Router troubles...

Hi everyone,

My landlord recently allowed me to tie his DSL modem (SpeedStream 5100 - SBC/Yahoo DSL service) into the available CAT5 wiring that's present throughout our house. I bought a Zonet ZSR0104CP broadband router and set everything up. After a bit of troubleshooting (tweaking the configuration, turning the modem on and off, turning the router on and off, etc.), I got the setup to work. It worked fine until I had to change the power configuration (move where it was plugged in) to the final location. After that, it hasn't worked again. (I haven't invested as much time trying to tweak it again, though.)

As nothing has changed, I'm at a loss as to why nothing is 'visible' past the router. The router reports that it has a connection to the outside world. Network preferences reports that it is connected to the internet. When a web query is made, the WAN light on the router and the ACTIVITY light on the modem both blink together. If I unplug one of the ethernet lines from the router and plug it into the modem, then the connection is fine.

Does anyone have any ideas about what could be going on here?

It seems most puzzling that it did work, but now it doesn't.

Well, based on your suggestion, I have DNS issues.

I'm able to ping the router IP address, and the internet gateway IP address. Both return signal just fine. When I tried to use 'host' though, it timed out.

Checking the DNS setting on the router, it reports it as being 192.168.0.1, which is the access address for the DSL modem. Just as a shot in the dark, I plugged directly into the modem and checked the DNS that it was giving, plugged that in manually under Internet Prefs, then switched back to going through the router. No dice. It still doesn't find anything when going through the router.

Interestingly, 'cat' doesn't seem to update too frequently. It's still reporting the domain from the router, even though the router is out of the loop at the moment. 'nameserv' is showing the manual entries followed by the 192.168.0.1 address.

So, it's still not working properly, and I don't seem to be any closer to getting it solved.

Thanks for your input. Any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

MacFan25863 said:

I think sharing a connection is against TOS, perhaps Yahoo! caught on? (though that is VERY unlikely, because the only way for them to tell is to go physically examine the house...)

Click to expand...

Well, given that I've spoken with SBC tech support and all they said was that using a router wasn't the recommended way to share the connection (they wanted me to buy a $200 DSL modem with router built in), I don't think there's any violation here. Also, how could they keep me from doing it when there's a router but allow me to as soon as I hook a single computer up to it?

Okay, just to add another twist to the story, while I'm trying to get this figured out, I've set the modem to connect only to my Airport Express BS, with the AExpBS set to distribute IP addresses. In other words, the BS is working as a wireless router, and everything's working fine. If I put the ethernet router in, everything goes haywire!!

Arrgh!!!

[Edit]
I just checked the 'cat /etc/resolv.conf' in terminal, and it shows the nameserv IP as 10.0.1.1, which is the IP of the AExpBS. This is the same as I was getting from the router. This makes me wonder if the router is defective...

I contacted New Egg. They're having me return the router for replacement. I guess that's that.

Thanks for the troubleshooting help!

Hopefully when the new one arrives I won't need any further help...