The Cynic Says……

My friend Tony just signed up with Comcast at his house (he’s never had internet access before; he always came over if he needed to get online) and wanted me to come over and setup the Belkin 54g wireless router he bought awhile back when he initially intended on signing up. Well, I get over there and connect the modem via ethernet and everything to make sure his internet connection itself actually works and of course it doesn’t. So I go through everything I know to make sure things are setup properly on his end. He has a valid IP, firewall is turned off, router isn’t connected, nothing out of the ordinary yet he can’t send any traffic past the modem. His computer is able to connect to the modem IP and view the diagnostics page and everything just fine. It’s a brand new RCA modem that I’ve never actually had any experience with but it appears to be a decent little modem overall. However, every site he tries to visit gives a “403 forbidden error”. At this point, I’m just like… fuck it, call tech support. We call Comcast and they ask the normal idiot questions… You know the drill… “is the modem connected directly to the PC, are there any lights on, which ones, etc.” then the walk-through the connections to make sure it’s set for auto-obtain IP, make sure he has an IP, etc. Turns out the system didn’t recognize the modem so he changes a couple of things and reboots the modem remotely… Now I can’t even get a fucking IP address… wtf? So I try to repair, unable to obtain an IP. Power down the modem, power back up, repair connection.. bang! connected! Problem #1 solved.

Now to get the router working. It’s a Belkin, so it comes with this easy setup disc that you run on your PC that supposedly does everything for you. Curious, I try it out and it appears to sort of work except that I still can’t access the internet. Frustrated, I give up on the easy setup wizard and go directly to the router’s setup page (192.168.2.1) and look at the settings. It appears to be setup properly but is not getting an IP address. Now, I’d heard of ISP’s blocking certain MAC addresses and thought maybe that was the issue. I setup the router to masquerade as the PC’s MAC and sure enough it pulled an IP instantly. So now this makes me wonder which camp Comcast falls into. Blocking the Belkin MAC addresses? Or is the modem somehow passing the PC’s MAC through to the system which is then locking his account down to only allowing that MAC address to authenticate with the network and thus get an IP? Strangely, I have a Linksys WRT54GS router that I just plugged up and it worked perfectly fine. Previous to that, we used an old computer with XP and two network cards to share the internet connection and basically act as a router. Seems that Comcast isn’t locking accounts to a single MAC address (something Knology seems to do as when my friend switched out network cards he had to call them to have his account reset). So that makes me lean towards them locking out Belkin router MAC addresses. But why Belkin? Why does my Linksys work perfectly fine and my friend’s Belkin not work unless I have it clone his PC’s mac? Very strange, to say the least. Regardless, it all worked ok in the end and I found the Belkin router to be quite easy to setup via the web interface. It’s a bit nicer than the stock Linksys firmware/web interface is and probably better for the average user who knows very little to nothing about setting up a network. The only thing that got me was how wide open the stupid thing actually is. Default setup is a blank password and no security on the wireless. I can’t say I agree with that, but I guess they’re going for the “easy setup” route.

Still, I’m utterly dumbfounded as to why Belkin would offer absolutely no assistance in setting up a secure network and actually locking down the router such that your internet connection can’t be hijacked by unscrupulous neighbors. Admittedly, outside administration of the router is turned off so you have to be connected to the router via  a cable or wireless but that’s still not terribly secure. The average person is going to plug in the router and just assume that they need to do nothing more when in fact they absolutely do. Fact is, hijacking wifi has become more and more common these days and it’s so easy to do…. and it’s pretty easy to protect against, though nearly impossible to prevent completely. Regardless, I think router manufacturers should have some sort of setup wizard that walks customers through setting up a WPA-PSK or WPA2 encryption scheme to keep outside access to their wifi networks to a minimum. Cisco/Linksys has implemented just such a thing for people who use their cards & routers together. That’s a start, at least.

Regardless, I’m still curious as to what Comcast’s deal is with Belkin routers. My Linksys worked fine but his Belkin wouldn’t pull an IP. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Comcast themselves offer a combo modem/router made by Linksys.