[ale] An unnecessary outage

[David Lemcoe]

I have U-Verse at the house right now, and what I've found to work pretty
well when it comes to circumventing a ISP router, is to DMZ (forward ALL
ports and the IP address) to ANOTHER router (in my case a lovely Cisco 2621)
and then run your network like that. I'm almost certain every router would
be able to work in this fashion, as long as it pulled a static IP from the
ISP router.

As for your /28, I would see no reason the DHCP client and clients on the
network of the second router would refuse to give out addresses.

Good luck, I've definitely been around this kind of struggle before.

David

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 11:01 AM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us>wrote:

> So I just had a nearly 24 hour outage on my cable services.  The root
> cause?  Defective hardware: a condition existed on my home network that
> triggered the mandatory SMC network appliance (cable modem/router
> combination) to fail fantastically.  Something caused my Linksys
> wireless access point to go wonky.  This caused the SMC cable
> modem/router combination to just stop working.
>
> This tells me three things.
>
> #1, something is very wrong with the design of the SMC box.  It does not
> isolate trouble to a single port as it should.  Anything that does not
> comply with the Ethernet standard, or anything that is not functioning
> properly according to the Ethernet standard, should _not_ cause the box
> to lock up, drop its DOCSIS connections, and do nothing.
>
> #2, the internal switch on the device must be bridging the four external
> Ethernet ports together with an Ethernet port (virtual or otherwise)
> internal to the device that represents the DOCSIS side of the modem.
> This is probably why the failure of _ONE_ device on my network caused
> the whole thing to go "tango uniform".  I'd be willing to bet that the
> switch treats the USB port on the device as another Ethernet port, too,
> but that's neither here nor there.
>
> #3, the multiport bridge on the inside of the device, or the software
> that drives it, or some combination of both, are very poorly designed
> and/or buggy.  If I wanted troubles to propagate through my network I'd
> use a bloody stupid hub!
>
> I want this thing off my network.  I want it off my network five years ago.
>
> Does someone here know a great deal about the cable network?  I want to
> replace this.
>
> But in order to do so I need to understand a little more about how it
> works and how it gets my /28 to me.  Is it possible to do something like
> use wireshark with a dongle of some sort that attaches to the coax, and
> can look at the traffic on the coax?  Is it possible to buy a DOCSIS 3
> cable modem and clone the MAC address of another modem on the DOCSIS
> interface so that the cable company thinks that I'm still using the
> modem they gave me and won't just refuse to talk to my new cable modem
> (because AFAICT, "authentication" on the cable network consists of
> having the right MAC address).
>
> And why again is it that nobody seems to make DOCSIS 3 internal cable
> modems?  Why do I have to have yet another AC→DC converter brick just to
> power a stupid external one?  I really can't see an internal cable modem
> requiring more power than, say, a video card or maybe a couple of
> standard Ethernet cards.
>
>        --- Mike
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