Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

No IP Address to my Airport Extreme

R

Redsand187

macrumors member
Original poster
I've been battling a stupid problem with my internet connection. I have a G5 a G4, and a newer MacBook.

About a week ago my internet connection would drop out for hours. After setting messing around with my router and modem and reseting everything it would work for a few hours then stop again. My connection is provided by Charter Cable, through a Linksys BEFCMU10 V4.0 modem, to a Linksys WRT55AG V2.0 router. If I removed the router and wired directly into the G5 from the modem, the internet connection would start working perfectly. If I went back, reset the router and hooked it up again, I would lose connection and it would actually take the modem completely offline, requiring the modem to be reset to get reconnected. So I decided I would spring for an Airport Extreme Base Station, figuring the router was bad.

Well I get home with the new AEBS hook it up, and does the same thing. I do appreciate Apples menus and troubleshooting guides. (The main reason I decided to get the AEBS) Well after going through the setup, it says it is not receiving an IP address.

Can anyone offer any reassurance that it is actually the modem. I assume that it has to be. However it working directly connected seems odd. I don't know if it just cannot pass an IP address to a router.
 
The people in this thread...

http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-23910-linksys-wrt54g-and-charter

Seem to be describing the same problems as you. There seem to be two separate problems involved -- the first being that, for some of the users, there is a MAC address issue and the router is being refused network connection, and the second that for other users, they are being distributed weird WAN IP addresses on which the routers choke.

Both problems seem to revolve around Charter not following networking standards. 🙄

For #1, one solution listed is the MAC spoofing. I'm not sure how to do this on an Apple router or if it's even supported. It seems to me like an absurdist solution. There may be an alternative, which would involve logging into your modem's settings and changing it from bridging its IP address to distributing IP addresses on the subnet. The downside is that if you have a public facing computer, to which traffic is being directed from the public internet to the WAN IP, you have another layer of subnets now. Otherwise there really aren't any downsides.

For #2, the solution offered is the "Charter" power cycling sequence... I don't really understand why this would be a permanent fix, but I guess it's worth a try?
 
I had Charter Cable while living in the Columbia River Gorge, and had a similar problem, where once in a while I would loose network connection, and the only way to fix it was to restart the modem, and my router. I ended up calling them up and they sent a tech out to check my line, and he found that it was a problem from the Headend, which was in The Dalles, OR. The next day, the replaced the blade that ran the service, and I never had a problem again. I would call Charter, setup a service call so they can diagnose the problem and put in a service order with the company to fix the headend.

TEG
 
Thanks for the help. I haven't talked to Charter yet. However, my sister also has Charter internet, so I swapped modems with them. They just have one iMac, so mine had no problems at their house. They actually have a Motorola Surboard SB5101 that they rent from Charter. I set it up at my house with my network and everything works perfectly.

So I'm curious if when they reset IP's or whatever it is they do randomly if the problem will go away. Is it possible I just got a bad combination from Charter. Either way I plan on having them come out and take a look next week.

I know that they will probably blame it on me using my own modem, and will tell me to rent one of theirs. But I don't want to get roped into that racket, especially if I still can run into the problem later on down the road.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back