Hi, guys, need desparate help. A friend of mine's computer needs to be configured for "Cox High Speed internet", New Orleans area. Scenario: Got computer configured, wife messed with and Cox now says the network aspect needs to be configured. They r using a router at his mother's house and were networked via that route. I am a networking student, but we are only in the building blocks of the network at the moment, not actual physical labs yet. I know a little base networking but have never had anything other than dial up, so I really don't know how to configure same. I presume they are going through by means of a NIC and not USB and Cox uses the high speed modem as I used to work for them in customer service, but we never did any configuration, they had their own internet dept. out of state for those calls. Would u go in under network connections and get the address #s from Cox or would the router be involved and in simple English, how would you configure the router. I have read about pinging, but have never really done so, and would it be the standard 192 networking address!!!!!!!!!!!! I have read u have to ping the computer and u have to assign the address on the router. Have no router experience either. I regret that I don't have DSL or high speed experience but my budget doesn't afford anything more than dial up at the moment but am dying to get the scoop as I would like to be able to set it up. Would u set it up under 98SE's networking stuff, wizard or such. In the dark, thanks, haven't had much other than just base networking experience. Any help would be appreciated. Also they r using the firewall which used to be called "Inocculate It", but is called something else now, wouldn't the router act as a hardware firewall!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks a bunch!!!!!!!!!!

I've set up Cox via router for a few people. I live in RI so it may be different... When the cable modem is first connected to the users computer via ethernet, it identifies that computer by its MAC address (the address of the network card). It sends this information to the Cox servers.. now whenever you connect a PC to the cable modem it sends that PCs MAC address to Cox and Cox will accept/deny the connection based on the MAC address.. Cox only allows one MAC address.. when you connect the modem to a router, its a different address so now Cox will block it.. What you need to do is connect the router to the PC that the cable modem was first installed in, then go into the router configuration and find its "Clone MAC Addresss" option. This will make the router have the same MAC address as the main PC.. Now the cable modem should allow connections from the router.. Just make sure the router is set up to connect as "Dynamic IP Addres" and not Static, or PPPoE or any other setting. It should just work I only have experience with D-Link routers but other routers shouldn't be too different. Now, if the computer itself isnt connecting to the router, make sure all the cables are connected right.. Cable Modem > Router WAN Port Router Port 1 > PC 1 Router Port 2 > PC 2 etc.. If the computer isn't seeing the router, i.e. you cant ping the router (usually 192.168.0.1), try disconnecting the cable, then reconnecting it.. You said they're running win98, so go to Start > Run, and type WINIPCFG .. Once it loads, select the ethernet adapter in the list, click "Release", then once its released click "Renew", this should reassign the default gateway of the ethernet adapter to be the address of the router, it should now be pingable, and the internet connection should work (as long as the modem is allowing the router, which it should if you did the "clone mac" explained above) If you cant release/renew the adapter, try removing the network card device manager and reinstalling it. Hopefully one or both of these will help, unless the problem is something totally different then I'm not sure what you could do. Good luck!

So what we need to do first is configure the router if it hasn't already been done so to clone MAC address and make sure the router is set up to connect with a dynamic instead of static ip address, it probably is in that mode since they were connected before. Then that should pick up the 2nd computer and assign same and then we should be able to ping the router address of: 192.168.0.1 By putting this address in ie address bar and pressing enter. If we still can't ping, then we have to disconnect the cable and then reconnect it, the go to Run, type: WINIPCFG and once the gray box comes up press release then renew, the default gateway should then be set If still no connection, we must go to device manager and try removing and reinstalling the network card. Thanks so much for your help. It is greatly appreciated.