3. Regular Cable Modem ISPs

3.1. ATT (formerly MediaOne)

MediaOne Express is a Internet cable service provided by MediaOne. The hardware setup consists of a cable modem produced by LanCity or General Instruments which plugs into an ethernet card using a 10BaseT (UTP-45) cable. Assignment of IP addresses and other networking information is done using DHCP which stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. The only thing you need to do is read the DHCP mini-HOWTO and configure your system appropriately. There is no other necessary configuration. DHCP mini-HOWTO can be found at http://www.oswg.org/oswg-nightly/DHCP.html.

Most of Mediaone/RoadRunner tracks you're MAC (ethernet) address, and won't allow any other MAC address to use the CableModem.

To get around this you could either call Mediaone and ask them to change you're MAC address to you're current one. They do allow you to have multiple allowed MAC addresses, but they might not allow more than two. Other approach is to tell your ethernet card what MAC address to use. Most cards will allow it. So first make sure you write down the MAC address of the card you used when Mediaone technicians showed up and they type something like this:

ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:23:56:74:25:12

Additional notes by Peter Zurich:

Pump will not work without specifying the hostname ("-h fubar") on the command line. It doesn't seem to matter what exactly you give it as the hostname, as long as you give something.

Notes from Seattle, Washington area

You have to supply the -h option to dhcpcd if you want to get your service running. "windowsidentification" is the one ATT provides you and is REQUIRED for it to work. it ends in a "-a". For example

dhcpd -h {windowsidentification -->'cXXXXXX-a'} eth0

Alternatively if you would like to use pump check out the notes of user in Mobile, Alabama.

Information about ATT Broadband can be found at http://www.broadband.att.com.

3.2. @Home

@Home uses a similar setup to ATT (formerly MediaOne). However, there are a few fundamental differences, outlined by contributors. Since @Home spans different geographic locations you might get assigned different kind of equipment and have slightly different kind of setups.

Before you try anything, go to control panel, network, and properties for your network card. Write down all of the information. You will need it later.

TCI, the company that runs @Home issues a Etherlink III 3c509b NIC for all of their customers. What TCI does not tell you is that when they install your ethernet card, it is in PnP mode. Now in Slakware, if you uncomment the proper line for this card, everything will appear to be working fine. There will be no system problems, but the 'PC' light on your CyberSURFR modem will never turn on. If you are using Slakware, and are having this problem, reboot in DOS and skip the next paragraph.

In RedHat 5, your system will have some trouble autodetecting the card. If you try to pass the paramaters manually, the system will hang. This should be obvious that your card is not setup properly. Before wasting anymore time, reboot in DOS (This is a must because as of 12/25/97, there is no utility written for Linux to turn off PnP and turn on ISA.)

TCI does not give out a utility disk for your ethernet card, so you must download the utility from one of 3Com's sites. Here is a link to 3COM's page for driver download.

http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/index.htm

Once you have downloaded your driver files you will need to run them and disable the PNP mode of your network card.

What you've now done will make your ethernet card 'broken' in Windows 95. You'll need to go to Control Panel, Network, and remove the network card and the adapter. Reboot your computer, and again go back to control panel. Go to add/remove new hardware, and have it autodetect. It will automatically setup the correct i/o address for you. You will most likely need to reboot again. Now you should be in Windows 95, with the 'PC' light on your cable modem on. You will also notice that none of your internet applications seem to work, you can't ping, and you can't resolve DNS. You now must go back to control panels, network, and click on properties for your network card (not the adapter). Re-enter all the data you wrote down, and reboot.

With a little luck, your ethernet card should be working in Windows 95, and ready to rock in Linux.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
if [ -n "$PUMP" ]; then
     echo -n "Determining IP information for $DEVICE..."
     if /sbin/pump -i $DEVICE; then
         echo " done."
     else
         echo " failed."
         exit 1
     fi
 else ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------
if [ -n "$PUMP" ]; then
     echo -n "Determining IP information for $DEVICE..."
     if /sbin/pump -i $DEVICE -h YOURHOSTNAME; then
         echo " done."
     else
         echo " failed."
         exit 1
     fi
 else ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------

3.3. RoadRunner

RoadRunner is an Internet cable service provided by Excalibur Group (Time Warner). The hardware setup consists of a cable modem produced by Motorola and Toshiba which plugs into an ethernet card using a 10BaseT (UTP-45) cable. From what I can gather RR uses DHCP for IP assignment. In order to set up Linux to use DHCP you need to read the DHCP mini-HOWTO http://www.oswg.org/oswg-nightly/DHCP.html.

If this doesn't work out for you you should check out http://www.math.uakron.edu/RoadRunner/ for Akron, Ohio and http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/rr/index.html for San Diego, California. It might help solve your problem.

Another good site is http://www.vortech.net/rrlinux/.

One more thing that might be worth mentioning: you will need a Windows NT, 95, or 98 or Macintosh PC for the RoadRunner installers to configure the modem. It's not technically necessary, but they will insist, and will not install on a Linux system. It's also best not to mention the IPFW system while they're around.

Additional notes by Phil Baird <pjb@rocsoft.com> from Rochester, NY:

About getting hooked up initially. It is true the RR techs don't want to talk about Linux. However, they now offer us a "self-install" that is half the price ($50). Basically, they come out, run the cable, and make sure the signal gets to the modem. You must supply your own nic card and do the rest of the setup on your own.

Information about RoadRunner Service can be found at http://www.rr.com/.

3.4. Rogers@Home

The hardware setup consists of a cable modem produced by LanCity which plugs into an ethernet card using a 10BaseT (UTP-45) cable.

When the cable modem is installed by Rogers@Home technicians you are assigned a static IP address. They should also provide you with information on your subnet mask, router (gateway) numbers and DNS numbers.

If above doesn't help you can check out Randal Leavitt's <randal.leavitt@home.com> "Connection Notes" for Rogers@Home at http://members.home.net/randal.leavitt/CableModemConnectionNotes.html.

Notes from Greg Jacobs <gregjacobs@home.com>

They now only give out dynamic IP's. The techs says its pretty much fixed after first issue, they just want to use DHCP so any network changes on their end can just be 'pushed out' so to speak.

Also Make sure any cablemodem uses ensure they don't use a DHCP server on their cablemodem interface. The cable company gets very angry and often pull the plug then tell you ;).

Other information about Rogers@Home Service can be found at http://rogers.home.com/.

3.5. Sunflower Cablevision

This information is provided by Frank Wiles <admin@sunflower.com>:

In order to get online with Sunflower all you have to do is enable DHCP. DHCP mini-HOWTO ( http://www.oswg.org/oswg-nightly/DHCP.html) has instructions how to set up DHCP under Linux.

Also they should contact me at admin@sunflower.com for lawrence.ks.us domains

We use DOCSIS compliant modems now, not the old Zenth stuff.

3.6. Jones Intercable

This information is provided by Bob Kimble:

Jones Internet Cable supplies a Hybrid cable modem that connects to your machine / network via 10BaseT ethernet. They provide you with a static IP address for your machine, and another static IP address for the modem. The modem acts as a gateway to their network. Your IP address and the modem IP address are on the same network and have the same network mask (in my case 255.255.255.0 -- 24 bits). They also provide two DNS IP addresses which you enter into your configuration. I just entered the numbers when I installed Red Hat Linux 5 and it worked like a champ from the beginning. Since then I have configured my Linux machine to enable IP masquerading and domain name services, and it now acts as a router for my entire private network. My other machines are connected via a private network using the addresses 192.168.0.x. They are running Windows 95, Windows NT (Intel and Alpha) and OS/2. My Linux machine has two IP addresses -- the one from the cable company and one from the 192.168.0.x private network. Everything works like a champ. All six machines can browse the web simultaneously. My kids are even able to connect to their favorite game site, "The Realm" from Sierra.

3.7. GTE Worldwind

This information is provided by Blake R. Swopes (bhodi@bigfoot.com):

GTE WorldWind service is available in only a few areas (parts of California and Florida), its home page is located at http://www.gtecablemodem.com/.

