dhcp revisited...

[DPU-ibrown]

I must beg to differ with the following statement.:

> I am convinced at this point that Comcast as a service cannot handle
network connectivity for Ubuntu at all under DHCP...
> > 
> 
> 
DHCP is a protocol.  It has nothing to do with the Operating System installed.  DHCP has a "syntax" if you will.  As long as the platform speaks that syntax, then you can get a connection.

DHCP is generally restricted based upon MAC address, and one thing to note, via cable companies from my experience dealing with them and various devices.  They assign the lease to your MAC address, AFAIK, and that lease is maintained for a minute.  In the past I have connected a different device to my cable modem, requested a lease, and not gotten the lease.  I had to do a full power-cycle and wait a few mins for the lease to clear.  The powercycle was really just more to kill some time, because its always nice to reboot network devices when you get a chance.

So I would say that there's no problems with Ubuntu and Comcast or Cox or any other cable company.  The problem comes most likely from the Data-Link Layer, with regards to the Lease assignments.  Try power-ing down everything for a few mins, cable modem especially, and retry.  IE: turn cable modem off for like 5-10m, or call comcast and request they manually release the lease assignment, that's worked for me in the past as well.  The DHCP system from what i can tell essentially is setup to not change your IP as often as possible and this is the method they've used to do so.  Ubuntu understands DHCP, and has nothing to do with the DHCP client you're running, that's released by another group, and operates multi-platform with just a C compiler.  So I would suggest that you try to get the cable company to A: release the lease, hook the computer directly to the cable modem, and see if you get an assigned address that way.  Let me know the results.

>>It's a shame, since I need an environment that I can connect to from multiple locations...
Ubuntu/Linux as a whole solves that problem, but you have to begin to understand the smaller protocols and essential bits of information before everything becomes clear and easy.  You can't bake a cake without knowing how to beat the batter with a whisk... you know?




JD <jdangler at atlantic.net>

On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 16:53 -0400, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> JD wrote:
> > This is really getting more confusing by the moment...
> > I put in my live-cd from Ubuntu 6.10 (which I know doesn't use avahi).
> > I boot the machine, it cannot get a dhcp license for eth0...
> > 

> Wait, do you have a router?
> 
> Matt Flaschen
>