I didn't realize you even had the option to have Comcast manage your LAN.
I have the basic Comcast home package which gives me one public,
non-static IP which is my firewall doing NAT, behind which I have as many
devices as I want. I would not let Comcast manage my network, nor use any
Comcast provided device connected to anything other than a firewall, as I
doubt (as your friend has experienced) that they have either the skill or
the interest to do it properly. I'd go with your idea of plugging another
router into the Comcast device, and turn off NAT on the Comcast device.
FWIW, I work at home and have worked as a network engineer, so I'm highly
intolerant of bad connectivity, and Comcast has generally not pissed me
off over the ~8 years I've had them.
Dave
On Tue, 19 Oct 2010, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
Because of recent conversations on this list about comcast versus world, I feel
compelled to tell this story:
I have a friend, who is very computer proficient. He called me up to talk
about an IP
address conflict on his home network. He told me he has comcast, and he has
access to
login to the comcast router, and the router is configured to give out IP
addresses via
DHCP, and the dynamic range is from 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.14. So they only
give you
5 IP addresses, and if you try to connect a 6th computer, you can't. You get
an IP
conflict, and somebody gets booted off the network.
I told him, "Well, why don't you just change the dynamic range?" He said you
can't. He
said he spent hours on the phone with comcast, and they told him "Call
netgear." I
couldn't believe him. So he initiated a screen sharing session, and showed
me. We
considered flashing a nonstandard firmware onto the comcast router ... which
seemed
risky ... I suggested maybe looking up the factory reset for the router. He
said he
already did that, and it just resets to Comcast factory condition.
He's got a home server, a printer, two laptops, and two desktops. He can't use
them all
at the same time. Nevermind, god forbid, he should have anything like vonage,
or a PDA,
or a couple of teenage children with computers.
We concluded there's only one possible solution: He needs to buy another
router, and
hook the outside of his new router to the inside of the comcast router.
We concluded there is one, and precisely one, possible reason for comcast to be
stingy
with the 192.168.x.x IP addresses. They're just being d**ks and there is no
other
possible explanation.
Oh - Get this - While all his other computers and stuff were on, and his laptop
had an
IP conflict which was preventing him from starting his screen sharing session
... I
suggested that he just assign himself a static IP address, 192.168.0.15. He
did this.
He could ping the gateway. But he could not ping outside the gateway. So in
addition
to the dynamic range being pathetically small, they also apply a filter to
prevent you
from using any static IP outside of the dynamic range. D**ks.
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