GTE will send a technician out to hook up the cable modem to the wall, but does not do any configuration of your computer. The cable you hook up to your computer is the ethernet standard 10baseT (and you'll probably need to buy your own, since the one they left with me was only about two feet long).

The technician should leave you some information about configuring your system (IP address, gateway address, netmask, DNS addresses) and the number for GTE's support line (1-800-GTE-VIDEO, since WorldWind is attached to GTE's Americast cable service). If you have read the Ethernet-HOWTO and the DHCP mini-HOWTO, you should have no trouble configuring your system to work with WorldWind.

GTE provides one e-mail address, which they assign to you, but you can create aliases to that account and web mail accounts through gte.net.

According to GTE, they block inbound traffic on several ports for security purposes and to keep people from running servers that will eat into other users' bandwidth (e.g., telnet, DNS, News, and Netbios (Good news for Windows users)). In actual practice, I have found that I was able to telnet into my system from remote hosts.

GTE does not provide technical support for Linux users, so you will pretty much be on your own. My experience was that as soon as I mentioned Linux, they tried to get me off the phone, but that might have been the particular tech I was speaking to at the time.

GTE also advised me that they do not support users who have IBM Aptivas, however I was able to briefly connect an IBM Aptia 2176-C77 with a SOHOWare PCI 10/100 Ethernet Card to the service with no trouble at all.

I regularly test my connection speed through the bandwidth test at MSN ( http://computingcentral.msn.com/topics/bandwidth/speedtest.asp and regularly find my connection speed to be between 320-390Kbps. Depending on the site, I have seen transfers at up to 135K, though the average is probably 35-45.

3.8. SpeedChoice, Phoenix, Arizona

According to Micah <peenchee@asu.edu>:

Just thought I'd let you know that in my area (Phoenix, AZ, usa) there is a company called speedchoice that provides cable modem service. The service uses a hybrid cable modem and the set up is almost identical to that of Jones intercable described in the howto. See Jones Intercable. For any other issues mail Micah.

3.9. Cedar Falls Utilities Cybernet, Cedar Falls, Iowa

This information is provided thanks to Joe Breu <breu@cfu.net>

We are an ISP in Cedar Falls, Iowa that uses a mix of Zenith, Lancity, and DOCSIS Cable Modems over our own Hybrid Fiber/Coax system. Our system uses no proprietary connection software and is straight TCP/IP connections. We do use DHCP, but will offer static IP addresses to customers with older Macintosh machines or computers unable to use DHCP. We will answer basic questions if you want to hook up a Linux box to our network but it should be drop and surf.

3.10. Telstra Big Pond Advance, Australia

This information is provided by Mike Battersby <mib@post.com>

Linux is not an officially supported platform for Telstra Big Pond Advance cable internet. Do not report faults regarding Big Pond Advance and Linux to them, as they will not help you.

Big Pond Advance user Shane Hyde wrote an excellent open source BIDS v2 login client, BPALogin, which is now maintained by David Parrish. The BPALogin web site is: http://bpalogin.sourceforge.net/. Available at the same site is a page of instructions on getting BPALogin to work with Linux: http://bpalogin.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html .

3.11. Fibertel, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This information is provided by Pablo Godel.

My name is Pablo Godel and want report that I'm using the cable service of Fibertel in Buenos Aires, Argentina and it works perfectly with Linux.

They gave me a static IP. The brand of the cablemodem is COM21 and the model is ComPort.

I connect it to the nic properly, configured in Linux and it worked perfectly.

Update by Albert Claret <albert.claret@fibertel.com.ar>:

Besides the static IP/COM21 cablemodem setup you already list in the HOWTO, the company is also providing a DHCP/motorola surfboard cablemodem service, and AFAIK, they are planning to remove all of the static IP cablemodems and replace them. As far as the setup for the dhcp/motorola, just firing your plain old DHCP client will get you up and running without any problems. At present time, there are no ports filtered by them.

More information about Fibertel can be found at http://www.fibertel.com.ar.

3.12. Videotron (Videon), Canada

I don't have much information about Videotron except the fact that they use DHCP for the assignment of IP addresses and other networking information. Just read the DHCP mini-HOWTO and configure your system appropriately. There is no other necessary configuration. Also important thing to note is that the Ethernet card that Videotron distributes is a NE2000 compatible PCI card for which you need to use.

ne2k-pci driver

Additional information from Philip Gwyn <gwynp@artware.qc.ca>:

They use Motorola CyberSURFR (sic) modems. This will give you an ethernet NIC when you sign up. They gave me a TMC NE2000 PCI clone, which Linux recognises as a "RealTek RTL-8029". It couldn't configure it propperly however, until I downloaded the manufacturer's driver disk and changed the media type to "auto-config".

While they can't guarantee to get it working with Linux, they will do a bit of hand holding so it works. Many of the tech-support have Linux-clues, as it were, even asking questions like "what kernel are you running?" "do you have the latest version of dhcpcd?". When their DHCP server broke, they even suggested I delete the cache files in /etc/dhcpcd to start over from zero, as it were. This worked.

Additional information from Mihai Petre <mihaip@videotron.ca>:

Yes they are using DHCP for the tcp settings. You can also try posting your problems on news.powersurfr.com newsgroup videon.linux.

As far as running servers using your cable connection according to Alex Nuta says that "contract explicitly states that *no* servers of any kind are permitted; HTTP, FTP or otherwise".

Additional information from Stasnilav Kogan <s_kogan@alcor.concordia.ca>:

The modem they provide is now Samsung InfoRanger (SCM-100R). The ISA card they provide is an SMC NE2000 compatible (FCC ID: HED1661EN2). It is necessary to configure the card from DOS to NE2000 mode before attempting to get it to work under Linux. (Generally, this card is horrible. I replaced with a 3Com card as soon as possible).

The technical support in Videotron is absolutely HORRIBLE. (Not to mention Linux support). So, whoever signs up with them, should expect to work alone. However, aside from the NIC problems, the setup was a breeze. They use DHCP, so all the standard procedures apply.

Information provided by John Brzustowski

The following bash-style shell script, run as root, was sufficient for me to get connected. In my case, it is a fragment from /etc/pcmcia/network but you could equally place it by itself in /etc/init.d and link to it from /etc/rc2.d, possibly deleting some of the network init scripts already there.

#!/bin/bash

DEVICE=eth0

# In the following XXXXXXXX represents the 8-digit serial number
# affixed to the underside of the Motorola CyberSURFR modem.
# It is the same number the person who installed my cable link had
# to phone in to the central office for activation.
# (Substitute your actual number, of course.)

SERIAL_NUM=XXXXXXXX
/sbin/ifconfig $DEVICE up 0.0.0.0
/sbin/route add default dev $DEVICE
rm /etc/dhcpc/dhcp*

# I'm not sure both the -h and the -I flags are required, but
# this works for me.

/sbin/dhcpcd -h $SERIAL_NUM -I $SERIAL_NUM $DEVICE
. /etc/dhcpc/dhcpcd-$DEVICE.info

It is also a good idea to set a hostname using the Hostname page available via http://home.powersurfr.com/Customers/index.cgi Your dhcpcd client will receive this hostname from Videon's server. Some linux mail set-ups require a legitimate hostname in order to work.

Information about Videotron can be found at http://www.videotron.ca.

3.13. Telekabel (Teleweb), Austria

There are two approaches to setting up your Telekabel connection. First one is the approach used by Andreas Kostyrka:

• You may want to mention, that the Austrian Telekabel (Teleweb) ISP works with Linux. It seems quite similiar like MediaOne Express (3c509+dhcp, etc.)

• Second there are 3COM configuration utilities for Linux (But don't fool around with them on a busy system, 3c509 may lock the bus if touched the wrong way :( ):

  • ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/hurricane/SRPMS/3c5x9utils-1.0-3.src.rpm

  • ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/readmes/3c5x9utils-1.0-1.README

Second approach is provided by Marcel Ebmer <marcel.ebmer@chello.at>

• Do NOT bother using dhcpcd or pump!

