Access to Time Warner cable network

Fbsd8 fbsd8 at a1poweruser.com
Sun Apr 1 18:10:54 UTC 2012


Well here is the results of my attempts to connect to Time Warner cable 
network.

After 4 calls to their call center which was in the Philippines where 
all the people just read a scripted answer FAQ and only had the ability 
to remotely reset the modem. I finally requested to talk to the top 
support level in the USA. Finally got a tech support person who knew 
something about how their network was configured.

Their modems at power up time run a script that is really a private LAN 
using 192.168.x.x to auto verify the cable modem mac address against a 
table of authorized accounts. At the conclusion the 10.2.0.1 dhcp server 
issues a real routable ip address along with the routable 2 dns ip address.

Now this long duration hand shake takes about 40 seconds and on a 
windows system, windows keeps looping through the ip and dns acquire 
code until it succeeds. Now on freebsd the ifconfig_fxp0="DHCP" seems to 
only cycle a single time and results in a "no carrier" status in the 
boot up msg log.

After the Freebsd 8.2 boot process completed and I saw "no carrier" 
status i issued "/etc/rc.d/netif restart" command which resulted in the 
same status. This is when I posted to the questions list for help. It 
was after the post that I had my conversation with the level 3 tech 
support guy and learned about the long hand shake process. I next tried 
  issuing (ifconfig fxp0 up) after the freebsd boot process completed 
and to my surprise I had a public routable ip address. So I have to find 
a way during the boot process to give the ifconfig_fxp0="DHCP" statement 
in the /etc/rc.conf some delay time. But I think Freebsd 9.0 has an 
built in "up" process in its boot up process that may solve this problem.

Another thing I learned from the level 3 support guy is that the cable 
modem has to be reset by unplugging it's power if I want to move the 
        output cable to a different device, such as from the window box 
to the freebsd box or to a router.

The bottom line is I have things working now and there was nothing wrong 
with either my window box or my freebsd box. Its just the Time Warner 
cable modem box and the non-standard way it's configured.




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