road runner not working

[Jesse Raynor <raynorj@mathcs.carleton.edu>]

Hi

I'm in Golden Valley, and I ordered media one's road runner service.  They told
me they'll sell me the service only if I have a mac or windows.  I have a
laptop running win98 and a desktop running redhat6.1.  The service was
installed on the laptop, and it works.  But I want to get it working on the
desktop machine and use IP masq with the laptop.

It won't work under RH6.1.  I've tried dhcpcd with various options, but it
always times out, leaving the following message in /var/log/messages:

 dhcpcd[2233]: timed out waiting for a valid DHCP server response


I've read that the cable modem stores the ethernet address of the first
computer that contacts it, and that I should shut off the cable modem and
restart it after 5-10 minutes, and let the linux box be the first to contact
it.  I've done this, but the result is the same.  I've tried running pump, and
even installed dhclient, but they don't work.

I gave static IPs to the linux and windows box to test the ethernet cards.  I'm
able to telnet and ftp between the boxes just fine.  What's more (and strange)
is that if I disconnect the 'cable' cable from the cable modem, but leave the
ethernet cables in place, and then run dhcpcd I *do* get a response from the
cable modem.  I get an IP address, subnet mask, DNS servers, etc.  I can even
contact the cable modem via netscape.  However, plugging the 'cable' cable back
in destroys this.

Does RH6.1 have trouble with media one's dhcp server?  Do they run one dhcp
server from the cable modem, and one upstream (which would explain why I get a
dhcp server response when the connection upstream is severed)?  If so, does the
upstream server remember the ethernet address of the computer things were set
up on, and refuse to respond to other computers?

Has anyone experienced this before?  Is there something simple I'm overlooking?

 
-- 

Jesse Raynor
raynorj@mathcs.carleton.edu