• In case you don't know, ask the provider for your IP-address, which is static, for the DNSs, the Gateway and use linuxconf to configure the network. For Vienna: 960 60 333 is the helpdesk's telephone number They officially do not support linux, but you need not mention you are running linux.

• Choose a unique name for your PC....not "localhost"

Information about Telekabel can be found at http://www.telekabel.at/.

3.14. Shaw Cable, Canada

According to Peng F. Mok <pmok@shaw.wave.ca>:

I recently signed up for a cable modem service from Shaw Cable here in Canada, which runs under Shaw@Home brand. Shaw has been upgrading their cable network for about a year and a half now, and now offer cable-modem service to a number of locations across Canada. Information about the `Shaw@Home' service can be found at http://shaw.home.com General information about Shaw Cable can be found at http://www.shaw.ca.

I thought I'd just drop you a line to inform you that your DHCP mini-HOWTO, was very useful in helping me set up Linux to work with my cable-modem service, and that you might want to add `Shaw@Home' to your Cable-Modem mini-HOWTO as another entry. I don't have specific information on the `Shaw@Home' service yet, but from conversations I've had with Shaw technical support it seems that `Shaw@Home' is a partnership with @Home and involves the same features and setup procedure as that already described for @Home in the Cable-Modem mini-HOWTO document.

In both services Shaw Cable techs will come over and bring you two pieces of hardware -- a Motorola CyberSURFR cable-modem and either a 3Com EtherLink III 16-Bit ISA 3C509B-TPO NIC or an EtherLink XL PCI 3C900-TPO NIC. You have your choice of either an ISA or a PCI card depending on your needs, and these models only have the RJ-45 (UTP) connectors. The ISA cards come with PnP-mode enabled by default, so it may be necessary to boot into DOS, disable PnP operation, and configure the card to some base I/O address and IRQ setting which are available. Once this is done Linux should have no problems detecting the NIC at boot-time. I'm not sure about what needs to be done in the case of a PCI card since I don't currently have a PC which supports either PCI or PnP.

Note from another user:

Shaw now also issues SMC PCI ethernet cards. They give these out without boxes or manuals. I found out that these are the SMC EtherPower PCI RJ45 card (model 8432T). They use the DEC 21041 chip so the tulip ethernet driver is needed for it.

If you need to set up your POP3 mailboxes you can do that at following URL: https://profile.home.net/Users/menu.htm and you can login and setup the POP3 mailboxes that way.

Oh, and for the record, Shaw's technical support is horrendous. The best place to go for information is the athome.users-unix newsgroup (which is not even mentioned by any of the documentation) or please consult http://www.ee.ualberta.ca/~pmok/linux/.

Information provided by Eric De Schepper:

Shaw Cable Winnipeg provides the user with either a 3Com EtherLink III 16-Bit ISA 3C509B-TPO NIC or an EtherLink XL PCI 3C900-TPO (depending on which slot(s) you have available) and a Terayon TeraPro Cablemodem ( http://www.terayon.com/tools/products/view.html?phase=show&id=973669299&famid=973595996&cat_id=9.4.1 ). You have═to disable PNP on the NIC's - Shaw gives a static═IP via DHCP.

3.15. Cogeco Cable, Canada

This information is provided thanks to Sean O'Grady <sean@incisive.dhs.org>:

I have a Cable Modem through a company called Cogeco Cable located in various parts of Canada. They are part of the "Wave" system which includes Rogers Cable and Shaw Cable. The technical setup is different for each provider though. They supplied me with a D-Link ethernet card (the version of that has changed since then but I believe are still using D-Link) and a Zenith modem. The Ip setup is easy since they use DHCP so all I did was install the DHCP daemon and that was that. If you like you can list my e-mail address <togrady@cgocable.net> for anyone with questions.

I contacted you awhile ago with information regarding setting up a cable modem under Cogeco (the mail came from togrady@cgocable.net). Well I have some updates to give you. Cogeco has now joined the @HOME network although I haven't seen anything good come out of yet. The modems have changed as well, instead of the old Zenith modems we now are using a Samsung InfoRanger SCM-100R modem. The modem changed has not affected the ease of setting up Linux with the cable modem. All that is still required is a functioning network card and working DHCP client and you will be able to get the network functioning quickly. Many people send questions to me regarding various cable modem/dhcp/networking issues and as a result I have started to put together some help pages. The are located at http://incisive.dhs.org.

Additional info has been provided Craig Kossowski:

Cogeco seems to be slowly getting themselves sorted out wrt cable modems and is now part of the set of Canadian cable companies that have cooperated on the @Home network. A network card is provided as part of their large (but currently waived) hookup fee; the D-Link 528CT for PCI capable systems, and, I believe, D-Link 220T for ISA systems (and possibly PCI capable computers that will accept the ISA card, they tried it in my roommate's system first, only when that didn't work did they put in the PCI 528CT). I'd recommend asking for the PCI if you have the choice, as I know that setup can work with Linux from my experience.

Both of these are NE2000 boards to the best of my knowledge. I got the PCI D-Link 528CT which uses the RealTek 8029 chipset, and Linux can deal with easily. I just recompiled the kernel, and after a little hiccup due to RedHat 5.2's lilo default not looking for the kernel at /vmlinuz, I was up and running. DHCP (with a 24 hour lease lifetime) is used for IP resolution and everything worked automaticaly (I had selected a DHCP config when I installed Linux, others may need to do slightly more configuration, but it doesn't require anything non-standard). The 528 is supposedly plug & play, but I had no problems using it in my Linux box (2.0.34). Note that you need to compile in (either built in or module, I used built in) the PCI NE2k code, and unlike what is implied in the Ethernet HOWTO, you don't need to also include the ISA NE2000 code to use this chipset. I don't have experience with the ISA D-Link 220T, but I would assume it's just as easy to set up, it's listed as a supported card in the Ethernet HOWTO.

The Cable modem I got was a great heavy thing that looks like a heatsink for a small nuclear reactor. Nearly a square foot in desk space, made by LANcity, and I believe rated for 10Mbps shared bandwidth on the cable subset side of things, it has a reasonably good set of LEDs to show you what it's doing once you figure out what each one is. While throughput will obviously vary, I see transfer rates around 10kB/s (80kbit/s) and up during the day, to 50-60kB/s at night, when presumably thinks are quieter on the backbone. Subjectively, it's very fast, and beats even fast modems hands down. I haven't had it long enough to determine uptime yet, so I can't comment there.

At the time of this writing (Jan 99), Cogeco's service runs $150 for installation, including the card, and $39.99 a month for the service. They're currently waiving the modem rental fee "until they are available for purchase" but the information there is mixed from 15.04/month as of early 1999 (from the web page) to "not for some time" from their phone staff. Included with this is up to five email addresses, and 5MB of Web space. They also say there is a 1GB/month limit, though I'm told (by their tech support people) that this isn't strictly enforced, and is more to discourage ftp sites with high traffic bogging down the subnets, and to provide them with an avenue to prevent such. Although their literature doesn't say so, additional computers are an extra 10.70 a month, though unsupported, and you have to provide the hub, wiring and additional ethercards if you do this, they're basicly charging the extra for the lease of an additional IP as far as I can tell from their information.

3.16. Optimum Online, New York and Connecticut

This information is provided by Seth Greenfield <islesfan@nassau.cv.net>:

Optimum Online uses DHCP, and rrclientd in Linux, by John Clark. Check out http://www.netaxis.com/~wharris/optimum/index.html for instructions on how to set up your service with Linux.

Tell people who had private ips who have public ips now to change their /etc/resolv.conf to look like this...

domain nassau.cv.net (or optonline.net depenind on the users mood)
nameserver 167.206.112.3
nameserver 167.206.112.4

Other Than that its the same setup procedure note: the rrclientd software will work if you tell it dce-server and you specify the domain as optonline.net

3.17. Singapore Cable Vision, Singapore

This information is provided by Jieyao <jieyao@letterbox.com>:

SCV provides Motorola Cybersurfer modem connected to the network card via UTP cable. The IP setup is easy since they use DHCP so all you need to do is install the dhcp daemon. If you can't make access the first time, turn the modem off then on again.

