NEWBIE: Logging into Cox Cable service

[James A. Coulter]

I am running FreeBSD 4.10 and am trying to connect to my Cox ISP via a an
Ethernet nic and cable modem.

I have DHCP for the nic enabled in /etc/rc.conf and can obtain an IP address
from my Windows 98 gateway, but when I connect the nic to the cable modem
and reboot I do not get a response from the cox DHCP server.

The nic shows active in ifconfig, but no IP is assigned to it.

I suspect the Cox DHCP server is expecting a username and password from
dhclient.conf

I googled and the closest answer I found was a short article in the FreeBSD
Diary published in 2000 that gave this as an example dhclient.conf:

interface "de0" {
send host-name "cr123456-a";
request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, routers, domain-name-servers,
domain-name, time-servers;
require domain-name-servers;
}

I tried substituting my own interface and looked up the hostname info cox
provided to my Windows 98 box and swapped the computer names, but no luck.

Is my hunch correct?  When I set up my Windows boxes to connect to Cox with
their CD, it always asked for the main account username and password – so
I’m guessing when the dhcp client sends out its request for an address, the
Cox DHCP server is expecting a username and password.

Can anyone tell me how to send the username and password?

TIA,

Jim C.

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.718 / Virus Database: 474 - Release Date: 7/9/2004