How to setup your cable modem under Linux _________________________________________________________________ _Disclaimer:_ The information contained herein is NOT official information of any kind and there are no warranties to the accuracy of the data. All information is provided in good faith. Use at your own risk. _________________________________________________________________ Vladimir Vuksan, vuksan@veus.hr v 2.5, Last revised: January 29th, 1998 This document attempts to answer basic questions on how to connect your Linux box to cable modem or cable Internet provider. This list is in no way complete, I try to add things up every so often so if you don't find information you are looking for you can try getting the latest version of this document at http://www.cro.net/~vuksan/cable.html. I might have included some new info in the meantime. Also if you have some corrections and additions please do not hesitate to e-mail me. Is your ethernet card working ? All of the setups below use ethernet cards (network cards) to connect you somehow to the Internet. That is why first we need to check if your ethernet card is working and most importantly can be used (read is supported) in Linux. There is a comprehensive Ethernet HOWTO at http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.html if you would like to read it otherwise try this. Boot into Linux During boot up a message like this should appear eth0: 3c509 at 0x300 tag 1, 10baseT port, address 00 20 af ee 01 23, IRQ 10. 3c509.c:1.07 6/15/95 becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov If you missed it type dmesg If you see a message like that you are set and you can go to the next section. If you can't see a message like this there are two possible explanations, your ethernet card is PNP (plug-n-play) and you need to use tools such as isapnptools to get it recognized (I am not quite sure on this because I don't have a single PNP card so correct me if I am wrong). The other explanation is that you need to set up your card. Most cards today come with DOS programs that are used to setup your card. For example to get my 3COM 3c509 to work all I needed to do is boot into DOS and use a utility to configure my card. There is usually a Auto Configure option. If that does not solve your problem try changing the IRQ for the card using the same utility. I find that usually IRQs 10,11 and 12 work well. If none of this solves your problem please read the Ethernet HOWTO referenced above or post to a newsgroup such as comp.os.linux.setup or comp.os.linux.networking. Who is my ISP ? If you think you have the card recognized you have to now look at the entry for your ISP. I have sorted the information according to a provider because setups are mostly ISP specific. MediaOne Express @Home/@Work RoadRunner Rogers Wave Sunflower Cablevision Jones Intercable GTE Worldwind Telstra Bigpond Cable, Australia MediaOne Express MediaOne Express is a Internet cable service provided by MediaOne. The hardware setup consists of a cable modem produced by LanCity or General Instruments which plugs into an ethernet card using a 10BaseT (UTP-45) cable. Assignment of IP addresses and other networking information is done using DHCP which stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. The only thing you need to do is read the DHCPcd mini-HOWTO and configure your system appropriately. There no other necessary configuration. DHCPcd mini-HOWTO can be found at http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/DHCPcd.html. There is also Linux & MediaOne FAQ which I would you should read. Information about MediaOne Service can be found at their Web site at http://www.mediaone.com @Home/@Work From what I understand @Home uses a similar kind of setup as MediaOne (to be investigated....) If you are experiencing problems with @Home and Linux check out the message from Dan Sullivan dsulli@home.com _________________________________________________________________ _I finally got my cable modem working under Linux with @Home. Feel free to reproduce anything from now on. Here's the details: Before you try anything, go to control panel, network, and properties for your network card. Write down all of the information. You will need it later. TCI, the company that runs @Home issues a Etherlink III 3c509b NIC for all of their customers. What TCI does not tell you is that when they install your ethernet card, it is in PnP mode. Now in Slakware, if you uncomment the proper line for this card, everything will appear to be working fine. There will be no system problems, but the 'PC' light on your CyberSURFR modem will never turn on. If you are using Slakware, and are having this problem, reboot in DOS and skip the next paragraph. In RedHat5, your system will have some trouble autodetecting the card. If you try to pass the paramaters manually, the system will hang. This should be obvious that your card is not setup properly. Before wasting anymore time, reboot in DOS (This is a must because as of 12/25/97, there is no utility written for Linux to turn off PnP and turn on ISA.) TCI does not give out a utility disk for your ethernet card, so you must download the utility from one of 3Com's sites. Here is a direct link to the file you need: ftp://ftp.3com.com/pub/network-interface-cards/shipping-drivers/3c509x .exe Once you have downloaded that file, put it in a temporary (or permanent) directory. Run it (self-extracting). There is a file that will be extracted called 'Pnpdsabl.bat'. You will need to run this batch file. Once that is out of the way, your card will be set to ISA not PnP. Fortunately, the ISA works in Linux. What you've now done has made your ethernet card 'broken' in Windows 95. You'll need to go to Control Panel, Network, and remove the network card and the adapter. Reboot your computer, and again go back to control panel. Go to add/remove new hardware, and have it autodetect. It will automatically setup the correct i/o address for you. You will most likely need to reboot again. Now you should be in Windows 95, with the 'PC' light on your cable modem on. You will also notice that none of your internet applications seem to work, you can't ping, and you can't resolve DNS. You now must go back to control panels, network, and click on properties for your network card (not the adapter). Re-enter