3.18. Cable Wanadoo, France and Netherlands (formerly Casema)

This information is provided by Jerome Sautret <Jerome.Sautret@wanadoo.fr> and it applies to Wanadoo's French customers:

I just read your Cable Modem HOWTO. I live in France, and I use Cable Wanadoo, the cable service of France Telecom, which is the main telecom operator in France. It is available in a few cities in France at the moment, like Angers and Metz. This service provides a dynamic IP address via DHCP. It uses a COM 21 modem plugged in a 10BaseT Ethernet card. The IP setup is easy just read the DHCP mini HOWTO.

Information about Netherlands is provided by Costyn van Dongen <cvd@casema.net>:

The current Casema cable modems operate via the serial port, acting like normal modems, answering AT commands like phone modems. The setup is really very easy, because all the chat script needs to do is dial ATDT4. (this is in ppp-on-dialer). Hence it uses PPP, which is unusual for most cable modems.

Relevant files are included /etc/ppp/ppp-on

DIALER_SCRIPT=/etc/ppp/ppp-on-dialer
exec /usr/sbin/pppd -detach /dev/ttyS0 115200 connect $DIALER_SCRIPT &  

/etc/ppp/ppp-on-dialer

exec /usr/sbin/chat -e '' AT '' ATDT4 

/etc/ppp/ppp-off

#!/bin/sh
######################################################################
#
# Determine the device to be terminated.
#

sleep 5

if [ "$1" = "" ]; then
        DEVICE=ppp0
else
        DEVICE=$1
fi
#
######################################################################
#
# If the ppp0 pid file is present then the program is running. Stop it.
if [ -r /var/run/$DEVICE.pid ]; then
        kill -INT `cat /var/run/$DEVICE.pid`
#
# If the kill did not work then there is no process running for this
# pid. It may also mean that the lock file will be left. You may wish
# to delete the lock file at the same time.
        if [ ! "$?" = "0" ]; then
                rm -f /var/run/$DEVICE.pid
                echo "ERROR: Removed stale pid file"
                exit 1
        fi
#
# Success. Let pppd clean up its own junk.
        echo "PPP link to $DEVICE terminated."
        exit 0
fi
#
# The ppp process is not running for ppp0
echo "ERROR: PPP link is not active on $DEVICE"
exit 1                    

/etc/ppp/keepalive.sh

#!/bin/sh

# keepalive.sh

# This is a keepalive script for the Casema cable modems. This script was
# lifted from the /usr/doc/HOWTO/unmaintained/mini/Dynamic-IP-Hacks
# document. There should be an entry in your crontab looking like:
# */2 * * * * /etc/ppp/keepalive.sh
# to run this script every 2 minutes to see if your connection is still
# up, if not, gracefully kill the pppd process and remake it.
# Modify paths as necessary.


if [ -f /var/run/ppp0.pid ]; then
 ping -c4 -l3 195.96.96.97 2>&1 | grep "0 packets" > /dev/null && \
 { /etc/ppp/ppp-off > /dev/null 2>&1 ; sleep 2 ; /etc/ppp/ppp-on }
else
 /etc/ppp/ppp-on
fi       

/etc/resolv.conf

search dynip.com
nameserver 195.96.96.97
nameserver 195.96.96.33   

/etc/sysconfig/network (this file applies only to RedHat and Mandrake distributions, adapt accordingly for other distributions)

GATEWAYDEV=ppp0
GATEWAY=195.96.96.97  

I've documented some things in the files themselves. The ppp-on script is called during boot time from /etc/rc.d/init.d/ppp and the ppp-off script during shutdown. The ppp-on-dialer is called from the ppp-on script. The keepalive script for keeping the connection alive as long as the computer is on (might as well, right?) is called from crontab (see the keepalive file for details). The /etc/sysconfig/network file specifies the default gateway for routing. The resolv.conf tells the computer which IP of casema.net to send DNS queries to (this is pretty standard across all unixes, I believe).

I've forgotten to include the /etc/ppp/pap-secrets which should be the same as the ExpressNet, Maryland, Maryland. There's also the question of the ip-up, ip-down. These however, didn't need to be changed. I've also included the options.ttyS0 file, which should be in /etc/ppp/ppp-on. It is read by the pppd daemon as it logs on. There are a couple options like defaultrouteadd that should be on. ttyS0 is the port where you install your modem mine is on COM1 == ttyS0. Change accordingly.

/etc/ppp/options.ttyS0

asyncmap 0
crtscts
defaultroute
lock
modem
name cvd     

I received notice from Casema a couple days ago that they will be changing their name to wanadoo.nl. So you might, in your document, refer to both: "wanadoo.nl (formerly casema.net)" This will be happening as of Sept. 20th.

I will be happy to provide you with information and answer any more questions. I my explanations aren't Red Hat only. I haven't used other systems, so I can't judge. I hope this is useful to you.

3.19. Prime Cable Expressnet, Las Vegas, NV

This information is provided by jedi <jedi@penguin.lcvm.com>:

They use the Com21 which can either be connected directly to your 10baseT input or inserted into the downlink input on your router. Static IPs are available for $10 per month and the usual address assignment is through DHCP ( http://www.oswg.org/oswg-nightly/DHCP.html )

More information can be obtained from http://penguin.lvcm.com.

3.20. Chello Belgium, formerly TVD, Belgium

This information is provided by Pierre-Yves Keldermans <pykeldermans@usa.net>:

At home, my cable-TV company is "TVD", it is the first company to offer internet on the cable in Belgium.

• Hardware : LanCity cable modem & 10-Base-T NIC ( DLink ISA if you buy it from TVD )

• Config : DHCP ( http://www.oswg.org/oswg-nightly/DHCP.html )

• Prices :

  • Cheap : for home use, real IP address but dynamic, DHCP expires every 10 min, 1 user only (theorically ... ), no problem with firewall, the web server on my computer is even reachable from outside..., full speed FROM internet, small speed TO internet.

  • Not so cheap : for small office use, same as 1) but not limited to 1 user and more speed TO internet.

  • Expensive : for WWW servers & ... , Static IP addresses and reserved bandwidth TO internet following price.

• Speed :

  • From TVD's mirror site : up to 30Kbytes/sec, very nice ( and YES, they have some Linux mirrors like redhat ... :-) )

  • From internet : variable but rather good if the remote server isn't overloaded.

• For more info : http://www.chello.be and http://www.upcbelgium.be/.

Note from another user:

TVD gives you an IP via DHCP and when it is activated they log the MAC-Address. So if you want to connect to the internet via another computer with another ethernetcard it won't work. You have to change your MAC-Address to the 1 that can connect. I just put somewhere in a startupscript :

ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:23:56:74:25:12

This was not all, TVD gives some problems with pump in RedHat 6.2 but with DHCPcd 1.3 it works like a charm. (that dhcpcd is on the install cd in Redhat/rpms)

3.21. Telenet Vlaanderen, Belgium

This information provided by Karel Goderis <karel.goderis@pandora.be> and Kris Carlier <kris@iguana.be>:

• Operator: Telenet Vlaanderen - Operatial in flemish speaking (northern) part of Belgium

• Hardware: Motorola CyberSURFR Wave Cable Modem using an RJ-45 Ethernet straight cable to a PC

• Software: Standard config is Windoze + Modified Netscape for newbie installations, although Linux i386 support is there under the form of mirrored redhat.com software on the internal ftp servers. A dedicated linux newsgroup is available for support. Most users depend on ipchains/ipfwadm in 2.2.x, or have a "Linux Router"-project implementation.

• IP Setup: DHCP address assignment, single address only. Outgoing : all ports accepted, except mandatory use of Netscape Proxy on port 8080, and thus port 80 blocked. Incoming : ports 0-1024 blocked, but re-allocation of ports on Linux works fine.

