So lets get down to business. I recently moved (very very long story), and have recieved a nice shiny new cable modem (Terayon TJ715) from my cable company (Adelphia). I also have a Linksys WAP/Router w/ 4-port switch (BEFW11S4 version 2, 802.11b compliant, blah blah). Now with my last cable modem (some RCA thing, which is now long gone), the router worked perfectly fine. I had my connection shared with this computer, my other PC, as well as wirelessly with my laptop. The problem is, when I moved, and got this new cable modem, that stopped. I can LAN perfectly fine across the 3 computers, but none of them can access the internet when the cable modem is connected to the router. If I connect the modem directly to the NICs on any of the computers (i.e., only one at a time), they all work perfectly and can access the internet without a hitch. The problem seems to be getting the cable to recognize the router, and vice versa.
Just to clarify a bit. I currently have the cable modem connected to this computer's NIC with a straight (patch) cable, but the odd thing is it's a T568A - T568A cable (this is the cable that came with the modem, btw). I can use a T568B - T568B straight, and that works perfectly fine as well, when connected directly to a NIC. Now the problem arises when I connect the cable, via a straight cable (either the A - A or the B - B straight cable) to the router's WAN port. When that happens, the diagnostic LEDs on the cable modem itself don't all light as they should. The Power and Cable lights light as normal, but the PC and Data lights do not come on at all, suggesting that the modem is not "seeing" the router or the computers beyond it.
The router is set to act as a DHCP server for my LAN. Thus is should be getting an IP for itself from Adelphia's DHCP servers, and yet it doesn't seem to do so. It's LAN IP is 192.168.1.1, and it correctly configures the clients to use that as their gateway, but for some reason, again probably a communications problem between the router and modem, it will not get an IP from Adelphia's DHCP, and thus I cannot access the internet from behind the router, regardless of which computer I use.
The three computers are as follows: PCs (both of them) are WinXP home, Laptop is (agh!) WinME (I don't currently have the cash to upgrade it to XP at the least so I'm stuck with this horrible demon of an OS..). They all have TCP/IP installed, and all are set to obtain DNS servers and IP Addresses automatically (thus setting them up for the DHCP server that is the router). They all recieve IPs accordingly from the router. So it's nothing from the LAN side of things. The WAN side of things is the snafu, if I'm guessing correctly.
I've had suggestions to fix this as per the following: Get a crossover cable, and attach it from the modem to the router's WAN port and see if that works (which seems odd to me since that's not what crossovers are used for), try cloning the MAC address of the NIC card on one of the computers so that the router appears to be the NIC card, try different straight cables between the router and the modem (which I have, 5 different ones, in fact, and none have worked), and just shoot the damn things and be done with it.
The last one is very tempting.
I have yet to try the MAC address clone, as that seems a bit drastic to me, and it wasn't required by the last modem to work correctly. (BTW, again this is a long story, but I now using a different account with the same ISP. The first was my father's account, this new one is my own.) I am unsure if Adelphia requires registering of a NIC's MAC address or not, but it doesn't seem likely as with the last cable modem all I did was connect everything properly (and with all straight cables), and it worked flawlessly. I don't currently have a crossover cable to toy with, though I can easily get one or simply terminate one myself. The crossover cable again seems like an odd way to correct the problem, as crossover cables aren't typically used to connect cable modems to router WAN ports... I'm really stuck as to what to do, as I'm fairly sure the problem resides between the router and the cable modem. The LAN works just fine, it's accessing the internet that's the problem.
Any suggestions?
Just to clarify a bit. I currently have the cable modem connected to this computer's NIC with a straight (patch) cable, but the odd thing is it's a T568A - T568A cable (this is the cable that came with the modem, btw). I can use a T568B - T568B straight, and that works perfectly fine as well, when connected directly to a NIC. Now the problem arises when I connect the cable, via a straight cable (either the A - A or the B - B straight cable) to the router's WAN port. When that happens, the diagnostic LEDs on the cable modem itself don't all light as they should. The Power and Cable lights light as normal, but the PC and Data lights do not come on at all, suggesting that the modem is not "seeing" the router or the computers beyond it.
The router is set to act as a DHCP server for my LAN. Thus is should be getting an IP for itself from Adelphia's DHCP servers, and yet it doesn't seem to do so. It's LAN IP is 192.168.1.1, and it correctly configures the clients to use that as their gateway, but for some reason, again probably a communications problem between the router and modem, it will not get an IP from Adelphia's DHCP, and thus I cannot access the internet from behind the router, regardless of which computer I use.
The three computers are as follows: PCs (both of them) are WinXP home, Laptop is (agh!) WinME (I don't currently have the cash to upgrade it to XP at the least so I'm stuck with this horrible demon of an OS..). They all have TCP/IP installed, and all are set to obtain DNS servers and IP Addresses automatically (thus setting them up for the DHCP server that is the router). They all recieve IPs accordingly from the router. So it's nothing from the LAN side of things. The WAN side of things is the snafu, if I'm guessing correctly.
I've had suggestions to fix this as per the following: Get a crossover cable, and attach it from the modem to the router's WAN port and see if that works (which seems odd to me since that's not what crossovers are used for), try cloning the MAC address of the NIC card on one of the computers so that the router appears to be the NIC card, try different straight cables between the router and the modem (which I have, 5 different ones, in fact, and none have worked), and just shoot the damn things and be done with it.
The last one is very tempting.
I have yet to try the MAC address clone, as that seems a bit drastic to me, and it wasn't required by the last modem to work correctly. (BTW, again this is a long story, but I now using a different account with the same ISP. The first was my father's account, this new one is my own.) I am unsure if Adelphia requires registering of a NIC's MAC address or not, but it doesn't seem likely as with the last cable modem all I did was connect everything properly (and with all straight cables), and it worked flawlessly. I don't currently have a crossover cable to toy with, though I can easily get one or simply terminate one myself. The crossover cable again seems like an odd way to correct the problem, as crossover cables aren't typically used to connect cable modems to router WAN ports... I'm really stuck as to what to do, as I'm fairly sure the problem resides between the router and the cable modem. The LAN works just fine, it's accessing the internet that's the problem.
Any suggestions?