Frustrating (and seemingly simple) connection issue

[Joellymo]

Hi, all...

I'm having a little issue that's making me pull my hair out. I'm running OS X on an iMac G5 (the last of the G5's). For the last year or so, I've had my two home systems (one of which was Windows XP) sharing a cable modem via a Linksys 4-port router. Today, I ditched my XP machine and subsequently reconnected my cable modem directly to my Mac. But I cannot connect. No amount of rebooting my Mac or my cable modem will solve the problem. Going into my network settings and renewing my DHCP lease doesn't solve the problem either. Sometimes I seem to be issued a valid IP, sometimes my IP is self-assigned. But I just can't seem to connect. If I go back to my Linksys router, no problem (that's why I'm online now...). Somewhere something must be cached and is not letting go of the old settings, but I don't know enough about networking on my Mac to troubleshoot the problem. It's driving me a little nuts.

Any ideas???

Thanks!

Joel

[gsahli]

Any particular reason you don't want to use the router - it is providing a firewall which is very important with cable internet.

I suspect your ISP is using the router's MAC (machince address) for identification, and you would need to notify them to reset. On 10.4, you find your Mac's MAC in Network Prefs > Show built-in ethernet > ethernet tab > "Ethernet ID."

[MisterMe]

Joellymo,
Your problem is well-known. When you switch to MacOS X, you must reset your cable modem. Power-down the modem, count to 30, and then power it up again. Before I bought my router, I had to go through this little exercise every time I switched from my MacOS 9 computer to my MacOS X computer. Rather than jump through this hoop, you would be much better served by following gsahli's advice and keeping the router inline. I know of absolutely no advantage to running your network without the router.