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August 06, 2004
If it Ain't Broke, Don't Fix it
OK. So I bought an Airport Express, so I could stream music to the living room. Airport Express will extend an airport network, but I quickly discovered it won't extend my aging wireless network. So I bought an Airport Extreme. Beautiful stuff, should be able to link to the Airport Express, just what I needed.
Except that I cannot, absolutely cannot, get NTL to talk to it. It thinks it's connected to the cable modem and to NTL, it pings and so on. It just won't give me any internet.
I suspect a problem with the MAC address myself; I can't seem to force it to NTL's MAC registration phase. And the Airport Extreme won't spoof the MAC address I've been using. Help welcome. NTL officially doesn't support routers of any kind, so I'm not terribly sure that they'll help if I ring, but nevertheless I'll probably try in the morning if I get no luck here.
Update: I rang NTL, and although it took me about 40 minutes to get through to the set top box support line (0845 650 0125), when I got through they were absolutely helpful. I wanted to mention that because NTL's customer service does not have a particularly good reputation, but over the years we've used broadband we've found them mostly very helpful.
If you've browsed to this page because this is your problem, then the sequence of events goes as follows:
Turn off your Mac.
Turn off your Airport Extreme
Turn off your set top box.
Wait one minute.
Turn on the set top box (wait for the two green lights).
Turn on your Airport Extreme
Turn on your Mac.
Browse to the actual IP address of the MAC provisioning page (told to me as 172.16.30.84).
Register (you'll need your customer number (the one that starts with three zeroes) and your password which is the one you use when talking to them, not the one that was on my introductory letter).
Turn everything off again.
Reboot, again in the order set top box/router/Mac.
Browse to any web page; all should be well.
Posted by Alison Scott at August 6, 2004 12:05 AM