Hi,


I have some questions about (former) NTL / Virgin Media cable broadband
services.

I understand that they now only supply a single ethernet port cable modem
(i.e. / e.g. no more USB via a STB [not that that is strictly or at all
relevant for my query / queries here as no STB would be likely to be in
place - i.e. cable broadband only service [no TV, etc.]). Their modems /
service used to bind itself to the first MAC it met - is this still the
case? Would, and I read more recently that resetting the MAC is no longer
such an issue, it be possible ignoring anything to do with MACs anyhow, to
route the modem ethernet connection through a hub or switch before it meets
its "one PC"? I.e. for cabling reasons (not any long enough cat5 cables so
would need to have one from cable modem to hub / switch and then one out of
that to the target PC).

Where is the best place / where are the best places for cable (more the
broadband side) discussions? Their used to be many forums for cable
broadband, cable modems, ntl cable chat generally.

Any input greatly appreciated and gratefully received.


Best wishes,




News Reader

News Reader wrote:
Its not considered polite to cross post to a number of newsgroups by the
way.

Sorry I am struggling to follow your questions .... here's my attempt

Telewest that was, many moons ago used to require that users registered
the MAC address of their PC network card, but this was discontinued some
years ago.

You cannot plug the cable modem into a hub which is a dumb device - you
will need to acquire a router. Before purchasing take care to ensure
that you do NOT purchase an ADSL combined modem/router as this will not
work.

You presumably already have power in the area that the cable modem is
located so power for the router should not be an issue. All you would
need to do would be to connect via RJ45 Cat 5 cable the broadband modem
to the WAN port of the router and connect your existing cat5 cable to
the LAN side of the router (routers typically have a number of LAN ports
to connect to)

For more info try here http://www.networklab.co.uk/cmodem/

Regards

Alan

News Reader wrote:
I think you need to re-read things before posting, however if I
understand the question :

A hub or switch will be fine for 1 PC, as it is essentially invisible to
the modem.

If you want to add more PCs at a later date then the easiest way is to
find the MAC address of your PC & spoof this on the router you will be
adding.

Have you not thought of adding a wireless router & connecting over wifi?

Resident Drunk wrote:

You are quite correct - I was imagining more than one PC connected to
the modem.

Regards

Alan

Alan wrote:
In which case you need a router rather than a switch or hub.

What I found easiest to do when I swapped from a STB to a cable modem
last year was :

Connect a PC directly to the modem and run through the setup (you have
to do this from a directly connected PC I think).

(apols if the next few steps are teaching granny to suck eggs)

Open a dos window (Start/Run, type cmd hit enter)

Type ipconfig/all in the black box & make a note of the 12 hex digits
next to 'Physical Address' for your network card.

Pull the cable out of the modem and plug it into the router.

Log onto your router and find the page for MAC Address Clone (or
similar) and enter the numbers noted above. You will probably have to
replace the hyphens for colons (e.g. A1-4F-93-CB-4A-FF becomes
A1:4F:93:CB:4A:FF).

Plug the router into your modem, cycle the power and you should be
running - simply plug the other PCs into the router.

In message <5b55ooF2oecikU1@mid.individual.net>, Resident Drunk
<askmeforit@spam.com> writes
when I recently reconnected to VM (after using NTL before ADSL) there
was no need to clone the MAC in the router.

--
dave @ stejonda

News Reader wrote:
You've always been able to connect a router up to NTL for as long as I
can remember. The MAC of the router is then registered to the service
and you connect PCs and other network equipment behind that. It will
not work with a hub or a switch only, you have to have a router to route
traffic for multiple devices, you can connect switches behind the router
if you want more ports. I've changed routers a few times (although not
in quite a while) and it was just a case of registering the new routers
MAC with the NTL login page that came up. A pretty big forum for what
is now Virgin Media is here:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/

cheers,
Paul.

Alan wrote:

Yes it is (and it's preferred practice too btw) provided the post is relevant to
all the groups.

In fact the alternative multi-posting is to be deprecated since it results in
multiple disparate threads that not all of the respondents may be aware of.

Get your ideas up to date !

Graham

<groups restored>

Eeyore wrote:
Not sure what voip has to do with this

"Eeyore" <rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:464D7ADC.117E292D@hotmail.com...
All depends to which groups you're cross-posting.
Many have a "no cross-post" policy.

Try cross-posting something to uk.music.guitar and see what happens!

George

"George Weston" <geoweston@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:5b5fjmF2r0ut5U1@mid.individual.net
Whatever. But the topic definitely isn't relevant to uk.telecom.voip - I
see no mention of VoIP anywhere. Please remove this group from the cross
postings.

