Anyone on AOL with a cable modem?

[The_KiD]

I could do with a little bit of information.

If your connected to the modem via ethernet what IP does the modem give your PC?

Does it give a 192.168 address or a 169.blah address? If it's the latter does it give you a default gateway?

Thanks in advance?

 

[Phemo]

A 169.x.x.x address is what Windows determines for the network card when it can't contact a DHCP server so the only time you should ever see this address is if you're connecting two PCs via crossover cable (so no DHCP present) or if you have connectivity issues.

The cable modem itself usually has 192.168.100.1 as its IP for the web management, but the IP it passes onto a PC/router/whatever will be the Internet IP, therefore the default gateway depends on whatever IP range you happen to connect with.

I'm with Virgin but the AOL cable side should be exactly the same. My cable modem passes on an IP of 82.20.133.x and the default gateway for that is 82.20.132.1. Obviously this will differ among various Virgin customers as well as AOL customers.

The only time the cable modem should ever issue the PC with a 192.168.100.10 address is when there is no connectivity to the outside world or when the modem is still getting its IP parameters from the ISP. After a while, if everything is synced up correctly, the DHCP lease should update with the Internet address.

 

[The_KiD]

Ok basically here's the problem.

I was helping a friend with their PC.

They have AOL BB over cable and it just stopped working one day, after many calls to AOL's "tech" support they sent him a new modem, which worked for 2 or 3 days, then stopped.

AOL have said they can see his modem and that it is connected, but he cannot connect to the internet at all.

The AOL engineer said it should have 169.XXX address, which I told him wasnt right as that is just windows auto-config IP when it cant connect to anything.

We argued for a while until I managed to get them to send another modem, but the same thing happened, worked for 2 - 3 days then nothing.

He has 4 computers and I brought my laptop and none of them would get anything but a 169 address from the modem, so I set my laptop to static of 192.168.100.10 and then I could ping the modem and get on it's status pages etc.

So bearing in mind this is his 4th modem now and the same thing has happened on all 4 what could be the issue?

AOL and NTL have both said the circuit checks out and that they can connect from their side to his modem, but he cannot connect outwards and only ever gets the 169 address.

 

[Phemo]

If the PCs are getting a 169 address then that obviously means the cable modem isn't getting an address from the outside world so it has no DHCP details to pass over. It's clearly an AOL/Virgin fault but as always, getting them to admit to that is quite difficult. I guess the only way to get this resolved is to somehow get them to send an engineer out.

Out of curiousity, what modem is it and what lights are lit up on the front?

The engineer saying it should have a 169 address is quite clearly a fool as it should be the WAN IP.