NTL / Virgin Media - Cable Broadband - Some (technical) questions...

Hi,


I have some questions about (former) NTL / Virgin Media cable broadband
services.

I understand that they now only supply a single ethernet port cable modem
(i.e. / e.g. no more USB via a STB [not that that is strictly or at all
relevant for my query / queries here as no STB would be likely to be in
place - i.e. cable broadband only service [no TV, etc.]). Their modems /
service used to bind itself to the first MAC it met - is this still the
case? Would, and I read more recently that resetting the MAC is no longer
such an issue, it be possible ignoring anything to do with MACs anyhow, to
route the modem ethernet connection through a hub or switch before it meets
its "one PC"? I.e. for cabling reasons (not any long enough cat5 cables so
would need to have one from cable modem to hub / switch and then one out of
that to the target PC).

Where is the best place / where are the best places for cable (more the
broadband side) discussions? Their used to be many forums for cable
broadband, cable modems, ntl cable chat generally.

Any input greatly appreciated and gratefully received.


Best wishes,




News Reader

News Reader wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> I have some questions about (former) NTL / Virgin Media cable broadband
> services.
>
> I understand that they now only supply a single ethernet port cable modem
> (i.e. / e.g. no more USB via a STB [not that that is strictly or at all
> relevant for my query / queries here as no STB would be likely to be in
> place - i.e. cable broadband only service [no TV, etc.]). Their modems /
> service used to bind itself to the first MAC it met - is this still the
> case? Would, and I read more recently that resetting the MAC is no longer
> such an issue, it be possible ignoring anything to do with MACs anyhow, to
> route the modem ethernet connection through a hub or switch before it meets
> its "one PC"? I.e. for cabling reasons (not any long enough cat5 cables so
> would need to have one from cable modem to hub / switch and then one out of
> that to the target PC).
>
> Where is the best place / where are the best places for cable (more the
> broadband side) discussions? Their used to be many forums for cable
> broadband, cable modems, ntl cable chat generally.

Its not considered polite to cross post to a number of newsgroups by the
way.

Sorry I am struggling to follow your questions .... here's my attempt

Telewest that was, many moons ago used to require that users registered
the MAC address of their PC network card, but this was discontinued some
years ago.

You cannot plug the cable modem into a hub which is a dumb device - you
will need to acquire a router. Before purchasing take care to ensure
that you do NOT purchase an ADSL combined modem/router as this will not
work.

You presumably already have power in the area that the cable modem is
located so power for the router should not be an issue. All you would
need to do would be to connect via RJ45 Cat 5 cable the broadband modem
to the WAN port of the router and connect your existing cat5 cable to
the LAN side of the router (routers typically have a number of LAN ports
to connect to)

For more info try here http://www.networklab.co.uk/cmodem/

Regards

Alan

On Fri, 18 May 2007 00:40:17 +0100, "News Reader" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

[snip]

>Where is the best place / where are the best places for cable (more the
>broadband side) discussions? Their used to be many forums for cable
>broadband, cable modems, ntl cable chat generally.
>

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/

....is one such, and probably the best known. There's also some cable
discussion on:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

...but's it also a more general BB site for UK ISP discussion.

HTH

--
Mark

News Reader wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> I have some questions about (former) NTL / Virgin Media cable broadband
> services.
>
> I understand that they now only supply a single ethernet port cable modem
> (i.e. / e.g. no more USB via a STB [not that that is strictly or at all
> relevant for my query / queries here as no STB would be likely to be in
> place - i.e. cable broadband only service [no TV, etc.]). Their modems /
> service used to bind itself to the first MAC it met - is this still the
> case? Would, and I read more recently that resetting the MAC is no longer
> such an issue, it be possible ignoring anything to do with MACs anyhow, to
> route the modem ethernet connection through a hub or switch before it meets
> its "one PC"? I.e. for cabling reasons (not any long enough cat5 cables so
> would need to have one from cable modem to hub / switch and then one out of
> that to the target PC).
>
> Where is the best place / where are the best places for cable (more the
> broadband side) discussions? Their used to be many forums for cable
> broadband, cable modems, ntl cable chat generally.
>
> Any input greatly appreciated and gratefully received.
>

I think you need to re-read things before posting, however if I
understand the question :

A hub or switch will be fine for 1 PC, as it is essentially invisible to
the modem.

