[SWLUG] NTL Cable modem problems in MDK10.0 install

['o-Dzin Tridral]

I hope this may be of help.  I received a lot of good advice from this
group in March 2004 and setup NTL Broadband on Mandrake Linux 9.1 in
April.  I've since moved to 10.1 with no problems at all.

Having the wireless router has been useful as we can have out 4
computers (all Mandrake Linux 10.1) on the internet at the same time.

It would ge good if NTL could pick up on how easy it can be to use
their service from Linux and actually offer some support.

'o-Dzin



Ntl Broadband and Mandrake Linux 9.1

In March, I asked for help with setting up ntl Broadband on Mandrake
Linux 9.1, in the South Wales Linux User Group and Mandrake-Linux
mailing lists. Thanks to the advice I received I was able to get
successfully set up. Ntl themselves do not offer support for using
broadband with Linux, and the information they send may not be enough
to create a working system, so the support of Linux users is
important. I'm grateful for all the help and advice I received. For
the benefit of anyone else who wants to use ntl Broadband with Linux,
this is a summary of the process.

Components
01. Computer (Evesham eLinux 2700). (This has an ethernet port.)
02. Cable Modem
03. Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router
(This is not an essential part, but I was recommended to use a router
because it has some firewall capabilities. It should also mean that I
can let other computers use the same internet connection).
04. Mandrake Linux 9.1

Physical Setup
01. Cable Modem - Ethernet - WRT54G
02. WRT54G - Ethernet - Computer

Power on
01. Router
02. Computer
03. Cable Modem

(Linux seems to have automatically detected the network connection)

Register
01. Go to https://autoreg.aurotegister.net/
02. Select Broadband
03. Select Register
04. Enter 11 character serial number from letter (***-***-*****)
05. Continue
06. Pin Number from letter (********)
07. Surname (*******)
08. Continue

At this point the registration process responds with
[Verifying ...]
(Customer details check)
This takes a little time.

09. Continue

At this point the registration process asks
'Do you already have a dial up account?'

If you have a dial up account and you want to convert it to a
broadband account, answer 'Yes', if you don't have a dial up account,
or want to keep it, answer 'No'. I said 'No' because I wanted to keep
the dial up as a fallback.

10. No (if you want to retain what you've got)
11. Mother's maiden name (****)
12. Continue

At this point the registration process responds with
[Transferring data from autoreg ...]
(Displays top part of a page with ntl: and 'Terms and conditions' and
nothing else.

The registration got stuck at this point. I waited about 30 m inutes,
stopped it and started again. I tried this three times in all, each
time going back to point 04 above. I was originally using Mozilla as
the web browser, and I switched to Konqueror. I don't think that made
the difference, but eventually the process continued.

The 'Terms and conditions' are displayed
13. Select I accept

'Internet advice' is displayed
14. Select continue

'Registration information' is displayed offering a proposed e-mail
address etc. You can change this if you wish.
15. Modify
(Change the settings)
16. Continue

The process responds with
[registering user ...]
Membership number *********
Complelete registration

17. Continue

The Cable modem reboots
Lights go out ... lights come back

18. Quit

That was it. It seemed to take a while for registration to be
successful. For a while nothing worked, than after about 5 minutes it
sprang into life and it's been working ever since.

Once again, my thanks to all those who offered advice. I hope this is
helpful to others and also that one day Ntl will support Linux on
broadband.

'o-Dzin