Some other points that I had to do when I had Mediacom. -- I had to clone my MAC address from my cable modem to the router. Also, the router and the cable modem wanted to use the same IP, so I had to change the default IP for the router.
Wii on Wireless Internet with Mediacom?
- Thread starter dustinal
- Start date
The cable modem should not have an IP address, generally speaking, unless it is also a router. A DOCSIS modem itself will not have an IP.
The modem WILL only allow one MAC address (one network card, basically) through. This is why it's important to make sure that the modem is powered off before you plug it into the wireless router's WAN jack. The cable modem will then allocate it's one IP address to the MAC of the WAN port on the wireless router. The wireless router will then handle traffic from the rest of the stuff on the local ethernet, so that the cable modem only sees one MAC address.
The modem WILL only allow one MAC address (one network card, basically) through. This is why it's important to make sure that the modem is powered off before you plug it into the wireless router's WAN jack. The cable modem will then allocate it's one IP address to the MAC of the WAN port on the wireless router. The wireless router will then handle traffic from the rest of the stuff on the local ethernet, so that the cable modem only sees one MAC address.
I think I understood that. :wink: Good to know that the modem should be off when plugging it into the router. I'm not sure I did that before.
Man, now I just want to get home so I can try this!
you have to register your mac address with Mediacom and if you have already connected your pc to your mediacom modem the mac address mediacom has is your pc mac address. When you switch to the wireless router you need to register the routers mac address with mediacom. You can do this in your router settings but it may be easiet to call mediacom and tell them you need to register the mac address of your new router.
It doesn't need to be off, it just can't have been hooked up to anything else beforehand. If it doesn't work, you can just power cycle it, and it should come up.
It really should be pretty much automatic, so long as you have the wireless side configured properly.
I've never had to do this. Recycling power to the modem generally fixes that.
They make you register each MAC? That sounds hokey. Just what kind of shananigans go on at Mediacom? Usually they just register the modem and anything behind it doesnt matter.
I don't remember having to do that when I set up my wireless internet. I had my computer hooked straight into the modem before that, but then brought in a wireless router when I bought my 360. I now run my desktop wireless and my 360 hardwired into the wireless router (I haven't bought the equipment to run my 360 wireless yet) and have had no problems working either my computer or 360.
The modem (at least the crappy modem I have) only will allow one MAC through (i.e. it's not a router). It's the first MAC that it sees that sends a DHCP request, I presume.
As a tip, if you can hardwire stuff, do it. The more hardwired stuff you have, the happier your wireless network will be.
If you can hardwire everything, even better.
Yeah I figured that. It only allows on connection per modem without a router. I guess I didnt read far enough back, did he say he didnt have a router or did?
I too have a Mac with Mediacom (connected through a wireless Airport Extreme base station). I really struggled getting mine set up too and found that if the router was too close to the modem, it wouldn't work. (Strange, huh?) I didn't need to register my Macs with Mediacom either. Don't forget to re-set the modem (hold the re-set button for at least 30 seconds)
Just making sure you understand that a Media Access Control (MAC) address is a different thing than a Macintosh computer.
Sorry! :embarrassed:
(I should have suspected the all-caps as something different)
I've never had to do this. Maybe we're talking about different things. I've installed several routers and wireless access points on my network. I always just run ethernet from the modem to the WAN port of the router and run ethernet from the router to the access points (and to my hardwired PCs). I've never had to mess with MAC cloning.
There's a big difference between a switch a router and a modem, though they may look similar from the outside.
The modem I got from Mediacom only has one ethernet port on it.
When I hooked up my wireless network at home I had to pay extra. It was for an extra IP address though not for the wireless network. I had to have it to get my laptops to work. The Wii worked right away with the wireless router here so it could also be that or they sold me a $5 per month line that fixed my problem. Either way the right answer is probably to set aside 4-5 hours and wait on hold for their tech support to walk you through it.
Do you have some sort of weird requirements for a static IP for a VPN or something?
There really isn't much these days that can't work through a NAT connection. I doubt you really need that extra IP, if you wired things up right.
