So the other day, I was working on trying to forward some ports on my gateway to set up a Vent server.
I come to the screens on my modem/gateway, and lo, the options and screens to do so do not actually exist. This is on a Linksys WCG200-CC, which is the cable modem/wifi router dumbed down by Comcast.
I have seen and read documentation on precisely how to do what I need to, but my interface lacks these parts somehow. I think, perhaps, that my firmware is out of date and must be updated. The Linksys site says there are no releases of firmware for the WCG200, but other sources suggest that there may be revisions for the CC rebrand. I pop into Linksys's live chat support and the girl says they don't manage firmware for it.
So I do a few hours of Googling and everything I find says that there is no way to update the firmware myself, and that Comcast has to push the upgrade from their end, which frankly creeps me right out.
So I pop onto Comcast's live support chat, and the girl says, oh, you'll need to call our support center as I don't have that information. I call Comcast, first guy I talk to says as far as he knows, the firmware is just updated automatically and there's no way to do it manually, but he'll double-check. Not three seconds of hold time later he comes back telling me he's checked with his team-mates, his lead, and several techs and that is indeed the case.
I ask to be transferred to home networking support, and after talking for a few minutes with the guy there he says I completely get what you're wanting to do, but we don't support that model, and transfers me to.. Netgear support.. yes, that's right. Netgear. Netgear support of course tells me, dude, why did you call us, you have a Linksys device. I hang up and call Linksys support, and explain my situation, and they kindly tell me that I'll have to contact Comcast, as it is a Comcast-supported model, not a Linksys-supported model.
Having a slightly clearer idea of the slippery slope that I'm treading here, I call Comcast back and ask to be transferred to home networking again. I get a different guy who coughs continuously and deafeningly into his headset while he looks up my model-- and drops the call while he's typing.
I concede defeat and go to sleep.
In the morning, hoping I'll have an entirely fresh batch of employees to talk at, I call back.
This time I get a different guy, thank god and my ears, and we go through the whole spiele, he looks up my model and tells me that he'll have to register this device with my account. Okay, fine. I read off the MAC and SN blah blah, then he tells me how to log in to it. I humor him, as I have it open already and have been poking at it for days, on the off chance that he'll reveal something new.
"Okay, open up Internet Explorer."
"Ok"
"Click on the address bar."
"uhuh."
"Delete everything in it."
"done.."
"Now type.. 1.. 9.. 2.. dot.. 1.. 6.. 8.. dot.. 0.. dot.. 1, exactly like that."
"yeah..."
"now hit enter"
"done."
Prompts for username and password. I already know that it is the Linksys default of <blank>:admin despite him saying comcast:1234 which does not work
Once in, he tells me ok now click on such-and-such link.
"There is no such link."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. Trust me, I've--"
"It should be there. Just click it."
"No, it seriously isn't."
"It should be."
"Maybe you need the Linksys login"
"I have it, I've talked with them and they--"
"You need to talk to Linksys."
"I was just on the phone with--"
"Call Linksys and ask them for the login."
"I already have it--."
"You need to do that, I can't help you more."
"Linksys said they didn't support it and I'd have to call you."
"Contact Linksys, I can't help."
"But.."
"Well at least we got your modem registered, which we needed to do. Thank you for calling Comcast. I'm glad we could help. *click*."
So today after realizing there was probably no way I was going to get the Linksys, or wait is it Comcast, gateway working how I needed it, I reinstalled the old Motorola wired modem and jacked a wireless router into it for great signal.
I power everything back on, and lo and behold every website I visit gets walledgardened into their Welcome to Comcast captive portal saying I need to set up my account. There was a procedure I worked out to bypass this by forcing different DNS addresses a while back at a previous installation but I couldn't convince it to work this time around, so finally I threw my hands up and called Comcast again.
