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This is an upgrade?
Jul. 29th, 2015 12:58 amI got an email the other day from my cable internet provider (which I will not name because last time I diod I got a reply to my post from one of their people, which indicates that they are scanning public posts here)
Anyway, it said my modem needed to be upgraded as my current one wasn't capable of the higher speeds they now offer.Not sure if it'll make an actual difference as I've got the cheapest plan, but it was a free upgrade so what the heck.
Ity arrived monday. Which was nice fast service (I think I ordered itThursday).
There were some good things. It runs off AC directly, so there's no power brick to get in the way.It has built-in wi-fi. B/GN in fact. It has support for two phone lines (not that I'm ever going to order phone service from them. Has a bult-in battery backup (supposedly just for the phone service, but we'll see.)
And it has 4 ethernet ports. The old one had only 1. Nothing in the enclosed material said what speeds were supported though.
I was able to download a better user guide online that told me it supported 10/100/1000. Somethiung that *really* should have been in the material. If they are going to menntion that it supports B/G/N wifi, you'd think they'd mention hat it supported gigabit ethernet.
Obviously, there had to be a built-in router. This looked good, as I need to update my existing standalone router to one that supports gigabt, as I've got a bunch of stuff (including a network drive) that use it.
I found the login screen easily. Which was *identical* to the user login screen for the cable companies website. Since there was no mention of router stiuff in the docs, much less a password, I tried my ID and password from the cable company. Didn't work.
I finally gave up and plugged my existing router into it.
That got me to the activation screen. And aactivation seemed to go ok. The laptop I'd plugged in directly went thru ok.
I seemed to be able to access the web from my main system which was connected to the router. pinging various sites worked. Activation screen came up again. I entered the info.
Then I finished reading a chapter in an online novel I was reading. Went to go to next chapter. Back to the activation screen.
After going thru this several times, I call suupport. I was not happy that the first suggested solution was to reset the *computer. When I pointed out that it was hooked up thru a router, he backed doewn and had me dioconect and power down the router (which I'd already done when first hooking things up. *sigh*
Had to leave it off and disconnected for several minutes. Not mere;ly while the varous lights on the modem did their remote reset thing, but fgor several minutes after. At last I had things working again.
I asked about the router setup in the modem. Turns out that the ologibn/password were "admin" and :"password". Again, not in the docs.
I checked iy out later. This is the *dumbest* router I've ever seen. It is set to 10.0.0.1. Ok, that's a valid LAN address. But it's set for a 256 address LAN. Which is *not* what 10.x.x.x is supposed to be used for. That's what the 192.168.x.x ranges are for.
The base address for the LAN is *not* configurable. It is not possible to reserve IP addresses based on MAC addresses. Not on the wired or wireless side. Mind you are lot of low end routers have that last one.
The SSID for the wireless is set to HOME-xxxx where xxxx is the last 4 digits of the MAC address of the modem. Not changeable. The security and password are not configurable.
In fact the only things that are configurable seem to be:
The admin password, and under "advanced" you can set up port mapping. That's it.
Well, there's a parental control section I haven't checked.
So unless I want to reconfigure several systems, I can't hook up to the modem except thru a router that is more capable. Also can't use the wifi for the same reason.
So I guess I still need to get that gigabit router.
The one "good" thing is that I can set up a system hooked directly to the modem and have it be pretty damn isolated from the rest of my systems. I actually may have a use for that, but still.
Anyway, it said my modem needed to be upgraded as my current one wasn't capable of the higher speeds they now offer.Not sure if it'll make an actual difference as I've got the cheapest plan, but it was a free upgrade so what the heck.
Ity arrived monday. Which was nice fast service (I think I ordered itThursday).
There were some good things. It runs off AC directly, so there's no power brick to get in the way.It has built-in wi-fi. B/GN in fact. It has support for two phone lines (not that I'm ever going to order phone service from them. Has a bult-in battery backup (supposedly just for the phone service, but we'll see.)
And it has 4 ethernet ports. The old one had only 1. Nothing in the enclosed material said what speeds were supported though.
I was able to download a better user guide online that told me it supported 10/100/1000. Somethiung that *really* should have been in the material. If they are going to menntion that it supports B/G/N wifi, you'd think they'd mention hat it supported gigabit ethernet.
Obviously, there had to be a built-in router. This looked good, as I need to update my existing standalone router to one that supports gigabt, as I've got a bunch of stuff (including a network drive) that use it.
I found the login screen easily. Which was *identical* to the user login screen for the cable companies website. Since there was no mention of router stiuff in the docs, much less a password, I tried my ID and password from the cable company. Didn't work.
I finally gave up and plugged my existing router into it.
That got me to the activation screen. And aactivation seemed to go ok. The laptop I'd plugged in directly went thru ok.
I seemed to be able to access the web from my main system which was connected to the router. pinging various sites worked. Activation screen came up again. I entered the info.
Then I finished reading a chapter in an online novel I was reading. Went to go to next chapter. Back to the activation screen.
After going thru this several times, I call suupport. I was not happy that the first suggested solution was to reset the *computer. When I pointed out that it was hooked up thru a router, he backed doewn and had me dioconect and power down the router (which I'd already done when first hooking things up. *sigh*
Had to leave it off and disconnected for several minutes. Not mere;ly while the varous lights on the modem did their remote reset thing, but fgor several minutes after. At last I had things working again.
I asked about the router setup in the modem. Turns out that the ologibn/password were "admin" and :"password". Again, not in the docs.
I checked iy out later. This is the *dumbest* router I've ever seen. It is set to 10.0.0.1. Ok, that's a valid LAN address. But it's set for a 256 address LAN. Which is *not* what 10.x.x.x is supposed to be used for. That's what the 192.168.x.x ranges are for.
The base address for the LAN is *not* configurable. It is not possible to reserve IP addresses based on MAC addresses. Not on the wired or wireless side. Mind you are lot of low end routers have that last one.
The SSID for the wireless is set to HOME-xxxx where xxxx is the last 4 digits of the MAC address of the modem. Not changeable. The security and password are not configurable.
In fact the only things that are configurable seem to be:
The admin password, and under "advanced" you can set up port mapping. That's it.
Well, there's a parental control section I haven't checked.
So unless I want to reconfigure several systems, I can't hook up to the modem except thru a router that is more capable. Also can't use the wifi for the same reason.
So I guess I still need to get that gigabit router.
The one "good" thing is that I can set up a system hooked directly to the modem and have it be pretty damn isolated from the rest of my systems. I actually may have a use for that, but still.
