[ThisGuy]

I have AT&T Broadband cable internet and the above mentioned router. I am running 10.2.3 on my iBook and connect to the BEFW11S4v.2(has the most recent firmware upgrade) for my internet connection. On Dec 19th I started to have trouble accessing completely random websites(http://mail.yahoo.com, http://www.macnn.com, http://home.attbi.com/~macnn/start.html, mail.attbi.com, and ftp://upload.attbi.com) and my connection to more and more sites has seemingly been blocked by the router ever since. I have reset the router a few times and it is currently running on the factory defaults. No matter what I do I cannot get my internet connection to work as it did 1 week ago. If I plug directly into the modem my connection is fine and nothing is blocked. Have any of you run into similar problems? Are there some settings/info that need to be put into the the setup page to allow me to connect again? DNS? DHCP info? Any and all help is truly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

[ghporter]

Have you checked the wired part of your router to see if it's the router or something wireless? It'd be good to check that.

The "latest and greatest" firmware for routers is not always the best thing for you. It is possible that an earlier version could help you out. Check out Linksys' FTP site for routers and wireless routers to find an older version, say version 1.40.3 (it's called BEFW11S4_VN_FW1403.zip).

[ThisGuy]

Originally posted by GHPorter:
Have you checked the wired part of your router to see if it's the router or something wireless? It'd be good to check that.

The "latest and greatest" firmware for routers is not always the best thing for you. It is possible that an earlier version could help you out. Check out Linksys' FTP site for routers and wireless routers to find an older version, say version 1.40.3 (it's called BEFW11S4_VN_FW1403.zip).

Thanks for the help, but I figured out how to get it running again and it seems to be holding up, so far. I was also very surprised at how nice and helpful the Linksys tech support guy was and that he helped me with OS X (supposedly not supported), but I guess it can't be that difficult since the router is configured through a web browser. Anyways, I gave them a call and he walked me through a setup of the router and it didn’t work. He then said it is probably a hardware issue and gave me a case number and told me the procedure for a return. I was not 100% sure of this and after we hung up I started playing around with the setup/configuration pages. Here is what I did to get it to work:

1) Turned off my airport on my iBook
2) Plugged in a Cat5 from the router to my iBook
3) Opened up the configuration page http://192.168.1.1
4) Clicked on the “Advanced” tab
5) Clicked on the “MAC Addr. Clone” tab
6) Entered the Ethernet Address of the iBook, not the Airport card, in the “MAC Addr. Clone” spaces
7) Clicked the “Apply” button
8) Clicked the “Setup” tab
9) On the “Setup” page I entered attbi.com in the “Domain Name:” field
10) Clicked the “Apply” button
11) Quit the browser
12) Restarted the computer
13) Opened up a browser to verify connection and it worked, quit browser
14) I then unplugged the iBook from the Cat5 cable and turned on the Airport card
15) Opened up a browser and here I am!

I hope this helps some of you if you run into the same problems I did.

[ghporter]

It's the old "I don't recognize your network card so you don't get an IP" bit! This (he said knowingly) is why I mentioned checking to make sure that the wired part did or didn't work.

Many cable providers authenticate their users by reading the hardware address of the network card (the MAC address-nothing to do with Macintosh). When you buy a new computer, or buy a router to protect your self against the big, bad world (that's the real reason we buy them, now isn't it?), the modem sees a different address and promptly clams up. Fortunately most router manufacturers provide a facility to clone your computer's MAC address so the modem sees what it wants to see.

[ThisGuy]

Originally posted by GHPorter:
It's the old "I don't recognize your network card so you don't get an IP" bit! This (he said knowingly) is why I mentioned checking to make sure that the wired part did or didn't work.

Many cable providers authenticate their users by reading the hardware address of the network card (the MAC address-nothing to do with Macintosh). When you buy a new computer, or buy a router to protect your self against the big, bad world (that's the real reason we buy them, now isn't it?), the modem sees a different address and promptly clams up. Fortunately most router manufacturers provide a facility to clone your computer's MAC address so the modem sees what it wants to see.

Very interesting! I never knew this stuff before, Macnn has the best forums ever. You da man!