Connecting to Comcast cable internet

[LinuxRandal]

Milanuk,

Did you hit a clone button, or did you manually type in the mac address?

You connected to the WAN? port, NOT the lan port? So you did use a crossover cable?

[milanuk]

manually entered the address in the form slot provided.

Used the cable provided with the wifi router, that its instructions said 'plug this cable into the wall/modem'. Worked like a champ going from my router at home (exact same model) to the wall jack (cat5 to fiber, pppoe).

[LinuxRandal]

The cable going from the wall to the modem is a normal cable. The Wan port is a crossover port, verses the lan port. To talk from your computer to the Wan port, you would need a crossover cable. (but you said you entered the mac address manually, via the wireless, since I haven't seen that before and don't have the model, I can't add anymore there).

What I have experienced, is you hook the computer to a lan port, enter the home address (192.xxx.xxx.xxx) and hit a clone button, which captures the mac address of the computers, physically connected lan port.

[milanuk]

I don't think I said that I connected the *laptop* to the WAN port... I connected the WAN port on the wifi router to the cable modem. You wouldn't normally connect the ethernet from the wall/modem to one of the regular jacks on the router, but use the WAN port instead - which is what I did. Laptop wired to cable modem works (only one port on each, not much chance of screwing it up). Laptop wired to router LAN port (for initial configuration of router) works. Laptop wireless link to wifi router works. WAN port on router to the only ethernet jack on the modem... no worky, for reasons I think we've already figured out - need to power cycle the modem to make it 'release' the MAC address that it attached to. I've never had a need to clone MAC addresses before, so I can't swear I did that part right. Pretty dang sure the cables were in the right places, and that I got the right MAC address, and that I typed it in the only place it was possible to do so.

[sparkeyjames]

Comcast use to install a small suite of software on customers computers that they install onto their network. I found this crap ware to be a source of a lot of the networking headaches of getting a computer set up correctly after the comcast people were done with it. Remove that if it is there and I'll bet things will be easier.

Jim

[LinuxRandal]

Originally Posted by milanuk

Then I unplugged the cable from the laptop, and plugged it into the WAN port on the wifi router.

Originally Posted by milanuk

I don't think I said that I connected the *laptop* to the WAN port...

If you read above, I think you will read why I was confused. If you sucessfully cloned the hardware mac address, you shouldn't have needed to powercycle, theoretically. In actuallity, powercycling is easier and saves time and hassle.

And no the software that comes with their installs (or used to), isn't needed. It is mostly adds and making their page your homepage, really a waste. Hope you got her up and running tonight.

[milanuk]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you guys... it took a couple evenings before she and I were both in the right place at the same time, but we got it done. First time tried turning off the cable modem, then back on about 15 seconds later, thinking the 'memory' issue was strictly local in the hardware. Still no go. Second time around we left the cable modem off for about 5 minutes, and when she turned it back on and went back into the web control panel for the wifi router, we were able to get her connected and online.

Still have a few things to iron out as far as tidying up the network and configuring the WPA2 authentication the way I want but thats a battle for another day...

Thanks again,

Monte

[leehljp]

Originally Posted by milanuk

Second time around we left the cable modem off for about 5 minutes, and when she turned it back on and went back into the web control panel for the wifi router, we were able to get her connected and online.

Monte

Monte,
This is quite common. One thing I almost posted but didn't was something along this line. Power Cycling the whole system - CM, Wireless Router and Computer does wonders.

One area where computer systems are different from other systems are the various memory "holds" (my word). Unlike a TV, radio or light switch, cutting computers (and computer equipment) off and back on immediately does not clear the memory. In some small ways, it is like the heating element on an electric stove - stays hot after cutting off. These little Xs and Os don't like to die! AND if you cut one item off but not the other, you still can have problems. Continue to cut one off and back on, then another off and back on, you still can have troubles.

In my experience, this is particularly true of networks and printers and routers. As an example - If I send the printer a file for printing over a network and something goes wrong, it will hang in the que until the printer is cut off. Cutting the printer back on does not clear it up. Network or computer has to be cleared of the que feedback - or file too. For me, I have to cut the wireless unit off, the printer off and the computer off, and then back on in order to clear the errant que. Happens to me about once every 6 months or so. And about once a year or so, I have to reset my CM, Wireless unit and computer - can't just cut one off or I will have similar problems.


By the way, on Macs - I am not sure how they are now but three or four years ago, Apple was clear that a "Re-start" was not the same as a "shut down" and Re-"Start". This could have been part of your problem. "Re-starts" did not clear out all aspects of RAM, memory, ques or something of the sorts.

[milanuk]

Normally my experience with electronics (industrial controls, PLCs, & computers in general) has been that a 5-10 second pause is enough to make sure everything has had a chance to 'zero out' and go back to its default state before restoring power. Some of that is probably a hold over from the 'old days' with electro-mechanical relays and given them enough time to drop out before the fields got powered back up (mainly so they didn't get hung up in an intermittent state). Either the newer electronics have enough of a charge left in there (possibly a cap discharging) to hold them through momentary power interruptions, or else the system on Comcast's end takes a little longer to realize there isn't anybody listening on this end and flush the buffers.

I know what you mean by the periodic reset... I have to do that with my wifi routers periodically. Pull the power, leave 'em sit for a bit and turn them back on. If I didn't know better, I'd swear they were running M$ inside or something (actually, I think most of the little mini router/firewall packages run some embedded form of Linux on flash memory). Weird.

[leehljp]

"Buffers" - That is what I was trying to think of. I need my memory restored!