What I tried to say is that your modem gets anIP from your ISP. Thsi is the public IP. Then your router has an IP towards your LAN and the WAN port linked to the modem is listening to the public IP... A gateway...
So, when connecting the PC directly to the modem the PC has to accept an IP from your ISPs DHCP-server. That's why you can't connect,

IMHO

Then the MAC-addy might be involved too, or it might not, I don't know your ISP.

And, don't kick yourself in the nuts... Leave that for Zone-MR and billybob and the other wise guys. To ordinary people it hurts.

just curious... maybe this are obvious quiz, but consider myself smacked toghether with you :horse: :drunk: :D
i'm assuming that u tryed it with the NIC interface of the modem connected to a NIC in yr machine :rolleyes:
did you used the original CAT5 cable u used to? (could be a crossed link one... ;) )
also, does yr modem as a USB interface also? you could try it to see if u can connect with it :)
yr hole prob can be the modem NIC interface in it's last days of life??... :huh:
one of the first symptoms of a dying NIC can be slow tranfer speed... ;) it as happened to me before :blink:
if it was to be the Mac addr, then a reset to the modem would definitly have solved it ;)
just a thought, hope it helps :)

i thought about it being a bad ethernet cable, i'm going to take an extra home from work when i get off in a few hours and try it, and yeah, the one being used is the same one i've used for ages

"i'm assuming that u tryed it with the NIC interface of the modem connected to a NIC in yr machine ", yep :(, doesn't work

i hope it' s not a dying nic, the one i'm using right now is integrated into my motherboard, which is about 3 months old, lol, it's an msi board with an nforce2 chipset, so an nvidia nic... maybe i should try my PCI SMC nic tonight and see what happens?

Speaking of the CAT5 cable, try switching the one that goes to your modem with a new one. This has happened to me before, and I spent days trying to figure it out, and it turned out to just be the cable. Even if the cable works on other things, it could still be broken...really bad grammar there, but you get the point.

@.unicorn
Thanks for letting everyone know about me and kicking myself in the nuts :D :kicking:

@nuxx
THanks for the smileys, really made my day ;)

There is a wide difference between ISP's. My ISP in Canada uses the MAC id of the connecting device. To conect, we must realease the IP address before disconecting the router, connect the modem to the pc's NIC, then do ipconfig renew. If we mess it up, ther is no recourse but to telephone the ISP and ask them to release and renew. You gotta go through the same routine in the inverse--or, clone the NIC MAC address in the router before connecting it to the modem.

as far as i know, my isp Bellsouth never has used the mac address for anything, what i was wondering though was that if my modem was ignoring my nic's mac id and expecting the router's, but a reset to defaults should have cleared that

another thing that i might not have made clear is, it's not a problem with connecting to my isp, it's just the modem's built in config pages i can't even connect to, which of course i can't connect over pppoe with xp's dialer either, because my machine doesn't realize the modem is there in the first place

Ah, ok, dsl. I had dsl from Bell Canada for a while, but forget the details now.

Bell Canada did not use MAC, but rather a small "dial up" program that contained the user name and password. It acted like a mini dial up, but of course simply called up the connection on the dsl line, wich, if I recall correctly timed out automatically if not used and had to be reconnected when the equipment was rebooted.

But one thing, From time to time IE6 refuses to access my LinkSys router setup pages. Even putting in the router's IP in "trusted sites" doesn't work right now on 2 of my WinXP pc's. But, Mozilla always works. Netscape and Phoenix also work, but I've settled on Mozilla for getting around the recalictrant IE 6. Never been able to figure out why.

f***ing hell, well, it isn't fixed the way i want it to be fixed, but it's fixed

it's a problem with my onboard nic, there's a really long thread at MSI's forums i just found about it here:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/e_serv...043f3eff8ce7a6

aparently a lot of older 10baseT hubs, switches, routers, and modems and this nic don't work together, and my modem is on the list of verified non working until MSI releases an updated bios or driver to fix it :( *goes to install a PCI nic now*

thanks for the help guys

Yep, got the Alcatel. First one died after 11 months, but got a new one under warranty and it's 2 yrs old. Also, the Linksys router takes care of DHCP, so I don't have to specify IP addr on my 2 PCs, the first one on grabs 192.168.1.100, the second gets *.*.*.101, etc. The only problem(?), if I need to configure the DSL modem (which I haven't yet), I need to connect directly from the NIC to the modem. Otherwise, it's very reliable.

to bad shephirod :(
cant u try to install a chipset driver for the NIC only, instead of the MSI's Mobo drivers?? :Jumpy: might do the trick maybe :rolleyes: it probably is a realtek or something ;)
maybe a firmware upgrade to the modem could solve it :sailor:
that is if yr willing to go for all the trouble, instead of just sticking a PCI :hammer: in the freakinn thing, hehe :cheers: