Ethernet card
in my PC to the router (there is a command in Cisco routers that allow
you to change the MAC address). It worked perfectly. I added '1' to
the MAC address. It stopped working. I subtracted '1' from that
original MAC address. It still didn't work. So I put the address of
that Ethernet card back into the port on the router. It worked.

I called back and shamed them that they didn't know that. I
was teaching a course in Telecom at the local technical college in
that area at the time. I had a Time-Warner customer support person in
my class. I discussed it with her and she agreed with me that the
cablemodems do discriminate by MAC address and that you need to power
down the cablemodem for at least thirty seconds to blow the MAC
address out of the memory.

Try it. You'll like it.

I'm on Mediacom here at my new location in NC. One of the
first things they told me on the phone (I had a VOIP device directly
connected to the cablemodem before I brought my computers and my other
networking devices to the house) was that I should power down the
cablemodem for thirty seconds before it would accept the MAC address
on my router's Ethernet port. I didn't even ask them about it and
they made sure I knew.

My only problems with Mediacom so far are that their customer
service reps don't seem to know what Usenet is (they don't recognize
the terms 'Usenet', 'NNTP', or 'News Server' when I try to talk to
them about it). One of them told me they don't support it at all.
But their Web site says their news server is netnews.mchsi.com. Hmmm.

The other problem is that they don't have the supervisor call
you back when they say they are going to. They had an outage here
yesterday. When I didn't get a satisfactory response from the CSR, I
asked for the supervisor. They said they'd have the supervisor call
me back. It didn't happen.

Quality wise, I'd say they are fairly good as cablemodem
companies go. I just wish they'd deal with the two issues I've
mentioned.

Regards,


Fred

JB wrote:
> This issue has been irritating me for a while and I wonder if anyone has
> any guidance. I have helped some friends set up their wireless routers.
> Invariably, as soon as I unplug the cable modem from their computer and
> into the router, and the modem into the router, they lose the Internet. I
> know you have to wait a few seconds for the modem to get a new IP address
> -- I have heard 15 seconds, one minute, 5 minutes, and up to an hour or
> more as the correct wait period.
>
> Anyway, I've always had good luck with a Belkin Pre-N router that seems to
> work right away every time, usually after 15 seconds of having everythign
> powered down, turning on the modem, waiting 10 seocnds or so, and then
> powering on the router. With a Buffalo SRG router, these steps never
> worked. I had to clone the IP address of one hard-wired computer before
> the router would let anyone else connect. But last week with a Linksys
> WGT624, none of those tricks worked. I had my friend call the company
> figuring maybe the modem had to be re-provisioned, but I'm not sure why
> it would need that. I cloned the IP address. And now, I've left it off for
> an hour. None of these things have worked.
>
> Anyone know the fool-proof method for getting this to work?
>
> - JB
Hi,
How about reading the manual? BTW, WGT624 is Netgear model no.
Tony

"Tony Hwang" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:BifIe.107666$%K2.61340@pd7tw1no...
> JB wrote:

>> Anyone know the fool-proof method for getting this to work?
>>
>> - JB
> Hi,
> How about reading the manual? BTW, WGT624 is Netgear model no.
> Tony

Don't you mean RTFM? Good idea, except that the cable modem manual doesn't
talk about routers because they don't want you sharing the connection, and
the router manual doesn't talk about cable modem problems that much becuase
they sell the router and support that device.

"Fred Atkinson" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:41:31 -0500, JB <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>Anyway, I've always had good luck with a Belkin Pre-N router that seems to
>>work right away every time, usually after 15 seconds of having everythign
>>powered down, turning on the modem, waiting 10 seocnds or so, and then
>>powering on the router. With a Buffalo SRG router, these steps never
>>worked. I had to clone the IP address of one hard-wired computer before
>>the router would let anyone else connect. But last week with a Linksys
>>WGT624, none of those tricks worked. I had my friend call the company
>>figuring maybe the modem had to be re-provisioned, but I'm not sure why
>>it would need that. I cloned the IP address. And now, I've left it off for
>>an hour. None of these things have worked.
>>

> I first solved the problem the same way you did. I have a
> Cisco 831 SOHO router. I cloned the MAC address of the Ethernet card
> in my PC to the router (there is a command in Cisco routers that allow
> you to change the MAC address). It worked perfectly. I added '1' to
> the MAC address. It stopped working. I subtracted '1' from that
> original MAC address. It still didn't work. So I put the address of
> that Ethernet card back into the port on the router. It worked.

See, and this worked for the Buffalo I had, but not for the new Linksys I
tried a few days ago. So far, powering down for even an hour didn't work. So
now I am thinking maybe the router itself is screwed up. I guess maybe I
will reset the router and start over after powering down for a while. But
does anyone else have any ideas? It's the WRT54G, not the 624 I mentioned
before. I tried cloning the MAC address but that didn't work.

- JB