On 2007-02-17 14:48:53 +0000, John Rumm said:
Andy Hall wrote:
It could be NTL cable. I use this as a backup to my normal connection.
For that, they supply a modem with ethernet presentation. There is a
CD that comes with it, in order to initially do the modem config and
registration of the modem on the network. A lot of other assorted
"user experience" stuff is installed as well and it seems to heavily
use Javascript and other assorted material.
The Windows version is bad enough, but the Mac version, which they do
claim to support, just doesn't work properly at all. Fortunately,
there is a way to manually access the modem and the registration web
site without the need for the CD at all.
Yup, you can access the web server in the modem via a web browser
usually (assuming it is their usual motorola modem)... I tend to apply
the same logic to any broadband hardware, if you ignore the supplied
software and talk directly to the box you get a much more
straightforward setup usually.
I think that's true, plus it doesn't pollute the computer with (more)
unrequired junk.
They are now supplying the NTL 250 as CPE which is manufactured by
Ambit. This one has USB and Ethernet presentations.
However, I am fairly certain that you can't just go out and buy an
arbitrary cable modem and plug it in. AFAIK, NTL's registration system
looks for certain MAC address ranges for cable modems supported on
their network. It then hands out temporary IP addresses via DHCP to
enable the user to reach the registration site. After registration,
the user is handed out an IP address for operational use.
The way to deal with these is to use a ethernet to ethernet broadband
router[1]. Connect it to the NTL modem box and then it handles NAT and
sharing on your lan etc. There was a time where NTL used to enforce MAC
address filtering on the network device that could connect to the
modem, so during initial setup the MAC address of the NIC would have
been set. Hence you had to register the MAC address of the router with
them via a web site or tech support call. IIRC they allowed up to five
different MAC addresses to be logged for one modem (obviously once the
router was one of those any other restrictions became irrelevant). They
seem to have dropped that restriction now though.
One would want to put such a device in place anyway since it would be
foolhardy to trust the security capabilities of Microsoft on an
unrestricted internet connection.
I directly connected a PC with Knoppix to the modem and did the initial
registration with that, then added in a Cisco 870 series router with
DHCP enabled on the WAN port side.
[1] Linksys do a range of reasonable ones that are my default weapons
of choice here.
These work pretty well IME.
It's possible that the CD won't work on Vista and for that reason NTL
could be saying that it is unsupported.
Equally it could be they support staff have not been trained (or more
likely do not have the first line tech support scripts) to talk people
through setting up network settings under vista - IIUC an area where
there has been quite a significant area of change.
Mmm... There is a difference between "not supported" and "doesn't work"