Well here is the results of my attempts to connect to Time Warner cable network.

After 4 calls to their call center which was in the Philippines where all the people just read a scripted answer FAQ and only had the ability to remotely reset the modem. I finally requested to talk to the top support level in the USA. Finally got a tech support person who knew something about how their network was configured.

Their modems at power up time run a script that is really a private LAN using 192.168.x.x to auto verify the cable modem mac address against a table of authorized accounts. At the conclusion the 10.2.0.1 dhcp server issues a real routable ip address along with the routable 2 dns ip address.

Now this long duration hand shake takes about 40 seconds and on a windows system, windows keeps looping through the ip and dns acquire code until it succeeds. Now on freebsd the ifconfig_fxp0="DHCP" seems to only cycle a single time and results in a "no carrier" status in the boot up msg log.

After the Freebsd 8.2 boot process completed and I saw "no carrier" status i issued "/etc/rc.d/netif restart" command which resulted in the same status. This is when I posted to the questions list for help. It was after the post that I had my conversation with the level 3 tech support guy and learned about the long hand shake process. I next tried issuing (ifconfig fxp0 up) after the freebsd boot process completed and to my surprise I had a public routable ip address. So I have to find a way during the boot process to give the ifconfig_fxp0="DHCP" statement in the /etc/rc.conf some delay time. But I think Freebsd 9.0 has an built in "up" process in its boot up process that may solve this problem.

Another thing I learned from the level 3 support guy is that the cable modem has to be reset by unplugging it's power if I want to move the output cable to a different device, such as from the window box to the freebsd box or to a router.

The bottom line is I have things working now and there was nothing wrong with either my window box or my freebsd box. Its just the Time Warner cable modem box and the non-standard way it's configured.


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