[SWLUG] Mandrake and ntl Broadband - continued

[Tim Shapcott]

On Thursday 25 March 2004 22:44, 'o-Dzin Tridral wrote:

> This has encouraged me to take the plunge, and the engineer is due on
> Tuesday!

Fantastic!

> One person advised getting a router to provide some measure of
> firewalling and MAC address cloning, so I have gone for a Linksys
> WRT54G from Broadbandbuyer
> http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=463

This looks like a nice product. Good buy. I still prefer my Linux-based 
Smoothwall router personally, but hey, its personal choice :-)

> I've also been advised that I will have to register the MAC address,
> and that I can find this out via the 'ifconfig' command, and go to
> https://autoreg.autoregister.net/start.html to register.

You don't need the MAC address of the router or the PC... all you need is the 
MAC address of the cable modem, and this is printed on the box. In fact, I 
don't think you even need to type it in anywhere, I think the modem knows its 
own MAC address.

> If people think it might be useful, I'd happily provide a writeup of
> the whole process of setting things up once it is all done.

Sounds like a good idea to me, I'm more than happy to give any advice I may 
have to help.

> Meanwhile, just a couple of questions
>
> 1. Which address should I register - the computer or the router?

See above.
> 2. As I won't be around when the cable modem is installed, are there
> any particular instructions I should leave, or, is there any
> information I shopuld ask that the engineer leaves?

Not really, all the engineer needs to know is where to put the modem. They 
aren't allowed to touch a computer at all, legal issues etc. All he does is 
plug the modem into the cable and look at the lights on the front of it. 
These tell him all he needs to know, like bandwidth, signal propagation loss 
from the street corner box etc.

When you get back, you should do the following:

1) switch everything off (modem, router, PC).
2) connect ethernet cable from modem --> WAN port of router
3) connect ethernet cable from router --> PC
4) switch on router.
5) switch on PC
6) switch on modem.
7) point browser on PC to https://autoreg.autoregister.net/start.html
8) fill in the stuff that you need to fill in
9) reboot the router.

Good luck!

Tim