television cable internet service

[Steve Sapovits]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003 10:58:18 -0700
Derrick Ryalls <ryallsd at datasphereweb.com> wrote:

> To make life easy, I had a windows box laying around for the technician
> to verify a live line with.  Once it was live and he was gone, I
> switched to using a BSD router on the connection.

That's what I do.  If I ever get to the point of having a tech
come out (once, and it turned out to be a fried modem) I hook
back up to my Windoze box.  There's no point in trying to get 
them to support FreeBSD or even Linux.  Just get it working 
yourself.  As someone pointed out, Comcast uses DHCP.  I've been
running it on my FreeBSD box for over a year with no issues.
Their support and tech's will tell you that you have to use 
specific OS'es, specific mailers, specific browsers, etc. but 
that's just how they're trained.

One important note I learned early: If you have to reset your
connection, unplug the modem for a few minutes.  Simply turning
it off doesn't do the trick.  e.g., if you move the connection
between a Windows and FreeBSD box when testing, unplug the modem
in between.  Also, watch out for IP changes.  I had DHCP set up 
and working but my firewall rules had a hardcoded subnet.  One 
day a new DHCP lease put me on a new subnet.  If you ante up for 
their Pro service they will support VPN's, your IP will remain 
static except for big network changes, and you'll get faster speeds.

-- 
Steve Sapovits  steves06 at comcast.net