Airport Express won't connect to Comcast

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Adam Ryssdal - 30 Jan 2005 18:29 GMT

A friend of my just got an Airport Express and can't get it to connect to his
Comcast high speed cable service. The folks at Comcast have been absolutely
no help, and the folks at Apple (downtown store in San Francisco) have also
not been any help.

He's running OSX 10.3.7 on a G4 iBook. Plugging the cable directly into the
ethernet port on the iBook works fine - connection speed is great. But with
the Airport Express, the connection never gets made.

Can anyone help with this?

Thanks

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Cathy Stevenson - 30 Jan 2005 19:21 GMT

> A friend of my just got an Airport Express and can't get it to connect to his
> Comcast high speed cable service. The folks at Comcast have been absolutely
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> Can anyone help with this?

It's pretty hard for you to transmit the info that your friend needs to
relay to the newsgroup. What has he done so far to configure the
airport network?

Cathy

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"there's a dance or two in the old dame yet." - mehitabel

C.Stevenson, M.D.
cats1921@invalidsonic.net

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Gnarlodious - 30 Jan 2005 20:03 GMT

Entity Adam Ryssdal spoke thus:

>> A friend of my just got an Airport Express and can't get it to connect to his
>> Comcast high speed cable service. The folks at Comcast have been absolutely
>> no help,

It may need to have it's "IP lease cleared", maybe he should call them up
and tell them he has a new computer plugged in.
Most newer cable systems recognize what a new machine is plugged into a
router, but this may be an older one that needs to be manually reset.

-- Gnarlie
Social Security Privatization: a solution in search of a problem

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Neill Massello - 30 Jan 2005 23:21 GMT

> It may need to have it's "IP lease cleared", maybe he should call them up
> and tell them he has a new computer plugged in.
> Most newer cable systems recognize what a new machine is plugged into a
> router, but this may be an older one that needs to be manually reset.

Well, we can't even be sure if the OP's friend has tried power-cycling
the cable modem yet.

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Clark Martin - 31 Jan 2005 07:11 GMT

> Entity Adam Ryssdal spoke thus:
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> Most newer cable systems recognize what a new machine is plugged into a
> router,

Or try power cycling the cable modem (turn off / unplug power, wait for
ten seconds then turn on / plug in)

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Clark Martin
Redwood City, CA, USA Macintosh / Internet Consulting

"I'm a designated driver on the Information Super Highway"

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Karl Schendel - 30 Jan 2005 23:00 GMT

Has he set the MAC address of the Airport Express to the same MAC address
as the iBook? (I assume there's some way to do that, I don't have an
Airport.) Alternatively he can get the MAC address of the Airport
Express, call Comcast back, and tell them that he changed out the
Ethernet card on his machine (or, got a new computer), and would they
pretty please change his provisioned MAC address to xxxxxx.

Last time I had connection problems, it turned out to be the
MAC address presented by my nat/router box - it had been inadvertently
reset. Comcast support claimed that their net wasn't MAC sensitive,
but it turned out to be otherwise -- at least in my area. (Which used
to be ATTBI -- dunno if that makes any difference or not.)

Karl

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Budd Good - 31 Jan 2005 22:35 GMT

> A friend of my just got an Airport Express and can't get it to connect to his
> Comcast high speed cable service. The folks at Comcast have been absolutely
> no help, and the folks at Apple (downtown store in San Francisco) have also
> not been any help.

> He's running OSX 10.3.7 on a G4 iBook. Plugging the cable directly into the
> ethernet port on the iBook works fine - connection speed is great. But with
> the Airport Express, the connection never gets made.

> Can anyone help with this?

> Thanks

Impossible to say what the problem is from your description, but perhaps
he's running into the same problem I had with wireless a while back.
Is he using WEP? I have a 2Wire Officeportal for my wireless AP, and I
found that in order to get my Airport Express card to connect to it, I
had to put a "0x" (zero X) before my hexadecimal WEP key (which was not
necessary when configuring the wireless connection on my work WinXP
laptop) before I could get a connection. This was obscurely documented
on the Apple support site (which I found after a lengthy search) but the
materials that shipped with my iMac G5 made no mention of it. I guess
they want you to buy the Airport Express Base Station too...

B

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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / January 2005

Airport Express won't connect to Comcast