802.11 and AT&T Broadband cable

pestobreathpestobreath
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Not to sound paranoid, but is there any way my ISP (AT&T Broadband cable) can determine whether my cable modem is connected directly to a computer or into a wireless base station?



I've been having all sorts of troubles recently with sporadic connectivity (Every evening the modem drops off the network and blinks an unhappy orange). Upon reflection, this seems to have started shortly after I set up a wireless LAN.



I noticed that AT&T's usage policy requires purchasing a dedicated IP number for each machine (at an additional monthly charge). So I'm naturally curious whether they might have somehow sniffed out my wireless LAN and are blocking my connection. Is this crazy? Is it technically feasible? Does a base station have a different "fingerprint" than a Mac or a PC?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    alicealice Posts: 15member
    If not that, what? There are many ways but not all are the same. Thanks for the information: Rick said he ve been having all sorts of troubles recently with sporadic connectivity Every evening the modem drops off the network and blinks an unhappy orange. How old are you? "How old are you?" AT T s usage policy requires purchasing a dedicated IP number for each machine at an additional monthly charge ? Does that make sense? Oh. it is an interesting subject to me too. Yes I think this is crazy, but I'm not completely sure. Better not tell you now. Ask Cybelle if it is. Does it want to?
  • Reply 2 of 3
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    Alice, save the rambling for other Forums. The Genius Bar is not the place for disjointed drivel.



    *cough*



    ok, now that that's out of the way, your wireless station.



    you aren't doing anything wrong by just having a wireless base station on your cable modem. for all they know it's just sending to one machine in your house, in which case you'd be just fine.



    i'm not 100% sure they can detect it anyway, or that they'd bother. the only thing i've heard them really caring about is when peopel have uncapped their cable modems, which leads to a huge spike for about 3 days then they get cut off completely.



    i wouldn't worry about it if i were you, you might want to just call in and see if there have been outages in your area.



    also, is it related to anything like rain, wind etc? could just be a physical problem on the line somewhere.



    -alcimedes
  • Reply 3 of 3
    pestobreathpestobreath Posts: 69member
    Thanks, Alcimedes! (At first I thought Alice's incoherent response was due to a faulty dial-up connection, since I can't use my cable modem...)



    Spoke with AT&T last night, and they said my modem was "online" and that there were no outages in the area. The only suggestion they made was to remove it from my power strip and plug it directly into the wall. Of course, this made no difference. Finally they scheduled a service call for Friday morning. (Which, naturally, means that my service will be perfectly fine that morning and then go down again Friday night for the entire weekend!) In any case, I've removed the base station for now and have the modem plugged directly into my PowerMac G4.
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