Rogers high-speed internet

[Kevin Cozens]

Daniel Armstrong wrote:
> Is there any special 'gotchas' configuring Rogers high-speed internet
> to use with Linux? My major concern is there might be some config or
> software install that requires a Windows box... which will not be
> available at this address.
Not really. I went the "self install" route. The technicians came, ran 
the wires, connected the modem to the cable, ran some tests with a 
laptop to make sure the modem was online and talking to the Rogers network.

The one catch with a self install is the computer/modem cabling. The 
only cable I got with my modem was a USB cable. I used it at first to 
get connected. I eventually switched to using Ethernet when I added a 
router to my local network.

If you want to use USB to access the modem, you need to configure the 
hardware device settings for "USB CDC Ethernet driver". Accessing a 
cable modem using Ethernet is just a matter of picking the driver for 
your NIC.

After that it was a simple matter of connecting a cable between the 
computer and the modem followed by configuring Linux to use DHCP on the 
NIC.  You don't even need to enter your assigned hostname. I haven't and 
find I don't need to.

BTW, If you get a Terayon cable modem, watch out. They are known to be 
flaky. If you start experiencing random disconnects from the Internet 
from time to time and a power cycle of the modem gets it on line after 
you have been using the modem a couple of months, the modem may be going 
bad on you. Report the problem to Rogers and track your outages.

After bugging them about my outages and saying I suspect the modem may 
be bad, they replaced the modem on the second service call to my home. 
The two guys that came the second time were standing at the front door 
with a new Motorola Surfboard 5100 modem in hand. They said that when 
they hear of connection problems and know that a Terayon modem was 
involved, they just swap it out. Rogers even gave me one months access 
free to keep me happy after all the trouble. (I didn't ask for it.) If I 
had reported it sooner I might have gotten two months.
> Can the cable modem be accessed and configured through a web browser?
It can be accessed via a web browser. To access the modem and its status 
screen, enter the address of http://192.168.100.1/ in to your web 
browser. There is little in the way of any configuration you can do. You 
can get useful status information about the cable signal.
> Does the Rogers cable modem act as a router and dynamically assign a
> IP address to the connected Linux box?
Yes. The following is from the web page served by the Motorola Surfboard 
5100 cable modem I have.

DHCP Server Enabled
The SURFboard cable modem can be used as a gateway to the Internet by a 
maximum of 32 users on a Local Area Network (LAN). When the Cable Modem 
is disconnected from the Internet, users on the LAN can be dynamically 
assigned IP Addresses by the Cable Modem DHCP Server. These addresses 
are assigned from an address pool which begins with 192.168.100.11 and 
ends with 192.168.100.42. Statically assigned IP addresses for other 
devices on the LAN should be chosen from outside of this range

If you add a router to the network at some point in time, just configure 
the WAN settings of the router to use the MAC address of the computer 
NIC. That is what I did when I added a wireless router and everything is 
working fine.

-- 
Cheers!

Kevin.

http://www.ve3syb.ca/           |"What are we going to do today, Borg?"
Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172      |"Same thing we always do, Pinkutus:
                                |  Try to assimilate the world!"
#include <disclaimer/favourite> |              -Pinkutus & the Borg 

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