all the data you wrote down, and reboot. With a little luck, your ethernet card should be working in Windows 95, and ready to rock in Linux. Hope this might help some people. Dan Sullivan _ _________________________________________________________________ If you live Hampton Roads, VA you should read a little note from Mark Solomon: _________________________________________________________________ _With the @home service in Hampton Roads, VA, it is absolutly neccessary to run dhcpcd-0.70 (or higher) that supports the "-h" option to specify the hostname of your computer. Without this switch the @home dhcpcd server will not assign addresses. _ _________________________________________________________________ Information about @Home Service can be found at their Web site at http://www.home.com RoadRunner RoadRunner is an Internet cable service provided by Excalibur Group (Time Warner). The hardware setup consists of a cable modem produced by Motorola and Toshiba which plugs into an ethernet card using a 10BaseT (UTP-45) cable. The details about Linux setup for Road Runner can be found at http://home.neo.lrun.com/rrlinux/ If that works out for you great, otherwise if it doesn't and you live in San Diego area this page might be of help http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/rr/index.html Information about RoadRunner Service can be found at their Web site at http://www.rr.com Rogers Wave The hardware setup consists of a cable modem produced by LanCity which plugs into an ethernet card using a 10BaseT (UTP-45) cable. I don't know how RW operates but there is a pretty good page at http://home.on.rogers.wave.ca/mreid/rogwave/index.html explaining other aspects of the service. Other information about Rogers Wave Service can be found at their Web site at http://www.rogerswave.ca Sunflower Cablevision This information is provided by Andrew Novick: _"I recently saw your cable modem howto and I have an addition. Sunflower Cable is a company stricly in Lawrence KS, however we have a rather large Linux community because of the University of Kansas. On our local LUG mailing list, we are starting to get more and more questions on how to configure their linux machine for the cable modem. It is just regular static addressing, and the modem is made by Zenith." _ To configure your Linux box make sure you get all the pertinent information from the Cablevision tech support or use these. 1. IP address: Assigned by SunFlower Cablevision 2. Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 3. Gateway (router) address: 24.124.11.254 4. Hostname: Assigned by SunFlower Cablevision 5. Domain name: lawrence.ks.us 6. Primary DNS server (nameserver): 24.124.0.1 7. Secondary DNS server (nameserver): 24.124.0.6 Have all those numbers written down before you proceed. To register, visit http://www.sunflower.com. To register in the lawrence.ks.us domain contact Stephen Spencer at gladiatr@artorius.sunflower.com Under RedHat use Control Panel and Network Configuration to put in these numbers. Just say Add Interface, Device type=Ethernet, Device name=eth0 (this is zero not O in eth0) then fill out all the fields. Then click activate. In Slackware type netconfig. When you are finished reboot and you should be up and running. If this doesn't work make sure you do network card troubleshooting. Jones Intercable According to Bob Kimble: _Jones Internet Cable supplies a Hybrid cable modem that connects to your machine / network via 10BaseT ethernet. They provide you with a static IP address for your machine, and another static IP address for the modem. The modem acts as a gateway to their network. Your IP address and the modem IP address are on the same network and have the same network mask (in my case 255.255.255.0 -- 24 bits). They also provide two DNS IP addresses which you enter into your configuration. I just entered the numbers when I installed Red Hat Linux 5 and it worked like a champ from the beginning. Since then I have configured my Linux machine to enable IP masquerading and domain name services, and it now acts as a router for my entire private network. My other machines are connected via a private network using the addresses 192.168.0.x. They are running Windows 95, Windows NT (Intel and Alpha) and OS/2. My Linux machine has two IP addresses -- the one from the cable company and one from the 192.168.0.x private network. Everything works like a champ. All six machines can browse the web simultaneously. My kids are even able to connect to their favorite game site, "The Realm" from Sierra. _ According to Mike Hughes: _The information you provided for Rogers Wave works for GTE WorldWind cable modem services also. However, GTE's service is EXTREMELY slow, barely faster than ISDN. more information at http://www.psilord.com _ Telstra Bigpond Cable, Australia According to Douglas Garstang Linux cannot be used on Telstra's network due to proprietory software Telstra is using. Everyone should be advised to contact Telstra and demand that they make a Linux port of their access software :-). You can e-mail their Helpdesk at helpdesk@c3.telstra-mm.net.au. More about the whole thing from Douglas: _We have a Cable network here in Australia. It was launched officially to the public in May this year and its called "Telstra Big Pond Cable". Telstra, and its daughter company, Telstra Multimedia (who run the service) are the main communications carrier here. The network uses Motorola Cybersufr cable modems, over HFC available to a few million homes in the Sydney and Melbourne areas. Apparently, it was the biggest cable rollout ever. (sorry if I sound like a salesman... I used to work for them). The server complexes run Hewlett Packard software/hardware primarily I believe. The end user software is by NetManage. Unfortunately however, the connection between client systems and the server complex is partly proprietary and uses some form of internal "heartbeat" of some sort with Kerberos authentication. I'd tried with Kerberos on Linux, and dhcp but couldnt get any further than authenticating with the server complex. There are also all sorts of nasty firewalls in place and pretty horrific pricing. In short, Linux won't run with the network yet. The powers that be are promising big things for early next year.. (this is 1998) so I have my fingers crossed! _