A gentleman called saying that he got a new PC, but he couldn’t connect to the internet. He has cable internet a few weeks ago, but his PC broke down & he only just plugged in the PC. He also tried the PC at his brothers place, & he was able to connect without a problem.

I wonder if this is just a faulty cable, or a faulty modem.

Once I get to the house I ask a few more questions & I find his brother has ADSL internet, not cable internet, & his brother also has a router, so he can connect a few PCs, whereas my client connects directly from PC to cable modem.

The ISP is telstra, & I’ve used cable internet before (with Optus), so they should be similar.

After an hour of trying to “ping” the modem , trying different ethernet & USB cables, I couldn’t get to the modem “configuration” web page… unless I unplugged the modem from the “thick” cable… it just didn’t make sense!

I call telstra & I quickly find out that “Telstra does it differently”… You cannot communicate with the modem unless your pc runs a special “monitor” program in the background… So I ask the obvious question: what if I connect the modem to a router… the router cannot run the “monitor” program. But the tech assures me that as long as 1 PC on the router network is running the “monitor” then everything should be fine.

What a strange setup!

Anyway, after some confusion about passwords, everything is working fine. I help setup the email, & then go my merry way.