DHCPCD Problems with Cox's new network
Shawn Rutledge
plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Tue, 29 Jan 2002 10:48:12 -0700
Forgot to mention, I have one of the Toshiba modems from Circuit
City. I used to have a LanCity but one of the Cox techs told me
those old modems are kindof picky about signal strength, and the
newer modems are much more tolerant. My problems with staying
connected went away after I got the new modem.
On Mon, Jan 28, 2002 at 01:41:53PM -0700, Shawn Rutledge wrote:
> This morning power went out, my gateway machine got rebooted, and I
> noticed that I have a new IP address too.
>
> I'm running Debian/Sid, which uses something called dhclient by
> default. (same thing as dhcpcd maybe?) My configuration is pretty
> much default; incidentally I'm still sending my old hostname but I
> guess the Cox dhcp server is ignoring that. No MAC address, nothing
> else unusual.
>
> It would appear port 80 is still being blocked.
>
> SSH wasn't working before, now it is. But I changed a couple of
> options this morning too, so maybe that fixed it.
>
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2002 at 11:35:48AM -0700, Technomage wrote:
> > uh..
> > what is it I am doing right that you guys are doing wrong?
> >
> > 1. do any of you have firewalls going on said boxes?
> > 2. did anyone edit their network config section of rc.sysinit to add dhcpcd
> > or pump there long before any firewall starts up?
> >
> > what else have I done different.
> >
> > All I know is that for some strange reason, my dhcpcd works fine in mandrake
> > 8.1 without fail. the new address was popped in there after a small
> > interruption of service and things have been "mostly" smooth ever since.
> >
> > I never had to worry about the MAC address.
> >
> > so guys, tell me, what did I do right thats got everyone so confused?
> >
> > Technomage
> >
> > On Monday 28 January 2002 10:32, you wrote:
> > > I've been having trouble, as well. I thought I had it all figured out, but
> > > apparently not. I did spend almost 2 hours on hold Saturday morning
> > > (listening to Tori Amos or Enya or whomever-- I requested AT LEAST two
> > > songs for the hold music, and the tech support guy replied that many other
> > > people had requested the same thing).
> > >
> > > Anyway, I found something interesting: I had been having trouble getting a
> > > DHCP lease for the past week. Sometimes I would not get a DHCP_ACK from
> > > their server. Other times I would get one and I would get my old @Home IP
> > > address, but then I wouldn't be able to ping my default gateway or connect
> > > to anything on the Internet. When I finally spoke to someone Saturday, I
> > > told him that I was getting an IP address of 24.x.y.z, but that I couldn't
> > > connect to anything on the Internet. He said, "Hmmmm, that's an @Home
> > > address; you should be getting an IP address that starts with 68."
> > > Interesting. He wanted me to look at my "Workgroup" setting, so I quickly
> > > connected my Win98 box to my cable modem and reconfigured it and rebooted.
> > > He had me change the Workgroup to "@COX.NET" and reboot. But while I was
> > > futzing around with this, he said a supervisor had just told him that their
> > > "provisioning server" was down and that I would not be able to get an IP
> > > address from DHCP until it was back up (oh, and there was no E.T.A.).
> > > After I expressed my displeasure and hung up, I tried rebooting the Win98
> > > box just for fun. When I did, I immediately got an IP address and could
> > > connect to resources on the Internet. Bizarre. I connected my firewall
> > > back up and ran 'dhclient ne0' and I got my old IP address again (even
> > > after deleting /var/lib/dhcp.leases, which is an OpenBSD thing)). I tried
> > > manually assigning the values I received on my Windows box to my firewall,
> > > and then I could connect. So are they using some DHCP server that only
> > > hands out IP addresses for computers in the same "Workgroup?" If so, what
> > > about Macs (which they support)? I'm confused....
> > >
> > > Also, a guy at work said that he was told this weekend that the old LANCity
> > > modems don't work with the new network (or rather, they work, but only
> > > intermittently). (And indeed, http://status.cox.net/view.asp shows that
> > > this is an issue.) My co-worker is trading in his modem at a Cox office
> > > today. I have a LANCity modem, too. I think I'll trade it in just for the
> > > hell of it. What kind of modem do you have?
