I have a linksys BEFSR41 router and at&t's @home cable internet. I have the cable modem connected to the WAN port of the router and my 2 98SE PCs connected to ports 1 and 2 on the router.

I have entered the IP, gateway, subdomain, DNS, host name and domain name from the info sheet provided into their proper places in the router's config. The PCs pick up their IPs from the router like they should.

Everything starts to work until I load a web page or download something. Pages don't finish loading, downloads stop right after they start, speed tests never complete. Pages will load if I keep hitting refresh.

Everything works fine when I skip the router and connect the modem directly to one PC. Any ideas?

2 win98se PCs

1ghz athlon
128mb ram
Network Everywhere LAN adapter

1.4ghz athlon
256mb ram
Linksys LAN adapter

There was something you didn't mention, and there seems to be the problem.

AT&T Broadband allows you up to 3 different MAC's to be used alternatively.

If you don't know, what I'm talking about, we have the solution already.

Let me explain.

Your cable modem has to identify you to the service provider in a unique way. This is done by using some information (the MAC address) from your NIC (network interface conytoller, ethernet card) in your PC.

Your linksys router has also a MAC address, which AT&T probably doesn't know yet and there not acknowlege.

NO MATCHING MAC ADDRESS == NO MODEM CONNECTION

You have to find thic address ( it looks somehow like 00:20:73:c5:bb:19 ) just six hexa bytes separated by colon or dash.

This code specifies also the producer in the first few bytes. I don't know if "router" is easy to be decoded from it. Check your contract to see if you are allowed to share the connection (you may try anyway, you should just know if you can tell them)

Thanks for you help. I came to that same conclusion as I was searching other forums yesterday. So I called up AT&T and the woman I spoke to did not agree with me. She did create a ticket and sent me up to tier 2. The man I spoke to there said they only care about the cable modem's mac address. I asked if there was some place they stored my NIC's mac address and he said, "No."

Keep in mind that these service folks are just paid for the minimum knowledge ever possible.

I use a 3Com cable modem, which is rented from AT&T. At setup time they registered the MAC address of my PCMCIA ethernet adapter card (3COM 589C) sitting in an old laptop doing the router job for me.

If I put another card in (say Linksys PCMCIA) I would have to call them and tell them to register that card too. (The installer guy told me that I can have up to 3 MAC addresses registered.)

The same would happen if I had to connect the cable modem to one of the other computers directly.

Did you ever try to plug the modem into the "other" PC? If THEY are right, it should work right away, but it woun't.

Let me know.....

I connect all kinds of different systems to my cable modem - NEVER any problems needing to re-register MACs with AT&T.

Sounds like there may be some regional rules out there in the cable modem world.

If you are running a DSL/Cable router like the millions of other people out there, then you should be as happy as they are.

On my BEFSR41 I can set the MAC address to whatever I want it to avoid these problems. Check yours, you may need the latest firmware. Set the MAC address to what your MAC address is on the PC that can surf, and you should be all set....