rrna244448
01-04-01, 11:04 PM
I recently purchased a linksys befsr11 for my home network. I have 3 machines and a 4 port hub. I have a motorola sb4100 surfboard cable modem with TW's RR as my provider. As you know, RR does not provide network support. Anyway, I have the cable modem to the linky to the hub. I can access the linky from any machine and all the machines see each other, in addition I have a solid green light for LAn, so the LAN is fine. 4 greens on the surfboard modem and solid green on the linky WAN light. ACT lights on the linky and surfboard blink in unison, so I think the connection is there, but I can't reach it from any machine. Running status shows 0.0.0.0 IP from RR. I power off and recycle the modem several times to no avail. I remove and reinstall TCP/IP on each client, still zilch. I look on RR's site and I see that if you change NIC's or computers, you may have to call RR to change your MAC to prevent a service interruption. I call tech support and they refer me to cust service. Cust service denies that they change MAC's. According to them, any new hardware should resync with the modem after I power down and back up. I argue a little while so I get put on hold while she talks to a rep. Some time later she says yes, she's right, they do not change MAC, there is no need. Any talk of routers etc. is met with "we don't provide network support." Linksys book says I may need info from isp such as DNS names, host names, etc. I think I shouldn't with dhcp, right? Anyway, I later found a MAC clone feature with the linky, which I changed to my old NIC. Now I can connect, but I had also made some other changes, like eliminating all other protocols and removing and reinstalling TCP/IP, as well as powering everything down numerous times, as well as updating to the latest firmware-1.37 I think. So, you see, it works, but I am not really sure why. I have read a few threads here and I know you guys can help me. Funny, I don't think I have seen the MAC issue addressed here, but there are too any threads to go through them all. If you could link me to that it would be fine, and my sincere apologies in advance if so. Beyond that I was wondering if anyone has compared the speeds of using a router vs. a 2 NIC server? Just from running some speed tests (unreliable I know) it seems that with the router I get the same speeds on each client with all connections open (around 2300kbps). With 2 NICs and ICS I would get around 1800-2000kbps on the server and 500-900 on the clients. Thanks. Sorry for the long post. I think speedguide is great!