The lady informs me that it's perfectly expected that I'd be getting those screens, as my old modem had been revoked from my account. So we add it back in. Power cycle everything, reboot my computers. Same message. Half an hour of unplugging and replugging and checking lights continues on the phone until something inexplicable happens and lo and behold I can resolve Gmail. Good enough, I thank the lady and hang up so as not to waste more minutes.
But that's when the real madness ensues. Not /everything/ resolves. About 75% of the websites I try still resolve to the Welcome to Comcast internal page, while about 20% resolve and about 5% don't resolve at all. I reboot everything, clear all my local caches, reset all of my adapters and interfaces. Same result. It's now four in the afternoon and I need to leave for work at eight in the evening, so I crash for a few hours and come in, where I am now typing this.
Half rant, half plea for wtfhelpplox. So maddening.
Also I ran into a completely bizarre thing that nobody I've talked to [net gurus among them] has ever seen or knows why I find this, nor any results on the internets that I can find. On the WGC200-CC, any time I netcat requested any filename including '.conf' in it, I would get this, even or obviously bogus requests. Any other bogus requests not including '.conf' would return the expected 404 or forbiddens.
Any ideas? I can't find but a hair of documentation online about micro_httpd.
I come to the screens on my modem/gateway, and lo, the options and screens to do so do not actually exist. This is on a Linksys WCG200-CC, which is the cable modem/wifi router dumbed down by Comcast.
I have seen and read documentation on precisely how to do what I need to, but my interface lacks these parts somehow. I think, perhaps, that my firmware is out of date and must be updated. The Linksys site says there are no releases of firmware for the WCG200, but other sources suggest that there may be revisions for the CC rebrand. I pop into Linksys's live chat support and the girl says they don't manage firmware for it.
So I do a few hours of Googling and everything I find says that there is no way to update the firmware myself, and that Comcast has to push the upgrade from their end, which frankly creeps me right out.
So I pop onto Comcast's live support chat, and the girl says, oh, you'll need to call our support center as I don't have that information. I call Comcast, first guy I talk to says as far as he knows, the firmware is just updated automatically and there's no way to do it manually, but he'll double-check. Not three seconds of hold time later he comes back telling me he's checked with his team-mates, his lead, and several techs and that is indeed the case.
I ask to be transferred to home networking support, and after talking for a few minutes with the guy there he says I completely get what you're wanting to do, but we don't support that model, and transfers me to.. Netgear support.. yes, that's right. Netgear. Netgear support of course tells me, dude, why did you call us, you have a Linksys device. I hang up and call Linksys support, and explain my situation, and they kindly tell me that I'll have to contact Comcast, as it is a Comcast-supported model, not a Linksys-supported model.
Having a slightly clearer idea of the slippery slope that I'm treading here, I call Comcast back and ask to be transferred to home networking again. I get a different guy who coughs continuously and deafeningly into his headset while he looks up my model-- and drops the call while he's typing.
I concede defeat and go to sleep.
In the morning, hoping I'll have an entirely fresh batch of employees to talk at, I call back.
This time I get a different guy, thank god and my ears, and we go through the whole spiele, he looks up my model and tells me that he'll have to register this device with my account. Okay, fine. I read off the MAC and SN blah blah, then he tells me how to log in to it. I humor him, as I have it open already and have been poking at it for days, on the off chance that he'll reveal something new.
"Okay, open up Internet Explorer."
"Ok"
"Click on the address bar."
"uhuh."
"Delete everything in it."
"done.."
"Now type.. 1.. 9.. 2.. dot.. 1.. 6.. 8.. dot.. 0.. dot.. 1, exactly like that."
"yeah..."
"now hit enter"
"done."
Prompts for username and password. I already know that it is the Linksys default of <blank>:admin despite him saying comcast:1234 which does not work
Once in, he tells me ok now click on such-and-such link.
"There is no such link."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. Trust me, I've--"
"It should be there. Just click it."
"No, it seriously isn't."
"It should be."
