I've just migrated from Virgin and I think my Sagem is dead.

[Expat]

Hello,

I've just migrated from Virgin, which is due to be switched over on Wedneday (which can't come soon enough, I've had it up to here with this bloody packet shaping), however upon receiving my new Sky router - this bloody awful Sagem thing - I plugged it and networked it up (RJ45 into one of the yellow sockets - am I to understand that the latter two, blue and green are "reserved"?!) to change the standard IP and retrieve my ADSL login, and it successfully assigns an IP via DCHP however upon trying to login to the web interface (http://192.168.0.1, admin/sky), I get nothing. That is to say, it just continually times out. After about 10 attempts it will come up with the login prompt - but even after entering the aforementioned login it still times out.

Is my new glorified modem (it looks consumer, so I will not call it a router yet) dead?

I've an old DG834v3 that has served me well for many years (3 different ISPs in this country and one abroad!), and would really rather keep it. I am however getting a bit anxious about being offline now if it proves to be dead. My work takes me overseas for half of the year but when I'm back here in Blighty I need to be connected 24/7 as part of my contract.

As I understand it, ADSL username is the modem's MAC address appended with @skydsl, and the password is a hash generated from the MAC address and the default WPA passphrase? I found that little code generator website and have saved a copy of this username and password, but could anybody confirm this is the case?

Any advice would be appreciated - thanks in advance!

Expat

[Expat]

Sorry, I forgot to ask - I assume it would probably be wise to change (read: mask) the MAC address of my Netgear to the MAC of the Sagem thing?

[PaulSky]

All the ethernet sockets work on the unit, you can use all 4 as normal ports.
Have you got a firewall running, some times if you change provider the default gateway IP changes, I think VM use 192.168.100.1 for their router which means your firewall may be blocking the router if you have one running.
One other thing that can cause time outs (apart from duff hardware in the router) is proxy setups in your LAN connection.
By the way your Sky connection is residential use so don't mention work if you ever have to call them, it won't do you any favours.

[Expat]

Cheers Paul - early bird catches the worm and a half! Crikey. I'll be sure not to mention any livelyhoods if I should call them!

Symantec Endpoint managed network here at the house, although the laptops have unmanaged clients - firewall disabled & the only proxy/VPN set up is on my desktop here so that's a no-no. The IP range for my current network is 192.168.0.x - but I disabled my static IPs and allowed DCHP from the modem to assign them, which it did, but still no joy.

It seems to have loaded the HTML header now, "Sky Broadband Router" at the top of the window, but alas, no content in the page, again it just times out.

Duff router you reckon? To be honest, if they'd sent me another Netgear DG834 (or rather the flavour with the wireless chipset) I'd have no qualms over using it at all - in fact it would be handy to keep my old one as a failsafe, but purely from the look of this Sagem I can tell immediately if I ever do log into this cursed thing I wont have any NAT/PAT/general iptables control as I do on my "OEM" (for lack of a better term) DG834.

Would the non-Sky router still be identifiable if the MAC were spoofed? I can't see any way for it to be flagged on their system unless they have some sort of call back in the custom firmware. Anybody here looked into that?

Thanks for your reply,

Expat

Edit: Seems to be going from "Connection timed out" to "The connection was reset" now. Odd.

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

regardless of MAC spoofing Sky will still tell what your router is b checking the vendor ID hard coded into the router. you don't need to spoof it anyway as they only thing tha authenticates is the username and password - only if Sky had reason to check the router would they...

I assume you've tried another PC to rule out the PC in use as faulty?

[dms05]

What was the previous MTU setting? Sky use 1500 and if you are set for a lower number then loading can be erratic and slow.

[Isitme]

Try using a different browser to log into the router. You are correct in that there is very little you can configure apart from firewall and schedule settings.

If you are going to use VPN you will probably have to ask Sky for the upgraded firmware which supports this.

[Expat]

IWasNotTheEnemy - Yes, I've tried it from two laptops with different NICs. I suppose (being ignorant to the whole non-Sky router & no username and password hand-outs thing at the time) that telling them that I "wouldn't mother with this consumer modem paperweight thing" and that "I'll just use my own hardware" would be reason enough..!

dms05 - Good point! 1432 currently, I suppose it's worth changing to 1500, why Sky chose this however...........

Isitme - IE8 & FF3.6 on two computers... what are the chances it's a bug in both IE8 and FF3.6 on a mainstream modem?

Edit: Okay, for the first time in the 18 odd hours I've had it plugged in, as I was typing in the netsh MTU command into cmd, the bloody thing loaded! 1.9Sky firmware. Tried to backup settings (to confirm my user/pass combo), but again, nothing. Changed the MTU - again, nowt... same as before. Good suggestion though dms05.

Edit #2: Default MTU size in Vista/Windows 7 is 1500. Didn't need to change it, heh!

[Isitme]

Try resetting the router by holding in the reset button on the rear until the lights flash. This cures some problems.

[Expat]

Isitme: No joy matey.