Ivor

<mymail@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ksfr43hgd5dcil033knpbdvk95i3jjmlfd@4ax.com
[snip]

Yes Ron. If you say so.

Ivor

On Fri, 18 May 2007 15:01:30 GMT, mymail@hotmail.com wrote:

When did he issue an order there?

The word "please", particularly when talking about something you have
no power whatsoever to enforce, is NOT an order.
--
Alex Heney, Global Villager
Computer - A device designed to speed and automate errors.
To reply by email, my address is alexATheneyDOTplusDOTcom

"Alex Heney" <me8@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:ndhr43pf5fob21jdr1qsv1ktdg22jmnso2@4ax.com...

Hi,


I think the voip inclusion is an intended expansion of audience. A relevant
proportion of cable users may be inclined to or do only read for example one
or other group in isolation. Hence, inclusion improves and increases the
prospective "cable using or knowledgeable" audience of the post (and
consequently in a relevant fashion - further VoIP is a related technology
being carried generally over broadband services etc., so further anecdotal
or incidental useful and helpful information may emerge).


Best wishes,




News Reader

"News Reader" <no@email.invalid> wrote in message
news:f2ip4l$sgl$1@inews.gazeta.pl...

Hi,


Thanks for all your posts and input. Much appreciated.


Best wishes,




News Reader

"News Reader" <no@email.invalid> wrote in message
news:f2ip4l$sgl$1@inews.gazeta.pl...
This was never the case, you couldnt manually enter a the MAC address for
the ethernet ports you wanted to use, you had to connect the pc, reboot the
modem or tv box, and enter a registration URL that would update the box, and
the boxes could store a max of 3 units, but you could delete and add more
(this was just the way the firmware worked and it didnt limit anything)..

Ideally you would add a pc, remove the pc, add a router with the spoof'd MAC
of the pc and everything is fine.




as I said above, the ideal way is to get a router (one with a WAN port),
they are generally called Broadband Routers.. You dont need a "CAble Modem
Router" or a "ISDN/ISDN2 Modem router".. It's actually really really easy
to do and the instructions that ntl used to send out are really enough to do
what it takes.



http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/ is a good information site
ntlhellworld.com was taken over by ntl, and since virgions acquistion of ntl
95% of the support that ntl offer'd has now moved into a black hole
somewhere :/
digitalspy.co.uk would be a good place to go
and possibly cableforum.co.uk

[Followups set to uk.telecom.broadband]

In uk.telecom Paul Hayes <nomailforme@polog40.org.uk> wrote:
What the OP wants to do should be possible: use a hub or switch to extend an
ethernet cable. But they can only attach to one machine to it, ie:

Cable modem ----------- hub/switch ----------- PC/router --- PC 1
+------ PC 2

A hub won't care about MAC addresses, a switch will take of them by just
forwarding frames from one side to the other. What they can't do is:

Cable modem ------------ hub/switch ------ PC1
+---------- PC2

because that'll present two MAC addresses ot the cable modem. NTL used to
offer an option where you could do this for an extra fiver (advertised as
being for connecting games consoles) but give it up because everyone has
routers these days.

If the hub/switch is in a convenient place, the more efficient method is to
use the switch that's integrated into a router:

cable modem ------------ router ----- PC 1
+=-------- PC 2

Theo

On Fri, 18 May 2007 00:40:17 +0100, in uk.telecom.broadband , "News
Reader" <no@email.invalid> wrote:

I think they're trying to phase out the STB with modem model, as most
STBs won't handle 20Mbps.

Not been the case for several years. If you reboot the modem, it binds
to the first mac it finds after the reboot, up to (I think ) a max of
three different MACs in a 24-hour period.
..
Sure, but pointless - you can't connect anything else to the hub.
..
You need some cat5 couplers. Cost about a quid each from maplin.

--
Mark McIntyre

"Theo Markettos" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:A-s*3P4Kr@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...

Hi,


Thanks. That is very helpful .

It confirms what I essentially thought / hoped would be the case.

Nice diagrams to - good job and thanks .

The only other thing I was hoping to do, was to switch which one (only every
one at any one time) of two PCs was connected by unplugging one PC from the
hub / switch and plugging the other one in. This should be fine, bar MAC
issues (which should be fairly straightforward to deal with anyhow I
understand).


Thanks again and best wishes,




News Reader

"Mark McIntyre" <markmcintyre@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:3las439vb5ustquh2971it2s29d01hosqk@4ax.com...

Hi,


Thanks for your post and that later point is a very good one.

Not much point having a hub / switch sucking juice when a £1 coupler could
do the job better .

Thanks again.


Best wishes,




News Reader