"Maybe you need the Linksys login"
"I have it, I've talked with them and they--"
"You need to talk to Linksys."
"I was just on the phone with--"
"Call Linksys and ask them for the login."
"I already have it--."
"You need to do that, I can't help you more."
"Linksys said they didn't support it and I'd have to call you."
"Contact Linksys, I can't help."
"But.."
"Well at least we got your modem registered, which we needed to do. Thank you for calling Comcast. I'm glad we could help. *click*."
So today after realizing there was probably no way I was going to get the Linksys, or wait is it Comcast, gateway working how I needed it, I reinstalled the old Motorola wired modem and jacked a wireless router into it for great signal.
I power everything back on, and lo and behold every website I visit gets walledgardened into their Welcome to Comcast captive portal saying I need to set up my account. There was a procedure I worked out to bypass this by forcing different DNS addresses a while back at a previous installation but I couldn't convince it to work this time around, so finally I threw my hands up and called Comcast again.
The lady informs me that it's perfectly expected that I'd be getting those screens, as my old modem had been revoked from my account. So we add it back in. Power cycle everything, reboot my computers. Same message. Half an hour of unplugging and replugging and checking lights continues on the phone until something inexplicable happens and lo and behold I can resolve Gmail. Good enough, I thank the lady and hang up so as not to waste more minutes.
But that's when the real madness ensues. Not /everything/ resolves. About 75% of the websites I try still resolve to the Welcome to Comcast internal page, while about 20% resolve and about 5% don't resolve at all. I reboot everything, clear all my local caches, reset all of my adapters and interfaces. Same result. It's now four in the afternoon and I need to leave for work at eight in the evening, so I crash for a few hours and come in, where I am now typing this.
Half rant, half plea for wtfhelpplox. So maddening.
Also I ran into a completely bizarre thing that nobody I've talked to [net gurus among them] has ever seen or knows why I find this, nor any results on the internets that I can find. On the WGC200-CC, any time I netcat requested any filename including '.conf' in it, I would get this, even or obviously bogus requests. Any other bogus requests not including '.conf' would return the expected 404 or forbiddens.
Code:
$ nc 192.168.0.1 80 GET /home/fnord/bar.conf 80 HTTP/1.0 200 Ok Server: micro_httpd Date: TUE, 01 JUL 2008 23:44:04 GMT Content-Type: zip/application Connection: close Cache-Control: no-cache #<<Begin of Configuration File>> # #RIP # RIP Support(Enable or Disable)=Disable; RIP Authentication (Enable or Disable)=Enable; RIP Authentication Key=; RIP Authentication Key ID=0; RIP Reporting Interval=30; RIP Reporting Unicast IP Address=0.0.0.0; # #Routed Subnet # RIP Routed Subnet Support (Enable or Disable)=Disable; DHCP Provisioned Routed Subnet (Enable or Disable)=Disable; NAT Routed Subnet Support(Enable or Disable)=Disable; NAT Routed Subnet Gateway IP=0.0.0.0; NAT Routed Subnet DNS(1)=0.0.0.0; NAT Routed Subnet DNS(2)=0.0.0.0; NAT Routed Subnet DNS(3)=0.0.0.0; Routed Subnet Network IP(1)=0.0.0.0; Routed Subnet Mask(1)=255.255.255.0; Routed Subnet Gateway(1)=0.0.0.0; Routed Subnet Network IP(2)=0.0.0.0; Routed Subnet Mask(2)=255.255.255.0; Routed Subnet Gateway(2)=0.0.0.0; Routed Subnet Network IP(3)=0.0.0.0; Routed Subnet Mask(3)=255.255.255.0; Routed Subnet Gateway(3)=0.0.0.0; #<<End of Configuration File>> HMAC-MD5 checksum=3912E637608E FFF8538A5F93E CB740;
Any ideas? I can't find but a hair of documentation online about micro_httpd.
Also, I can kill you with my brain.