• Pricing: Installation is 8000,- BFr (~200US$), warranty of 2000,- BFr for the cablemodem (50$). They ask 50$ for a NIC if you don't have any, which is of course a ripoff, as you get them almost for free if you buy a hamburger these days. Monthly fee still is 1500,- BFr (37,5$)

  Optional: Telenet Internet + : here, you can install a HUB (which they'll sell you for 50$ if you don't have any). This way you can hook up up to 4 PC's to your connection. Higher installation price and about 1000,- BFr per PC per month extra.

  Telenet XL: standard, you can download up to 10 GB per month, 20% of that may be upload traffic. The XL costs 3500,- per month (88$), and you get 15 GB download. 2000,- BFr (50$) per extra 5 GB.

• Services: redhat.com netscape.com mirrors, quake I and II servers, proxy (5 NetCAcHe proxies proxy[1-5].pandora.be:8080), mail relay and pop account with 10 MB mailbox (5 aliases) and the other usual stuff you need to survive on the net.

• Caveats: Telenet states that you can download 300Mbytes/month, but this rule is not enforced unless there is a obvious abuse (i.e. you download 300Mbytes/*day* ;-) ).

  Till 2 weeks ago, the limits were only for external traffic. As they have mirrors of all kinds of things (tucows, freebsd, freethemes, allmacintosh, suse,...), and a proxy, the 2 GB per week they had before, counted only for external traffic, was OK. Now EVERYTHING is counted, including DHCP-traffic (30' leases), ARP, IGMP (they are experimenting with it so every 2' you get some traffic from them...)

  Blocked outgoing ports: apart from what Karel specified, 25 is also blocked, you have to use their mailserver. From time to time this beast seams to be pretty overloaded.

More info at http://www.pandora.be/ or http://www.telenet.be/.

3.22. Total-Web, United States

This information is provided by iota <iota@inaxx.net>:

I work for Convergence.com, a cable internet company who provides the network monitoring, technical support, and advice to cable providers (who, in turn, provide the internet service to their customers). Most of our markets are through Cablevision, one of the more popular cable providers in the eastern US. The service name that they operate their cable internet service under is "Total-Web". Customers are provided with a static IP; simply set this up like you would any other ethernet device under Linux. The modems we use are LanCity LCP's and COM21 ComPort's, but these devices should be transparent to your computer.

Total-Web is available in limited areas, including: Miami Beach, FL; Gwinnett County and Roswell, GA; Cookeville, Lebanon, and Columbia, TN; and many other test markets.

3.23. CyberCable, Paris, France

This information is provided by David Monniaux:

CyberCable gives you an ethernet card if you need one. It is a cheap NE2000 clone, ISA-Pnp or PCI I think. They only know how to set up the stuff for Windows, but reports from other people say that they let you use their access with other systems, provided you do the software setup yourself.

They use DHCP (DHCPcd) in RedHat and it worked immediately. In RedHat's netcfg, this means selecting "DHCP configuration". There are still some problems sometimes: DHCP outputs some error messages, but things still work afterwards generally (?). This seems related to rebooting; it looks like the cable system doesn't reallocate the line for one minute after reboot.

CyberCable's web site is at http://www.cybercable.fr/.

3.24. Chello (UPC) Stockholm, Sweden (formerly StjДrnTV)

This information is provided by <dinky@chello.se>:

UPC are providing their customers with SURFboard SB31000 Cable Modems, and if needed a NetGear Network card(ISA or PCI) can be purchased for an additional 300 swedish crows.

They offer 2 different services: Chello: 1 IP 512kbit downstream 128 upstream Chello Maestero: 4 IPs, 640kbit downstream, 128kbit upstream

DHCP is used to configure the network interface (dhcpcd).

More info about their services can be found at http://www.chello.se/ and http://www.upc.se/.

3.25. GCI.Net, Alaska

This information is provided by GCI Tech Support <support@gci.net>:

GCI provides CableModem services in Alaska, currently in Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks. GCI uses Com21 which can either be connected directly to your 10baseT input or inserted into the downlink input on your router. Static IPs are available for $10 per month and the usual address assignment is through DHCP. More information can be obtained from http://www.gci.net.

3.26. Saturn Communication NZ Ltd, New Zealand

This information is provided by Nigel Win <nigelwin@the.net.nz> and David Sims <david.sims@paradise.net.nz>:

This was tested on Debian 2.1 (Slink) Using Kernel 2.0.34 and 2.2.17

First of all you need to get the following information to fill in the gaps

IPADDR -> This is the IP Address Saturn have given you eg IPADDR=203.79.92.214

NETWORK -> This is the first 3 Decimal places of your IP Address and then 0 at the end eg NETWORK=203.79.92.0

BROADCAST -> This is the first 3 Decimal places of your IP Address and then 255 at the end eg BROADCAST=203.79.92.255

GATEWAY -> This is the first 3 Decimal places of your IP Address and then 1 at the end eg GATEWAY=203.79.92.1

Edit the file /etc/init.d/network and put this in to setup your cable modem.

#! /bin/sh
ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
route add -net 127.0.0.0
IPADDR=
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=
BROADCAST=
GATEWAY=
ifconfig eth0 ${IPADDR} netmask ${NETMASK} broadcast
${BROADCAST}
route add -net ${NETWORK}
[ "${GATEWAY}" ] && route add default gw ${GATEWAY} metric 1

This is what my /etc/init.d/network file would look like

#! /bin/sh
ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1
route add -net 127.0.0.0
IPADDR=203.79.92.214
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=203.79.92.0
BROADCAST=203.79.92.255
GATEWAY=203.79.92.1
ifconfig eth0 ${IPADDR} netmask ${NETMASK} broadcast
${BROADCAST}
route add -net ${NETWORK}
[ "${GATEWAY}" ] && route add default gw ${GATEWAY} metric
1

They use Com21 Cable Modem http://www.com21.com and provide free D-Link PCI or ISA network card if you require. The monthly fee already includes Cable Modem rental and they offer 2 connection speed plans ( 512k/128k and 2Mbps/256K ). But they charge you on how much traffic you transfer :). The speed is not bad since I am getting around 90K for download speed at peak time.

Information provided by Stewart Frater

For Redhat users, the suggested scripting should be added to the /etc/sysconfig/network file (as opposed to the═/etc/init.d/network file as detailed). In any event, the scripted change may be checked for effectiveness by issuing the following command as root :

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup eth0

A final check is to═ping an external IP═successfully. You should also expect to be able to hot-swap your cable between your Linux and Win boxes at will; ie. no rebooting of pc's or re-cycling of modems should be necessary during normal use.

More info about Saturn is available at http://www.saturn.co.nz.

3.27. Chello, Netherlands

This information is provided by Jaco de Groot <jaco@dynasol.com>:

I'm from The Netherlands and use a Terayon cable modem under Red Hat 6.0. My provider is Chello. I have installation instructions in Dutch on my homepage http://www.dynasol.nl/~jaco/redhat6.0/install.html. Chello has replaced all LAN-City modem in my city with Terayon modems (configuration remains the same because it uses the same network card).

If you are not using RedHat check out the DHCP mini-HOWTO on instructions how you can get your computer to connect to Chello network.

Notes from Henkjan Huisman <henkjan@m14-017.azn.nl>

Got my RH6.1 box on the net by installing dhcp3.0 ( ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/dhcp/dhcp-3.0b2pl6.tar.gz), and produce an EMPTY /etc/dhclient.conf. Change /sbin/ifup where it says:

if /sbin/pump $PUMPARGS -i $DEVICE ; then

to:

if /sbin/dhclient $DEVICE ; then

Info about Chello can be found at http://www.chello.nl/

3.28. Adelphia Powerlink, USA

This information is provided by Kevin Pfohl <kspfohl@adelphia.net>:

If you have a Adelphia service with a two way modem connection (e.g. you don't need a regular phone modem to dial in) all you have to do is install Linux and use DHCP to get your network connection going. If you have a one-way modem please read info on Adelphia Powerlink, USA.

