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Cable internet, Vonage phone service and wireless network

Submitted by macsane on May 13, 2008 - 2:39am. PowerPC Macs | Hardware Repair Help

I've run in to a bit of a head scratcher. My Daughter has cable internet and Vonage phone service. Vonage uses the internet connection for its phone service. She has a Mac iBook that has an Airport card and she wants to use it on a wireless connection.

I took a Airport base station over to her place along with a 4port network hub. The setup is. The cable modem has a Cat5 ethernet cable coming out and going to the Motorola modem for the Vonage phone service. The modem also has a plug in for the phone and a cat5 ethernet connection for her computer. This all works very well.

Until you try to hook up a wireless connection. The Set up is. The cat5 coming out of the motorola modem is going to the 4port network hub at the uplink port. There is then a cable going to the computer ethernet port and another one going to the Airport base station. So the computer is still hard wired to the ethernet.

When I try to set the iBook up for the wirless service. It recognizes the base station, gives me a airport address but it can't find the network or it says it has three networks it can link to but it only shows two. DSL and Mac's computer. Trying either of the two listed gets a signal but no connection and the airport icon on the top of the screen looks like it has a picture of a usb port on it. She called her service provider and as usual they had no clue.

With the network hub and the airport base station hooked in to the set up her computer keeps losing the internet connection and you have to go and reset it eveytime you want to surf the net. pull the airport base station and network hub out and everything is ok. She seems to think that Vonage maybe the problem and is planning to call them tomorrow.

Any ideas as to what maybe causing the problem or what I need to do

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coius's picture

router functions...

Submitted by coius on May 13, 2008 - 2:57am.

is the airport trying to provide DHCP service? It may be confusing the network by trying to give DHCP out to the network crashing the system. Also, make sure you don't have it acting as a router, you just want it to be a access point. Either that, or if the modem isn't a router, what you can do is hook the hub up to the airport, then the airport to the Modem.

Another thing to think about, is the airport plugged into the the hub/switch on the internal network port, or the one that goes out to the internet.

What version of the airport is this?

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Jon's picture

Is it really just a hub, or i

Submitted by Jon on May 13, 2008 - 3:03am.

Is it really just a hub, or is it a router? There needs to be something serving out private LAN IPs to the network if the Moto modem isn't (as it seems). Is the AP a Graphite, with just one ethernet port? If so you really need a router. The cable box should be serving IPs, but it might be set to only offer one IP. Check what IP the computer gets when hardwired, and what IP the Moto reports in any of its configs as it's external IP and it's internal IP. If the Moto has an IP in a private range going out then the cable box is serving up IPs and routing them and you might have to put the router/hub between the cable box and the VoIP box. If it's a general use IP then you might need a router to serve up private IPs behind a single IP.

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coius's picture

Ah, ok. Do this...

Submitted by coius on May 13, 2008 - 11:46am.

ah, i see. ok. I know now. Cable modems only take an internal IP address from ONE machine. In order to hook up more, you HAVE TO have a router, as it will take all the internal IP Addresses and put it to one so it can go to the cable modem. What you are doing is vying for the Cable Modem's setup. Cable modems are only supposed to be hooked up to one device. So what you need to do is take the cable modem and plug it into the INTERNET port on the Airport, and then from the airport, take the hub/switch and put it to the internal Airport port. This will allow the Airport to translate all the internal IP addresses and streamline it into one external IP address. Hence the word "Routing" as it "Routes" all the IP addresses internally to one address EXTERNALLY.

Yeah, try it like that. Also, you will want to go into the airport and turn on DHCP Support and NAT (Network address Translation).

Now is also a good time to turn on your firewall. This will prevent people from coming past the cable modem and into the internal network

Try that setup, and let me know

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cable internet, Vonage and a wireless neteork

Submitted by macsane on May 13, 2008 - 4:31pm.

Thanks to all who replyed to my question. It seem that I will have to get a router in order to set up the network as the Cable ISP only supports one computer

» Its not what you didn't do, Its what you did that makes a differance

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