TrueMobile1184 lost connection with internet

Exact same thing happened to me today.  Attbi and an 1184.  I had to power off the cable modem, when I turned it back on, no DHCP from AT&T.  Something is fishy here.  Comcast????  Anyone else seen this?

If the cable modem ever gets turned off, you need to turn off the router and the computers.  The modem should first be powered on and then allowed to synchronize with the ISP - this may sometimes take as long as five minutes.  Next the router should be powered on and allowed to synchronize with the cable modem.  This may take up to 1 minute.  Finally, the computers should be powered on.  Remember that the cable modem gets its IP address from the ISP, the router has to see this IP address, and then the router has to assign IP addresses to the computers.  I don't know if this the problem you are both having, but it is always a good idea to keep this in mind whenever you are troubleshooting problems like this.

Steve

Tried that serveral times.  No Joy.  I get DHCP from the router to the PC just fine.  I have reset the router serveral times too.  For some reason, I am getting no DHCP from ATTBI to the 1184.  I am pretty good with this stuff but nothing works.  Very frustrating...  It all started with a simple cable modem off for the night.  This has worked a thousand times before.  Anyone else have any ideas?

Thank you Steve, for your help.  I have tried this many times with many different variations.  I tried once more per your instructions, just in case I had missed some little step in all previous attempts, but alas...I got the same results.  The only clue that I have....and this could be a coincidence.....when I lost connection, I was on the wireless laptop.  I had ZoneAlarm activated and had removed some TCP flags from the trusted zone.  I thought maybe I had caused the problem by changing some settings I shouldn't have.  So I turned off the firewall. Tried to re-connect.  I went a step farther and uninstalled the firewall.  Still no connection.  At that point, I powered down the laptop and the other wireless desktop and concentrated only on the host computer.  I hadn't messed with any settings with this computer.  Even though I hadn't had problems with the firewall before....I unloaded it just to be sure.  Still no connection.  I have reset, hard reset, resync, renewed both cable modem and router, system restore, checked and rechecked settings, etc.  I don't think there is anything left for me to do.  I'm afraid I will keep tinkering with stuff until I eventually mess up my direct connection from the host to modem to internet.  That would really put me over the edge. The router is unplugged and unloved at the moment.  I'm beginning to think since jhbjr is having the same problem, there could be a Attbi / Comcast issue.  Yes, I agree jhbjr....something smells fishy.  It's odd that it works and has worked many times before and now, all of a sudden......nothing seems to work.

This may help..see my last post

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_network&message.id=18703&page=6

Steve-

Also try this website......

http://www.broadbandreports.com

Thank you Steve-, yes I have read and followed this thread with great interest.  However, I'm sad to say, it didn't work in my situation.  I printed out everything you did and tried to do the same, but no luck.  I appreciate you trying to help and I'm glad you resolved your problem. 

Thank you mhelms for the link.  I have often referred to this site and am reading it this very moment. 

Tried it all and I am still dead in the water.  I am baffled as to why turning my modem off and on should have killed the ability of the 1184 to do NAT.  I'm about ready to find a river and toss the 1184 into it.

The same problem appeared here (attbi/Comcast Northwest Chicago) overnight after having worked perfectly since Christmas with the default dynamic DHCP settings.  I'm unaware of the cable modem or the 1184 having been powered off as the cause.   The 1184 configuration status page showed no Internet connection.  The Renew button timed out and displayed a new status with still no IP address.  

attbi does not support home networking, so I connected the Ethernet port on my Inspiron directly to the cable modem to prove that out before calling their T/S.  Sure enough it worked perfectly after running ipconfig /renew to obtain a configuration for that connection.   No help there.

This morning, Dell T/S coached me through writing down that configuration obtained from ipconfig /all and setting the 1184 to the same fixed IP, subnet mask, gateway, DNS, and MAC addresses.  With the 1184's uplink port connected to the modem, it worked immediately and has been working since this morning.   I also tried it with the 1184's WAN port MAC address instead of the Inspiron's and it also obtained a lease and worked.

I am concerned that this is a poor solution as the attbi lease expires in 4 days and  I presume that with fixed settings, the 1184 will not renew or extend.  This may cause a problem if and when the cable system reprovisions the modem.   Anybody know how frequently IP addresses are reassigned or reused? 

It will be a real hassle reconfiguring the 1184 every four days to keep it working and that will be a big disappointment with the 1184.  This deserves a better response from Dell, since if the Inspiron can obtain a lease, but the 1184 cannot with the same (Inspiron's) MAC address, it seems to me there must be a fault in the 1184's DHCP client implementation that was exposed by some configuration change within attbi/Comcast.

 

Yea...it works.  Enter a static IP, Net Mask, Gateway and DNS and it all works......for the term of the lease or maybe if you never shut down the router.  No need for me to change the MAC.  What nonsense.  DHCP needs to be fixed.

Bingo...Now I know I am not going nuts.  While I hate to see this happening to anyone else, it is good to have confirmation that there is something up with the Comcast takeover of ATTBI infrastructure and whatever they are doing is beyond the ability of the 1184 DHCP server to handle it.  You nailed the symptoms exactly.  I fear we are the first of an epidemic of these failures.  I am betting it will happen to other ATTBI users when they renew their IP address lease. 

This is going to be one for Dell to own.  I am afraid it is the type of bug that will get very little attention either from Comcast or Dell.  Hey Dell...prove me wrong.

Well I am off to try that static configuration but as you say it is a hopeless cludge.

 

 

Yes....it worked for me too.  I left the MAC address blank and added the IP / Mask / Gateway / DNS (btw, I had two and used the first one...have no idea why I ended up with two)  First time I've been able to connect through the router in days.  Guess I'm good until the lease expires.  I agree there must be a connection with att/comcast.  While searching for a remedy I ran across some interesting news.  Rumors and such of comcast banning routers.  Tech support supposedly telling someone that as of March 1 they would be banned.  Sounds a little far fetched to me.  I have no idea if any of it is true.  Anyway...thanks DPoole for the suggestion and thanks to jhbjr for including no need for a MAC address.  I actually had already tried this procedure a couple of days ago but had been unsuccessful because I kept putting in a MAC along with the other settings.

Same thing happened to me as well.  My connection works fine when plugged into my system, but nothing from my 1184.

 

Anybody at Dell got an answer?

I tried using the ipconfig/all command and got all the information in the messages I've seen except the MAC address.  I then tried running the 1184 software and the software requested entries that were beyond my expertise.  Could someone out there in "screwed by Dell/ATTBI/Comcast land" do a screen print of a successful and post it?