3.29. 21st Century Telecom, Chicago, IL, USA

This information is provided by Jens B. Jorgensen <jjorgens@bdsinc.com>:

21st Century uses a "Regular" cable modem, that is up-stream and down-stream are both over the cable connection. The equipment is made by Zenith. The installer will bring along a NIC with them, (mine was an OEM Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100) which is connected via a 10-base-T cable (crossover?) directly to the cable modem. All 21st Century customers are assigned a static IP address. Just make sure your kernel is configured to support this card or insmod the module for it a configure the IP. You'll also be provided with a gateway address which you'll need to set the default route to. Be mindful of the netmask (255.255.0.0 for me) on the ether interface. Also note that the cable modem seems to 'learn' the ethernet address of the adapter you're provided with and will only work wit that adapter. I don't know if reseting the cable modem would cause it to relearn the address or not. I didn't feel the need to try the cable modem with another adapter.

Additional notes by Mark Howard <mark@xanderbelly.com>

Please note that this service has been changed; they now only use Nortel cable modems and everyone is assigned a dynamic IP address now. Also, my Nortel cable modem does not seem to care which machine or MAC address is connected to it; I have set up multiple machines on it and they all worked fine. In fact, if you hang a hub directly off the cable modem, you can get multiple valid IP adresses assigned through DHCP! I wouldn't recommend this, however, as a long term solution. I have a RH box set up as a firewall doing NAT for me on the one address, and it works just great. This service is particularly good - I consistently get 95-100KBps, or just about a 1Mbps rate. I also live in a coach house rental here in Chicago, and although they wanted to run new cable in the apartment, I told them to use the old cable because it was not my place. They said they could not guarantee that the service would work, but of course it does work just fine! So don't let them talk you into running new cable if you can avoid it.

Also, if you want to set up your own web server from home, I used a great service called EasyDNS.com where you pay them $25 per year per domain and you can control your DNS settings (even SOA, TTL, etc...) 24/7/265 through a web based (PHP no less) interface. So if I ever need to reboot my Linux box (which I never do really) I can go in and update the IP address that my web server www.xanderbelly.com and mail server

Additional notes:

The terms and conditions of 21st Century cable modem contains the following statement:

Distributing unsolicited information in any manner is prohibited on 21st Century's network and will result in termination of 21st Century service. (I.e. junk email, etc...) Any use of a server type application or service on a computer system connected to 21st Century Cable Modem Service is prohibited and may result in termination of 21st Century Cable Modem Service (i.e. web, ftp, or game servers, etc...). 21st Century Cable Modem Service is for client type applications ONLY.

Also, technically, each additional dynamic IP address beyond the first one carries a $4.95 monthly charge.

3.30. HTVi, Helsinki, Finland

This information is provided by Markku Immonen <wired.poet@sci.fi>:

HTV is the local cable TV company. Their Internet product is called HTVi. They issue a Motorola CYBERSURFR Wave cable modem for all customers. It plugs into an ethernet card using a 10BaseT (RJ-45) cable. Customers have two options: DHCP or a static IP address. The DHCP (dynamic IP address) option is 50 Finnish marks cheaper; in October 1999 the prices were 245 FIM per month for a dynamic address and 295 FIM for a static one.

I opted for a static IP. Configuration was incredibly easy. They give you a couple of info brochures which contain the necessary IP and networking information.

About speed: it varies but is generally acceptable, from 30 kbytes/sec to 200 kbytes/sec. Your best bet is the early morning hours. The fastest download speed so far was 470 kbytes/sec from a Finnish Linuxberg mirror.

More information about HTVi can be found at http://www.htvi.net/.

3.31. Garden State Cable, New Jersey

This information is provided by Denis Voitenko <denis@o3m.com>:

In New Jersey Garden State Cable offers @Home. They give you a 3Com CMX series cable modem and a SMC PCI NIC with the DIGITAL chip. It works just perfect with the Tulip driver. They assign static IP addresses.

One more interesting thing. Unlike in most places, upstream speed is not limited to 128kbs.

Garden State cable web pages are located at http://www.gardenstatecable.com/.

3.32. Zoom Internet, Butler County, PA

This information is provided by Jim Garrison <garrison@olga.net>:

Zoom internet http://www.zoominternet.net/ is a cable ISP. They provide a Bay Networks cable modem, which connects to a 10-Base-T ethernet card. The only thing required to set it up is to enable DHCP.

Note: They provide the cable modem, but you must have your ethernet card working properly with DHCP before the installation guys come.

3.33. Charter Pipeline

This information is provided by Chris Weiss <chris@free-source.com>:

Charter gave me a 3Com cable modem that uses DHCP. I simply followed the DHCP mini-HOWTO and my 256Kbps connection was running at over 350Kbps!

3.34. Netcabo, TV Cabo, Portugal

This information is provided by Marco Soeima <msoeima@netcabo.pt>:

It's a Portuguese ISP and it's available through TV Cabo. The hardware consists of a RealTek ethernet card (just use the rtl8139.o module) and a 3Com U.S. Robotics CMX cable modem. The only thing required to get one's cable access up and running is configure the ethernet card and install DHCP. After that it works like a charm!

More information about Netcabo can be found at http://www.netcabo.pt.

3.35. Supercable, Spain

This information is provided by Mario Galan <galan@arquired.es>:

The setup isn't so much different than other Cable providers. They offer a SMC (I think) network card but you can use yours if you want. They then install a cable modem made by com21 (http://www.com21.com). IP setup is easy since it uses DHCP so I don't think you should have any problems under a modern linux distribution.

For more information check out Mario's web page at http://www.supercable.es/%7Egabu/.

Last thing worth to be said is that Supercable doesn't provide support for Linux but you can always ask your questions in news.supercable.es in the Linux area. Their web page is located at http://www.supercable.es/ (WARNING: get ready to download an almost 1MB of useless Macromedia's Flash garbage).

3.36. NTL, United Kingdom

This information is provided by cogNiTioN <cog-cablemodem@cognite.net>:

This assumes that you've spoken to NTL, you have the cable modem, the cable line installed and your network card installed and recognised. You should also have you MAC address registered with NTL. (NTL contact: http://www.ntl.com/cablemodems/)

Now all you have to do is connect your cable modem to your network card and run the DHCP client. I've found that you have to specify the username you supplied during the registration process, on the command line: e.g. root # dhcpcd -h cognition (substitute cognition for your user name.). For any other problems with DHCP please check out the DHCP mini-HOWTO.

I've also found that occasionally the 3COM CMX modem used needs to be rebooted (power off, press the reset button on the back, power on) if left connected 24/7.

Nameservers used by NTL are: 194.168.4.100 and 194.168.8.100, so those should be added to your /etc/resolv.conf.

I've found NTL's tech support to be close to useless, most the time and they don't officially support Linux, so you're probably better off contacting your local LUG (http://www.lug.org.uk/ ), or you could even try mailing me direct (but I don't promise to be able to respond).

3.37. Virtua, SЦo Paulo, Brazil

This information is provided by Thiago Macieira <thiagom@mail.com>:

IP is assigned dynamically via DHCP. Just run dhcpcd or pump to get the IP and you're done. For more detailed instructions on how to get DHCP running read the DHCP mini-HOWTO.

Notes: operator blocks incoming connections to ports below 1024

3.38. Hathway, Bombay, India

This information is provided by Rishi Gangoly <rishi@w-o-i.com>:

The tech support guys at Hathway were not Linux Savvy at all, but I must say were quite helpful. They even referred me to another customer who got Linux to work with it. However, that person was only able to get it to work on Linux as a stand-alone workstation and not as a gateway (as a router) for his entire network.

Since I was not even able to get it to work as a stand-alone workstation I knew I had a long way to go. The Windows 98 Workstation configuration was a Celeron Workstation and it had a 10/100 D-Link Lan Card Chipset RTL 8139 . The IP address was manually entered, so I knew that there was no DHCP Client required etc.

Even the DNS and Gateway address was manually entered.

