@Home = @Hell. Here's how to avoid it.

[mbpark]

Hello,

I spent part of my day undoing the hell that Comcast@Home wreaked upon my sister's poor Athlon 900. Their cable modem software they install HATES Windows 2000 Service Pack 2. Actually, it causes a blue screen of death on startup. Their tech support does not want to resolve the issue. So, I did it on my own.

Here's how to REALLY install their cable service, with no pain.

0. Do NOT install any software they give you. Ever. Pretend the CD's never existed.

1. Get a Linksys Cable/DSL router. $79 from buy.com, and available at your local CompUSA, OfficeMax, Office Depot, or Staples, or online if you choose. Get the one with the 4-port switch. It lets you connect up a few computers very easily.

2. Get two lengths of Cat-5e straight-through cabling. Crossover is not good for this exercise.

3. Take one length of Cat-5e and attach it to the Ethernet port on your cable modem.

4. Put the other end in the WAN port of your Linksys router.

5. Take the other length and attach it to port 1 on the Cable Modem.

6. Attach the other end of that to your computer's ethernet card. If @Home installed yours, it's an SMC Fast Ethernet card, and it's not too bad. Enjoy.

7. Boot up your computer. Make sure that your Ethernet card is set up for DHCP and the DNS servers are not set.

8. After making sure that the addresses can be allocated dynamically, you'll want to reboot if you run Windows 98, Me, or 95. If you run Win2K or XP, it will autoconfigure. If you run Linux, BSD, or any other OS, you'll want to renew the DHCP address, or if you run Solaris, /sbin/ifdown hme0 and /sbin/ifup hme0.

9. Open IE, Netscape, or Mozilla to http://192.168.1.1 . Change the admin password ASAP to something other than admin .

10. Change the machine name on the first page to the machine name @Home wants you to change it to.

11. Hit the 'apply' button at the bottom of the page.

12. Enjoy Internet. It autoconfigures via a DHCP server and puts a firewall in place for you.

13. Liberally laugh at @Home, who can't configure for Win2K without installing Win2K drivers that don't make the machine crap itself.

14. Thank them for the sweet SMC card they give out, which has really stable Win2K drivers, and works quite well with Linux and BSD from what I know .

Today I had the experience from heck. Comcast@Home techs tried to install an Ethernet card in her machine, and the driver for the cable modem (I found out after doing quite a few traces of DLL's on it) were the ones causing the BSoD.

I hope this prevents pain like I had. Doing traces of bad DLL's on machines that aren't Diginexus machines is not pleasant, especially when it's my sister's and I dislike when systems I build for people get brutalized by bad techs.

I'll use the saved money for the Athlon 1.4 CPU and extra 512MB of RAM she needs.

Considering that she runs SPSS on a regular basis for grad school work, she needs 768MB RAM and a fast cpu for crunching numbers, not Quake. Grad Students love numbers.

Take care,

Mitch

Get a Linksys Cable/DSL router. $79 from buy.com

...depending on what you plan on doing online

I had a Linksys BEFSR41 (the one mbpark is talking about). It worked great... except for when I was playing Quake III Arena online and then it would give me constant "Connection Interrupted" - my ping was still fine, i could still do +showscores (normally you can't when you get a real Connection Interrupted)... but I would freeze in-game. My friend Scott had the same problem. My friend Jarod had the same problem.

I did a lot of research and came up with an alternative. I bought it from buy.com and have been happy with it. Sold my Linksys.

What I bought is the Netgear RO318. The 8 means that it's got an 8 port switch built in - very cool. It works with DSL as well as cable (a few people I know have reported problems getting the BEFSR41 to work with DSL). It has good port forwarding, easy setup...

One of the biggest advantages, though, is that it's a true firewall. It's not just NAT - it includes Stateful Packet Inspection too. Getting port scanned? It knows, and it drops their connection - after logging their IP. DoS attack? Dropped connection. You can set it to email you the logs as well.

There's another feature that some parents will like - it includes keyword blocking. So, for example, you can keep your child from going to http://www.teeniefuck.com or whatever. (No clue if that's a real link - click at your own risk )... You can have it email you whenever someone tries to access a link you don't want them to. Or you can set it to email you whenever the log fills up - whatever. It's very configurable.

It's also a pretty decent price. I paid $150 for mine. You can get a 4 port version for cheaper, but I believe it doesn't have the easy web setup - you have to telnet. You might want to check out http://www.netgear.com and see.

Lastly, it has no trouble with quake3 - so I'm very happy with it

[mbpark]

I haven't noticed those problems with Quake with the latest BIOS rev on them. Even DCC works. You have to work around allowing some connections for certain things like DCC, but for general web and ssh work, it's more than fine.

PPTP is the one thing I have issues with, however I'll have a workaround soon.

The Netgear is also a good product. They just make many good things, even NIC's (FA311TX NIC here).

However, I am more than pleased with the Linksys for my sister, since she can actually do work now.

[verbatim]

verizon wasnt much better for their dsl. registatration processes that dont work, faulty wiring that THEY DID, and shitty speeds made it not worth it. the best i was able to do was use some high quality cat5e wire for phone wiring. and that gay software. it must be an industry standard.

but it was a sucess story, with some hotwiring and a few computers and about $60, i got a home network. so screw them.

[roXet]

To use those inexpensive (around $100) Cable/DSL routers do you have to have something else to convert from whatever is coming into your house to ethernet? I work for an ISP/telco and we are starting our DSL rollout and we are selling some crap Creative DSL Blaster modems. These modems take an plain RJ-11 phone jack in and then go to the computer thru USB. If I understand correctly to use one of those routers you would have to get an Ethernet modem that supports PPPoATM (that is what we use), or find a router that supports that (We have used a Cayman for some business clients). So I guess the real question is: What type of jack is your WAN port on that router? I think I've confused myself more than I already was....oh well.

[mbpark]

These take a standard RJ-45 ethernet jack as the input as the WAN port

The newest Linksys routers DO support PPPoE, and there is full support for it, you can just configure it from the DSL router's web page.

USB won't work as the input, obviously. It may be an issue for you, but not for people using the standard RJ-45 jack.

Mitch

[roXet]

But the problem (my question) is that the DSL comes into your house as a plain phone line (RJ-11) that has a DSL signal on top of your voice signal. What converts that into the ethernet?

Originally posted by roXet
But the problem (my question) is that the DSL comes into your house as a plain phone line (RJ-11) that has a DSL signal on top of your voice signal. What converts that into the ethernet?

theoretically, as long as there is no special mixing going on (which there shouldn't be), it's just about the wires. as long as those are straight, you put on any connector you want. that's how we have converters.

my dsl modem does the conversion. a phone line comes in, an ethernet cable runs out. it's pretty simple, and that's how most dsl modems are (at least the ones i'm familiar with). i would recommend that anyone wanting to do this purchase their own dsl modem and make sure (via the company) that it will work with their service. tell them that you don't want to rent, or that you don't feel comfortable having your computer exposed to the internet so you want to have a firewall between the two. or tell them that you don't use usb.

anyway, afaik, it's pretty standard for the dsl to come in on a standard phone cable with an rj-11 connector (understand that the rj-11, rj-45 etc only refer to the connector and not the cable - for example, what we call "network cable" or "ethernet cable" is category 5 twisted pair with rj-45 connectors at each end). but whoever wants to use a router just needs a different modem. that's all.