Cable router advice

[Koa]

This is for my eldest daughter as I have an ADSL network setup so I don't know for sure what her options are.

She has NTL cable broadband and it's connected to her PC via the cable modem. She has a laptop for which I have given her a zoom-air wireless networking card.
She has just been out and bought a wireless cable G(?) router or something.
She had the PC connected to the internet via the modem and router, she tried to connect the laptop and could not get a connection, now she's lost the PC connection too.
Problem is, I can't go round her house to fix the problem

On my router for ADSL it's got the modem built in and anything I want to connect to it just scans and goes online no problem.

Any ideas what could be going wrong or advice as to what she should do would be appreciated. I suggested she should take the router back and get a cable modem router all in, but I have no experience with laptops so any suggestions ?

 

[Seraph]

i'm assuming that the router connects to the pc, and the pc to the cable modem?
if so, she wil need to bridge the two network connections.

other than that, i'm not too sure... also, isn;t there something about some ISP's not alllowing more than one pc on a cable connection, like limted by 1 ip...

 

[Koa]

Cheers seraph, she's looking into the two IP thingy right now, I think NTL may be one of those companies I'm not sure.
She had the pc connected to the net throught the modem and router, and apparently the laptop is showing a connected status but there's no web pages being displayed so I'm thinking it's not allowing an IP address.

 

[steve1219]

NTL allow any number of connections to your modem, I have 2 running on a wireless router,

If you can provide a part number and make I will check if it can be used on cable for you.

Steve

 

[rallycinq]

I have NTL broadband and a Netgear wireless router. The PC in the study is hardwired through the ethernet connection to the router., as is yougest daughters PC. Eldest daughters PC in her room is connected to the internet via the wireless no problem, and my laptop picks up the signal.

Either the router needs configured correctly or its knackered.

Cheers

D

 

[The Negotiator]

Koa, the wireless router, does it have wired ports too?

If so, she needs to set it up like this:

Plug the modem using a patch lead into the WLAN port of the wireless router. She needs to then plug a patch lead from the desktop PC to the wireless router, the PC should then have access. Then she should connect to the wireless router wirelessly from the laptop.

Lots of things to go into though if that fails to work initially.

If she already has it set up like that, get her to check that she has it right first.

 

[Koa]

I have NTL broadband and a Netgear wireless router. The PC in the study is hardwired through the ethernet connection to the router., as is yougest daughters PC. Eldest daughters PC in her room is connected to the internet via the wireless no problem, and my laptop picks up the signal.

Either the router needs configured correctly or its knackered.

Cheers

D

:Chin: Thanks, if that's the case then it's more likely she hasn't configured the router right, to top it off my younger daughter went round her house and was messing with it to try to sort it out

I'll let her know about the isp's so cheers guys

 

[Koa]

Koa, the wireless router, does it have wired ports too?

If so, she needs to set it up like this:

Plug the modem using a patch lead into the WLAN port of the wireless router. She needs to then plug a patch lead from the desktop PC to the wireless router, the PC should then have access. Then she should connect to the wireless router wirelessly from the laptop.

Lots of things to go into though if that fails to work initially.

If she already has it set up like that, get her to check that she has it right first.

A patch lead
Would it not be better if she got a modem router all in one and if so shouldn't it just scan for it and connect ?
Yes the router does have ethernet ports too.

 

[The Negotiator]

You don't get as many cable model routers as you do with ADSL, never really known why.

Anyway, the set up is fine, personally to me it makes no difference whether you have it integrated or not. She might (just might!) have connected the modem up to the PC using USB and then plugged the patch lead (she should have gone one with the router for set up reasons) from the PC into the router, which is wrong and would be complicated as to whether it would work at all.

What I said above should make it work very simply, once she has the desktop connecting to the internet when connected to the router, the wireless laptop can be looked at

 

[Koa]

well it's a d-link router. She has connected it exactly as you say there mate, but thats presuming that by a patch lead you are referring to an ethernet cable because she didn't get anything else in the box.

EDIT : also the laptop is not showing in her network places.

 

[The Negotiator]

It won't, not without sharing some things.

Ethernet lead = patch lead = network lead = RJ45 lead etc.

So if connected like that, does the PC not connect to the net? She could try reseting both the router and modem (will be little switches on each unit).

Also tell her to go to:

start/control panel/network connections, double click "local area network" and get her to click any that states TCP/IP, double click it. CHeck that the box showing "Obtain an IP address automatically" is ticked,

 

[Koa]

She says she's checked those items and they are all present and correct.
She's getting all the correct lights on the router and modem to suggest that it's connected to each other correct, the only problem she has now seams to be that internet explorer won't display web pages, they just timed out and she gets a pop up box telling her to connect to the internet.
Usually my brain would work and I'd sort this out in a flash, but i'm having a blank right now, i've overloaded with new input for the day and have pushed out all the stuff I wanted to forget

 

[purplemonday]

The NTL service allows multiple PC's to connect but requires each one to be 'registered' with the NTL network - their definition of 'registered' is that their network needs to know the MAC address of the network adapter in each machine (the MAC adderss is a unique identifier transmitted by the adapter to identify itself on the network).

Most cable routers allow you to clone the MAC address of the machine you initially registered with NTL so in effect the router is taking on the identity of the PC therefore the NTL network believes all the traffic is coming from the machine it knows about.

My guess is that the MAC address needs setting on the router to fool the NTL network security as the router will currently be giving out it's own MAC address which NTL doesn't recognise and therefore denies access.

If the router doen't have the cloning function you will need to get the MAC address from the PC that was connected to the cable modem - to do this, open a command prompt and type ipconfig /all. You should see an entry for either the ethernet connection (assuming PC used ethernet to connect to modem) or something describing itself as an ISDN adapter or dial up connection - the MAC address will be shown as 'Physical Address' and is a hexidecimal value which will look similar to this:

00-02-A5-FD-FD-93
​

Hope this helps

Cheers

John

 

[Koa]

The NTL service allows multiple PC's to connect but requires each one to be 'registered' with the NTL network - their definition of 'registered' is that their network needs to know the MAC address of the network adapter in each machine (the MAC adderss is a unique identifier transmitted by the adapter to identify itself on the network).

Most cable routers allow you to clone the MAC address of the machine you initially registered with NTL so in effect the router is taking on the identity of the PC therefore the NTL network believes all the traffic is coming from the machine it knows about.

My guess is that the MAC address needs setting on the router to fool the NTL network security as the router will currently be giving out it's own MAC address which NTL doesn't recognise and therefore denies access.


If the router doen't have the cloning function you will need to get the MAC address from the PC that was connected to the cable modem - to do this, open a command prompt and type ipconfig /all. You should see an entry for either the ethernet connection (assuming PC used ethernet to connect to modem) or something describing itself as an ISDN adapter or dial up connection - the MAC address will be shown as 'Physical Address' and is a hexidecimal value which will look similar to this:

00-02-A5-FD-FD-93

​

Hope this helps

Cheers

John

Nice one John, I'll give her a bell and get her to try that, much appreciated mate

 

[panda1408]

the only problem she has now seams to be that internet explorer won't display web pages, they just timed out and she gets a pop up box telling her to connect to the internet.

do you need to set the pc to use the lan connection instead of an ordinary modem connection.

dont know if this is right, just a guess.

 

[Koa]

Well she's taken the router back and is waiting for a different make so hopefully it won't require so much extra setting up. If it does I'll point her to purplemondays post for guidance as the next step