I was able to do a ping without any problem in Windows to any site and things were just happening. However, I had no luck with it in Linux. I installed Linux on the same machine (Dual Boot) to make sure there was any Hardware compatibility problems.

I even got the workstation to hook up on the LAN successfully in Linux. So I knew that the Lan Card was working.

I noticed that when I connected the Cable Modem to the LAN card I was not able to see any of the Link LED light up on the LAN Card. So I figured that could be part of the problem. I booted the PC in DOS and ran the DIAG DOS based utility to check the configuration of the Card. I just decided to take a chance and re-configured the LAN Card. I configured it to operate in 10 MBPS Half Duplex Mode instead of Auto Sense.

.......... Guess what..... The problem got solved ;-)

Even the lights (LED Link indicators) started to work, so all was good. ;-) At the end of everything it all worked out. I plugged that lan card into the linux server (since I knew it worked) and got it to work as a router / gateway too. I still wonder why the other customer was not able to get the Linux Box to work as a gateway for the rest of his network. That was no big deal at all. It just worked. The Cable Modem that was used (provided by Hathway) was a SurfBoard 3100

3.39. Siti Cable, Bangalore, India

This information is provided by Vinay Avasthi <vinay@avasthi.com>:

Zee Telefilms has partnered with Siti Cable in Bangalore, India to provide cable modem service. I subscribed to this service and it kind of worked out of the box from linux.

I am using Redhat 6.1 on a IBM Thinkpad 600 with Xircom Realport Ethernet card. On autodetect links mentions that the card will be used in 10MB/s only.

Only problem that I faced was on shutdown, the system will hang while shutting down pump. To temporarily fix the problem I just put that particular like in rc-scripts to background.

The steps that one needs to perform are as follows.

• - Need to have an ethernet card that works with Linux.

• - Enable DHCP by using pump. For some reason dhcpd does not seem to work.

Only thing that I would suggest is to be careful regarding support since the tech support do not seem to know much about software.

3.40. Com Hem, Sweden

This information is provided by Zoltan Arpadffy <arpadffy@altavista.net>:

com hem http://www.comhem.se/ is a Swedish cable TV/Internet provider, a sub-company of Telia http://www.telia.com/ the biggest Scandinavian carrier. com hem does not support any other OS but Windows and Mac-OS (as com hem support claims ), but it is not so complicate to set up on Linux as well.

com hem sells NetGame's cable modem (NeMo) http://www.ngcable.com/nemo.shtml. It is a very fast and flexible 2-way cable modem with initial speed of 512 kb/s but it can be set up to 10Mb/s by the cable provider. You can order it with or without Ethernet card. com hem Internet service is available in the bigger cities all over Sweden.

Network what you'd become a member is:
        IP address: Assigned by com hem
        Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
        Default GW: Assigned by com hem
        Hostname: Assigned by com hem
        Domain name: telia.com
        Primary DNS server (nameserver): 10.0.0.1
        Secondary DNS server (nameserver): 10.0.0.2

zone "private.net"{
        type forward;
        forward only;
        forwarders{
                YOUR.DHCP.ADDRESS;
        };
};

zone "private.net"{
        type master;
        file "private.net-ZONE-FILE";
        notify no;
};

search private.net telia.com
nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 10.0.0.1

3.41. SwissOnLine HiSpeed Internet, Switzerland

This information is provided by Nick Barnes <nick@debau.ch>:

This assumes that you have registered (either on-line or via snail mail) with SwissOnLine and you have received your cable modem, have plugged it in and ensured that it boots correctly as per the installation instructions.

At the time of speaking, SwissOnLine HiSpeed provide COM-21 modems (http://www.com21.com) complete with two different kinds of Antanae leads and an antenna splitter.

You will require a standard 10BaseT ethernet cable to plug the modem into either a network card installed in a PC or the uplink port of a 10BaseT hub. To plug the modem into a normal hub port, you will require a crossover cable.

All information is provided to the host via DHCP, with no special parameters needed in the call. The modem is not locked down by MAC address.

Providing it is not rebooted, the modem appears to grant the same IP address to the host. While this is not guaranteed with anything other than the static IP address option on the business account, I have not seen my address change in the time I have had the modem.

Be wary of any device on your local ethernet which makes DHCP requests. The modem is not fussy which devices it allocates addresses to and it appears to offer the same IP address to _any_ machine which makes a DHCP request.

SwissOnLine do not support Linux directly, but they are aware of its existance!

Notes from Thomas Holenstein <thomas@hex.ch>

I had problems installing my cable modem as well under Linux and under Win98, because the DHCP server of swiss online did not to respond. If you encounter similar problems, you may want call the hotline (0848 852 800). Hold the MAC number of your modem ready if you call, you can find it at the bottom of the modem. If you are only using linux, it might prove difficult to convince the hotline people you did things right. It was difficult with windows already. Be sure you get a number for your problem (Bearbeitungsnummer).

If you want to analyze the problems you may install a network sniffer: ethereal is available for linux and for windows. In my case, I saw that I was sending bootp packages to swissonline but did not receive bootp packages from them. However, I could get other packets.

Notes from Stefan Buckmann for SuSe users:

I use SuSE Linux (currently 7.1). I have had difficulties getting an IP address using the supplied version of dhclient (2.0pl5-4). Suggestion for SuSE users setting up a cable account with Swissonline : Get the latest release of ISC DHCP (currently V3.0b2pl23), compile it and replace /sbin/dhclient with the freshly compiled one. This solved the problems immediately.

3.42. Liwest, Austria

Information provided by Bernd Haug <haug@liwest.at>:

I'm connected through an Austrian cable provider called Liwest. The support eMail is <helpdesk@liwest.at>, the homepage is http://www.liwest.at/.

The modem is a Terayon, the box gets connected via TP cable. The modem works great with my ethernet hardware (3com 905b, vortex driver) as well under Linux as under Windows. Macs are supported, too.

None of my Friends, who use very various hardware and/or OS(versions) have any problems with incompatibilities.

The configuration is done manually (no DHCP, but it's *really* easy since the information sheets are very compact & informative), customers get fixed IPs and DNS entries. Running servers over the cable line is forbidden, no firewall, but ports 80, 21 usw are scanned on a regular base.

Use of bandwidth is limited neither in volume nor in time.

The provider had great availability problems a while ago, but they seem more or less fixed now; I am content with the Service. Transfers go up to ~30k (intercontinental, too).

Please contact Bernd if you have additional questions. He has kindly agreed to provide assistance to any current or new Linux user.

3.43. Blueyonder from Telewest, United Kingdom

Information provided by Mike Watson <mike@prog99.com>:

Plugged in the ethernet card, booted up and turned on DHCP.

Worked first time!! Nameservers were added to resolve.conf so I had to do very little other than follow the home networking howto to get the IP masquerading working.

They also dont mind people running masq'd connections or linux but will only support a win9x setup. But when it was this easy....

3.44. CableNet, Colombia

Information provide by Marco Muskus <muskus@gamebox.net>:

CableNet uses CyberSurf from Motorola, and a 3Com 905 10Base-T Ethernet NIC. Set up is mostly done using DHCP but some people also receive static IPs.

3.45. Brutele, Belgium

Information provided by Fabrice Timmermans <Fabrice.Timmermans@ITSoftware.be>:

Operator: BRUTELE - covers part of Brussels and South of Belgium

Hardware: Teraillon Cable Modem using an RJ-45 Ethernet straight cable to a PC

Software: Standard config is Windows, although Linux i386 support is there under the form of mirrored Linuxberg on the internal servers.

IP Setup: DHCP address assignment, single address only. More available depending on subscription mode.

Pricing: one-off installation : BF 2500 (+-$ 85) + BF 5000 ($175) deposit for the cable modem. Monthly fee : BF 1500 ($40) + Modem loan BF 500 (12$)

Services: Tucows and Linuxberg mirrors, quake I and II servers, proxy, mail relay and pop account (3 aliases) and the other usual stuff you need to survive on the net.

More info at http://www.brutele.be/.