> > >
> > > ~Frustrated in Phoenix
> > >
> > > On Sunday, January 27, 2002 Steve Ellis wrote:
> > > > As many of you may know, @home is going under and Cox Cable has built it
> > >
> > > own
> > >
> > > > network and is transitioning its customers. My Linux firewall quit
> > >
> > > working
> > >
> > > > the other nite and after many hours I have determined the problem - for
> > >
> > > some
> > >
> > > > reason the Cox network is not responding to my DHCP client. My system
> > > > is an old Pentium 166 and has two ethernet cards installed - eth0
> > > > connects to the cable modem; eth1 connects to my home network. I'm
> > > > running a DHCP server on the home network side (eth1 - static IP address
> > > > 192.168.1.1) and
> > >
> > > a
> > >
> > > > DHCP client on eth0. I am running Red Hat Linux 6.1 and using the dhcpcd
> > > > (ver 1.3) client. I have tried to run both dhcpcd and pump from the
> > >
> > > command
> > >
> > > > line and both timeout. I have also tried dhcpcd with and without the -h
> > > > <HOSTNAME> option. Cox technical support says that their DHCP server
> > > > does not require a hostname to be provided to their new DHCP servers.
> > > > The network traffic is extremely heavy as customers are logging into the
> > > > Cox servers to establish new mail accounts, move data on webservers, etc.
> > > >
> > > > I am logging dhcpcd messages to a separate log and it shows the following
> > > > sequence of events:
> > > >
> > > > DHCP_REQUEST for an old IP address
> > > > Timeout waiting for DHCP_ACK
> > > > broadcast of DHCP_DISCOVER
> > > > Timeout waiting for response from valid DHCP server
> > > >
> > > > It appears that dhcpcd was working up until the other nite. The
> > >
> > > information
> > >
> > > > in dhcp-eth0.info shows an IP address in the new range (68.3.xxx.xxx),
> > > > new domain name (ph.cox.net), etc. I cleared the info in dhcp-eth0.info
> > > > and have verified that dhcpcd is not updating the information.
> > > >
> > > > In the interim I have replaced the Linux box with a Linksys
> > >
> > > router/firewall.
> > >
> > > > It runs some kind of DHCP client and is able to talk to the Cox DHCP
> > >
> > > server
> > >
> > > > and get information. It works fine, but provides little protection.
> > > > Unfortunately, I can't observe the traffic between the cable modem and
> > > > the router.
> > > >
> > > > The problem may have something to do with the need for dhcpcd to send a
> > >
> > > MAC
> > >
> > > > address as part of the DHCP request. I had to configure the Linksys
> > >
> > > router
> > >
> > > > of a friend of mine to clone the MAC address of the adapter card in his
> > > > PC after connecting the router. This would imply that Cox has sniffed
> > > > MAC addresses of PCs on its network and will only respond to requests
> > > > from
> > >
> > > known
> > >
> > > > LAN cards. In my case, I thought that Cox may have sniffed the MAC
> > >
> > > address
> > >
> > > > of the router and would only accept requests from it. To test this, I
> > >
> > > tried
> > >
> > > > invoking DHCP from the command line using:
> > > >
> > > > /sbin/dhcpcd -d -h<old @home hostname> -I <router's MAC address>
> > >
> > > eth0.
> > >
> > > > I assumed the MAC address format is xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx. The man page for
> > > > dhcpcd doesn't document the format. Anyway, this didn't work either.
> > > >
> > > > Any insight or suggestions would be most appreciated.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks in advance,
> > > >
> > > > Steve Ellis
> > >
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> --
> _______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud@bigfoot.com
> (_ | |_) http://ecloud.org kb7pwd@kb7pwd.ampr.org
> __) | | \________________________________________________________________
> ________________________________________________
> See http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/navigator-mail.shtml if your mail doesn't post to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail.
>
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--
_______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud@bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) http://ecloud.org kb7pwd@kb7pwd.ampr.org
__) | | \________________________________________________________________