On 10/19/2010 10:42 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
Because of recent conversations on this list about comcast versus
world, I feel compelled to tell this story:
I have a friend, who is very computer proficient. He called me up to
talk about an IP address conflict on his home network. He told me he
has comcast, and he has access to login to the comcast router, and the
router is configured to give out IP addresses via DHCP, and the
dynamic range is from 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.14. So they only give
you 5 IP addresses, and if you try to connect a 6th computer, you
can't. You get an IP conflict, and somebody gets booted off the network.
I told him, "Well, why don't you just change the dynamic range?" He
said you can't. He said he spent hours on the phone with comcast, and
they told him "Call netgear." I couldn't believe him. So he
initiated a screen sharing session, and showed me. We considered
flashing a nonstandard firmware onto the comcast router ... which
seemed risky ... I suggested maybe looking up the factory reset for
the router. He said he already did that, and it just resets to
Comcast factory condition.
He's got a home server, a printer, two laptops, and two desktops. He
can't use them all at the same time. Nevermind, god forbid, he should
have anything like vonage, or a PDA, or a couple of teenage children
with computers.
We concluded there's only one possible solution: He needs to buy
another router, and hook the outside of his new router to the inside
of the comcast router.
We concluded there is one, and precisely one, possible reason for
comcast to be stingy with the 192.168.x.x IP addresses. They're just
being d**ks and there is no other possible explanation.
Oh - Get this - While all his other computers and stuff were on, and
his laptop had an IP conflict which was preventing him from starting
his screen sharing session ... I suggested that he just assign
himself a static IP address, 192.168.0.15. He did this. He could
ping the gateway. But he could not ping outside the gateway. So in
addition to the dynamic range being pathetically small, they also
apply a filter to prevent you from using any static IP outside of the
dynamic range. D**ks.
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I've been using Comcast for years north of Boston and it simply doesn't
work like this where I live. You don't even have to use one bit of
Comcast equipment on your line; I've had my own motorola surfboard for
years, and put whatever I want behind it (dd-wrt, soekris, linksys).
Frankly I don't even understand how they would accomplish this since
they don't control the internal LAN. They might control the firmware on
their router, but just replace it since it's probably garbage anyways.
--
--
Joe McDonagh
Operations Engineer
AIM: YoosingYoonickz
IRC: joe-mac on freenode
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
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