3.46. Optus @Home, Australia

Information provided by Simon Butcher <pickle@alien.net.au>:

For Optus @Home here in Australia (Competitor to Telstra Bigpond) - Originally they used to be running some sort of really weird DHCP server, so a mate of mine hacked a DHCP client and got it running, but recently they've fixed their problems and ordinary dhcpcd will run fine off the shelf. The trick is that Optus use your "Client ID" for authentication. Your client id is also your hostname, and if you're already running windows, your computer name. If your computer name is CO3012345-A then that's your hostname, and therefore your client id.

You feed dhcpcd this information and everything should run perfectly dhcpcd -H CO3012345-A eth1.

Alternatively if you would like to use pump check out the notes of user in Mobile, Alabama.

A word of warning though, Optus are very strict on running servers on their network, so before you connect linux up to Optus @Home, firewall your computer or disable running daemons.

Optus supplies a SurfBoard SB3100 cable modem and a network card. Don't say you've already got a NIC as they will insist you use it and not give you the freebie. I got an SMC EZ-10 PCMCIA card.

3.47. Destiny Cable, Philippines

Information provided by Juan Paolo L. Carballo <jplcarballo@mydestiny.net>:

It used to be just for our capital Manila, but has lately expanded to the province of Cebu as well. There are only three of us Destiny Cable subscribers in our local LUG and so far, no one yet in the province. Destiny Cable is not the first to offer cable internet services but is the cheapest, considering that they give a free cable TV feed in addition to unlimited Internet access. Unlike other cable internet providers, they have Linux as an OS option to choose when you fill up their application form.

There have two subscription options:

1. Residential Modem: Motorola Cybersurfer Wave NIC: Any Connection: Dynamic IP - DHCP (DHCP mini-HOWTO) * Free cable tv feed upon subscription. * Free first 200 feet of cable from service point to your PC. * Option to rent, lease-to-own or buy the cable modem. * Minimum of one year subscription contract.

2. Corporate Modem: No information but definitely not Motorola Cybersurfer NIC: Any Connection: Static IP

Destiny requires you to buy and install your own NIC/Lan card *before* they will setup your service line. In my case, I bought a Linksys etherfast 10/100 LNE100TX ver. 2.0 PnP card and installed it in my Mandrake 7.1 (helium) box using the tulip.c driver, version 0.91g. The NIC was recognized as: Lite-On PNIC-II rev 37 at 0x6200, IRQ 10. When the linemen arrive, they will bring with them only the cable modem, aside from the cable line to your pc. The coaxial cable plugs into the modem from the data splitter on the main line, which it shares with the cable TV. A 10BaseT Ethernet cable with RJ-45 jacks is included with the cable modem. One end plugs into the cable modem and the other end into the ethernet card. Finally, there are six LEDS, one each for POWER, CABLE, PC, TEST, RD and TD. Once the power cycle has been completed, the POWER, CABLE and PC LEDS should be on and not blinking. The TEST LED may light up for a few seconds but this should pass. When a connection is stable, the TEST LED is OFF and the RD "Receive" LED will blink every once in a while. The TD "Transmit" LED will of course light up when you send data.

3.48. Retecal, Spain

Information provided by David Grajal Blanco <picholas@wanadoo.es>:

Retecal www.retecal.es offers a PCI network card NE2000 compatible [Realtek 8129/8139 card] that is supported very well in Linux. Of course you can use any card if you want.

The cablemodem is made by Com21 [www.com21.com] and retecal have a dhcp server so it's easy to configure on a linux-box.

Of course, if you ask retecal about some support for Linux they cannot help you. But in case of problems you can ask in the private news [news.retecal.es] in the linux group, or if you want, you can ask in the local lug [www.augcyl.org].

Retecal uses a proxy that caches all the traffic but it works on transparent mode, so is unneccesary to configure.

Ah, retecal only works on a region of spain named "Castilla y Leon", and Supercable, that is other ISP provider only works in "Andalucia"

3.49. Netvisao, Portugal

Information provided by Bruno Guerreiro <bruno dot guerreiro at ine dot pt>:

At home i've signed up with Netvisao, which is part of Cabovisao, a cable TV Operator in Portugal. Their site is at http://www.netvisao.pt They have several packages with diferent bandwidth limits, that go from 128Kbps to 512Kbps. I think they╢re thinking about going to increase speeds up to 2 Mbps, but there isn't much information about that The card they supplied is a generic ne2k PCI, with DHCP assigned IP, which almost never changes :-). The out-of-the-box installation of Linux worked perfectly. I'm capable of running FTP , HTTP, IMAP, POP3 servers, with no problem at all.No problems with Telnet or SSH either.

3.50. Longview Cable - Cablelynx

Information provided by John Jeffers:

Cablelynx.com is a consortium of smaller cable systems that have recently gone on line in the Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma area.

Primarily they use DOCSIS 1.1 and up compliant cable modems such as a Terayon LJ110. Currently they are configured like the ATT cable system.

The computer is provisioned with Ethernet and DHCP is selected a host name is presented. The cable modem returns hostname.cablelynx.com and locks into the initial MAC address. The user then enters all his particulars including credit card from a Web Browser. DHCP is renewed to a different IP and full access is obtained. The only method to add different equipment is to spoof the MAC address per the AT&T entry or to leave the equipment on and configured and phone technical support and point out that you have changed computers in which case tech support will make the modem change authorized MAC address/es.

I should point out that these providers are amongst the first to provide a pure DOCSIS network (i.e. completely standardized) that will allow users to buy any DOCSIS compliant modem and log it into the network with no contact other than the initial webform with the cable company.

I will also point out that in Beta Site it was discovered that although this will work most of the time a many homes have too many or very poor splitters in line that will not give adequate bidirectional signal strength to the cable modem that will result in the Cable LED flashing in and out to indicate this.

3.51. Soon Communications Plc, Finland

Information provided by Edvard Majakari <ed@krypton.mikroneuvos.fi>:

Soon Communications Plc is an ISP located in Tampere, Finland (former Tampere Telephone Plc). Soon provides cable modem services for its customers, though as of this writing (9th of May, 2001) only some of the regions in Tampere are covered by the cable modem service.

Package offered by soon contains the cable modem (Cool alien-like thingamajick design, manufactured by 3Com), ethernet cable, USB cable (in Windows, you can connect the modem directly via USB cable), coaxial cable splitter (so that you can use your TV and modem at the same time, even if you have only one socket in the wall) and some Windows software I haven't used, as I use it with Linux. Soon doesn't offer Linux support for the modem, but because of the system they use (client acquires IP addresses by DHCP) it can be used with Linux, or actually any machine capable of fetching network information via DHCP), because of the ethernet interface provided by the cable modem.

Installing and using the modem in Debian GNU/Linux is very simple. You should first make sure that your network adapter is supported and installed in your kernel (if you are unsure, type dmesg|grep eth0 in command line and you should see a line saying eth0: (device information) etc). Also make sure that CONFIG_PACKET and CONFIG_FILTER are defined in your kernel configuration, for DHCP won't work without these.

After that, you might use eg. apt to install dhcp-client:

root@bespin # apt-get install dhcp-client

If I remember correctly, after installing the client apt launches it right over, and you should now be connected to the net. You can use - of course - manual method of stopping, starting and restarting the client via script /etc/init.d/dhcp-client.

3.52. InstaNet, Oregon

Information provided by Tucker McLean <tucker@noodleroni.com>

I have some info for you on my cable ISP (InstaNet). I don't have any idea if just my cable company (in Bend, Oregon) does this service, but here goes. The dynamic IP is assigned via DHCP. They supplied me with a Motorola SURFboard modem. I couldn't figure out how I'm supposed to get a pair of name servers assigned to me, so I just typed in the IP's of some name servers. The technician that came to my house was afraid of Linux, or something, and almost didn't put in the RF cable for me. He did, and it works fine. I also have a 486 as a router so I don't have to pay $10.95 /month for my 2 other computers to guarantee them an IP address. Hope this is helpful.