If you want to add more PCs at a later date then the easiest way is to
find the MAC address of your PC & spoof this on the router you will be
adding.

Have you not thought of adding a wireless router & connecting over wifi?

Resident Drunk wrote:

>>
>
> I think you need to re-read things before posting, however if I
> understand the question :

You are quite correct - I was imagining more than one PC connected to
the modem.

Regards

Alan

Alan wrote:
> Resident Drunk wrote:
>
>>>
>>
>> I think you need to re-read things before posting, however if I
>> understand the question :
>
> You are quite correct - I was imagining more than one PC connected to
> the modem.
>
> Regards
>
> Alan

In which case you need a router rather than a switch or hub.

What I found easiest to do when I swapped from a STB to a cable modem
last year was :

Connect a PC directly to the modem and run through the setup (you have
to do this from a directly connected PC I think).

(apols if the next few steps are teaching granny to suck eggs)

Open a dos window (Start/Run, type cmd hit enter)

Type ipconfig/all in the black box & make a note of the 12 hex digits
next to 'Physical Address' for your network card.

Pull the cable out of the modem and plug it into the router.

Log onto your router and find the page for MAC Address Clone (or
similar) and enter the numbers noted above. You will probably have to
replace the hyphens for colons (e.g. A1-4F-93-CB-4A-FF becomes
A1:4F:93:CB:4A:FF).

Plug the router into your modem, cycle the power and you should be
running - simply plug the other PCs into the router.

In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, Resident Drunk
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>If you want to add more PCs at a later date then the easiest way is to
>find the MAC address of your PC & spoof this on the router you will be
>adding.

when I recently reconnected to VM (after using NTL before ADSL) there
was no need to clone the MAC in the router.

--
dave @ stejonda

News Reader wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> I have some questions about (former) NTL / Virgin Media cable broadband
> services.
>
> I understand that they now only supply a single ethernet port cable modem
> (i.e. / e.g. no more USB via a STB [not that that is strictly or at all
> relevant for my query / queries here as no STB would be likely to be in
> place - i.e. cable broadband only service [no TV, etc.]). Their modems /
> service used to bind itself to the first MAC it met - is this still the
> case? Would, and I read more recently that resetting the MAC is no longer
> such an issue, it be possible ignoring anything to do with MACs anyhow, to
> route the modem ethernet connection through a hub or switch before it meets
> its "one PC"? I.e. for cabling reasons (not any long enough cat5 cables so
> would need to have one from cable modem to hub / switch and then one out of
> that to the target PC).
>
> Where is the best place / where are the best places for cable (more the
> broadband side) discussions? Their used to be many forums for cable
> broadband, cable modems, ntl cable chat generally.
>
> Any input greatly appreciated and gratefully received.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
>
> News Reader
>
>
>

You've always been able to connect a router up to NTL for as long as I
can remember. The MAC of the router is then registered to the service
and you connect PCs and other network equipment behind that. It will
not work with a hub or a switch only, you have to have a router to route
traffic for multiple devices, you can connect switches behind the router
if you want more ports. I've changed routers a few times (although not
in quite a while) and it was just a case of registering the new routers
MAC with the NTL login page that came up. A pretty big forum for what
is now Virgin Media is here:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/

cheers,
Paul.

Alan wrote:

> Its not considered polite to cross post to a number of newsgroups by the
> way.

Yes it is (and it's preferred practice too btw) provided the post is relevant to
all the groups.

In fact the alternative multi-posting is to be deprecated since it results in
multiple disparate threads that not all of the respondents may be aware of.

Get your ideas up to date !

Graham

<groups restored>

Eeyore wrote:
>
> Alan wrote:
>
>> Its not considered polite to cross post to a number of newsgroups by the
>> way.
>
> Yes it is (and it's preferred practice too btw) provided the post is relevant to
> all the groups.
>
> In fact the alternative multi-posting is to be deprecated since it results in
> multiple disparate threads that not all of the respondents may be aware of.
>
> Get your ideas up to date !
>
> Graham
>
> <groups restored>
>

Not sure what voip has to do with this