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Cable modem troubles.. unhappy network. Ultra Super Geek Assistance Required! =-/

C

Conundrum

Senior member
When I hook directly into the cable modem from my computer (specs listed in my sig)... if my computer is on when I do it my computer will freeze up for 10 second intervals. 10 seconds locked, 5 seconds not locked... until I shut down my computer. Once my computer is off or if I unplug the cat5 from my onboard NIC slot... the cable modem will start to handshake again with the DHCP server for my ISP. Then when I reboot.. nothing.

ipconfig shows nothing. ipconfig /renew media disconnected. Tried ipconfig /flushdns and no go. Decided to ping 127.0.0.1 to see if my NIC was ok... and it's fine. It just will NOT talk out to the LAN City cable modem which I have to use for my service. When the cable people were out looking at it last they had FIVE technicians here at one point who finally just said, "Just use your proxy server, I don't get it. It should work from your computer, but it won't.".

Wow, inspiring words from someone whose job it is to know how to get things up and working. They were even in communication through the walkie talkie option on their cell phones with the central office where many people were trying to figure it out. Nobody could do it... it doesn't make any sense to me and I've never heard of this happening before. I'm completely stumped.. and I'd like to be able to hook directly into the cable modem without doing a fresh install and/or buying a new motherboard if for some reason the SIS 900 NIC or the driver for it makes me unable to talk out. I even tried an older driver for sh!ts and giggles to see if that was the problem. Installed WinME to see if it was Win2k causing the problem.. same thing.

How incredibly gay... if someone can solve this.... you are a GOD.

Thanks for playing...
 
I guess I really didn't understand the post all that well. Are you normally hooked up to a router and then to your computer and you'd like to move the cable modem directly into your computer? If so, the computer works fine when going through the router? My initial reaction would be a bad NIC... it just can't seem to resolve things quite right even though it says things are fine. But then if it works through a router or something then I don't know.
 
As a first step, I would get a Cheappo NIC.

Disable the Mobo NIC, and try the new NIC.

It does not involve any reformatting or OS reinstallation, 15 Min. and at least you will know if it is the Mobo fault.
 
Do you use the same cable to go directly to your cable modem as you do to your router?

Jus' curious..

Scott
 
Does the connect light come on the NIC when the cable is hooked to the modem? Are you sure that the cat 5 cable you are using is a strait and not a crossover cable. If the nic light does not come on when the cable is plugged in the cable is probably no good. Have you checked your network settings to make sure that tcp/ip is bound to the network card? Lots of stuff to check. still more if none of these work.
Bleep
 
It sounds like you're a victim of a bad setting. DNS, for example, can do some really bad things to you, especially if you have Client for Microsoft Networks installed and bound to TCP/IP.

A few things to try:

1: First of all, when troubleshooting, skip DHCP and hard-set EVERYTHING. If there's a DHCP problem or if you have an IP address conflict you could see some really odd things.
2: Make sure you don't have anything in the WINS server section.
3: Make sure that you don't have a bad DNS server or that there isn't a problem with one of your DNS servers. Try to switch between them in WINIPCFG in ME or just deleting one in 2K.
4: Unless you really need it, don't use IP for Client for Microsoft networks. In ME, go into the Advanced properties of IP and make sure it's NOT the default protocol (unchecked). In 2K, I beleive it's a bindings tab - I forget the details.
5: Try to lock your NIC down to 10BaseT, half duplex, the lowest common denominator that can take care of some problems if you're having issues with auto-negotiation of speed and duplex.
6: Some kind of hardware conflict with the NIC? Check the IRQ's, etc. and make sure that it's not a problem. Spend the extra $10 and get a D-Link 10/100 and skp the on-board, as jack suggested. Well worth it.

Lastly.. If you've got your computer specs in your sig, I'm guessing you overclock it.. That can cause total havoc with NIC's, especially if you mess with the FSB speed. Try to set it back to standard FSB - Multipler doesn't affect it much, however. (Then again, that ECS isn't a real overclocking mobo, but you never know...)

Best of luck!

- G



 
Yes, I'm using the same length of cat5 that goes from the cable modem to my server (Gateway 6400 Server). It's just proxying out the internal traffic using ICS..

The cat5 cable isn't crossover. I've tried pretty much everything except disabling the onboard NIC and using a PCI NIC. Doesn't make any sense to me at all though since the onboard NIC works flawlessly in every other conceivable configuration. I connect to the ICS server through a D-Link switch..

I didn't want to have to go out and buy a NIC. Part of the reason why I got this mobo was that it did have an onboard NIC. The IRQ addressing is done using the virtual addressing that Win2k uses and I haven't had any problem with it yet. I just have a problem doing a few things through the proxy server. One of them would be hosting a game of Empire Earth, AOE2, etc...

I can't just give out the IP that my server assigns (192.168.0.x) and tell people to connect to it. It's only going to be able to get to the IP of my server. I'd run NAT and play around with things if I had a static IP... but I have a dynamic. Actually, the service itself assigns 4 dynamic IPs. It's really cheap cable... local service that was bought out by AT&T. I tried setting the NIC at 10 full... but I didn't try 10 half. Wouldn't that be a serious decrease in performance though? Half duplex being data can only travel in or out... but not both at the same time. =-/

I know on my proxy server the NIC that talks to the cable modem I set the properties from auto to 10 full and the NIC that talks out to the network to 100 full. Is there a way to circumvent the proxy server so that I can give an IP to someone so they can connect to my game on this machine? So far, I haven't heard anything about being able to do so. It's just real frustrating..

I'll try out the NIC thing tomorrow after all my classes. Thanks for the input though guys. If you have anymore ideas, keep 'em comin'.
 
I'll be picking up another NIC after my 3-5 class today... then we shall see if that is the problem.

Weird if it is.. that the NIC would only not work connected directly to the cable modem and work perfectly connected to anything else. Hell, I even used this rig over at a friend's house hooked to his DSL without a problem.

So.. freaking... stupid/weird/lame.... ugh.
 
This seems unlikely but could your cable modem be having trouble auto-negotiating the speed of the connection with your on-board NIC? Do you have a 100bT indicator on your computer and does it indicate a 100bT connection while connected to the cable modem and also while connected to the gateway? I'm assuming that everything in question is 10/100bT capable but if not that would be a problem. Like I said seems unlikely that any of your peices of hardware are not 10/100bT capable but its something to check.
 
If you've got a speed or duplex mismatch problem, odd things could happen - You might be seeing a bunch of errors on your Ethernet segment that are invisible to you, but are causing problems.

10BaseT half duplex is more than adequate for nearly all cable modems - AT&T, for example, caps it at 1.5Mb/s. 10BaseT, half duplex maxes out around 5Mb/s, so you're not going to see a speed problem. I've got two similar PC's, one at 100 and one at 10 and can really see no performance difference between them (except when transferring files to other computers on the home network).

- G
 
Shouldn't it be ipconfig /registerdns?

Anyhow, sounds to me like either a cable, nic, modem, or tcp/ip configuration setting problem. I've been down that road lots of times friend. Best of luck to ya.
 
I agree with Garion, change everything from auto under your NIC and change it to 10 base half duplex. That has corrected weird things in the past for me sometimes.

mrpeabody
 
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