Apple Computers & Virgin Media Broadband.

[muddly001]

Originally Posted by horseman

Except of course the OP may have difficulties in "cloning" a MAC address on WAN side so that depending on (old) franchise area and how well VM's auto-registration process is standing up there can be some "logistical/technical" inconveniences first setting up your quaintly named Time Capusle or Capsule....
Not insurmountable obviously.... but for that (and other) reason I tend to use mine mainly downstream from my primary router.

Sorry, lost me there totally! Could you explain that in lay persons language?

Regards

[huxleypiguk]

When I worked in Cleppa park I wrote the Mac training back in the ays of PPP and Dial up !

Back on topic, I hooked up an Airport Express to VM Cable Modem but mucked up the settings. VM gave me the Apple Care line and a very very nice Irish girl talked me through it.

In short VM support it, but you may need Apple to help set it up if it goes wrong.

[Jonnymeg]

Do not worry, macs are fine.

When Virgin speak of not supporting them it is meant from a software side of things and not the internet service. Your system will work fine but you cannot download all the crappy antivirus and other software they supply. That is windows only.
But you don't need it anyway.

[Biffs]

I've been using Macs on Virgin cable networks for 6 years. Perfect match in my opinion. One iMac is 'hard wired' into the router - My MBPro is wireless and my iPhone just works. We can even bring the 'other stuff' from work home and it connects easily. Very stable. No problems. Ever.

[horseman]

Originally Posted by muddly001

Sorry, lost me there totally! Could you explain that in lay persons language?

Regards

Gee - if I was a layperson I might be able to... however I'll give it a stab - just re-post if it's still not crystal? Assuming all of it was unclear:

For many (mainly historical) reasons many cable ISP's limited the MAC address (unique factory assigned id) of the network interface card of the equipment connected(reistered) to the cable modem. On domestic service (and specifcally with VM) the connection is limited to 1 device. (as typically defined by "cpe_max" stanza in the CM configuration file downloaded from TFTP server during CM reboot sequence)

When you reboot the CM then the MAC addy will be interogated and compared to a "mac bridging table"..... if it's changed then a re-registration process is required which may also additionally change your IP.

In the old NTL/TW/BY days different franchises had somewhat different ways of doing this ....from allowing so many changes in a set time period to actually requiring customer to contact ISP...
VM have attempted to automate (or correlate the different frot ends of) this process recently (within last 18 months) to minimise this incovenience, however occasionally authentication servers do "cough" and you can (albeit rarely) sometimes find yourself in a restricted "Walled garden" with a web page requiring you submit a userid/account number and password that NTL/TW/BY sent to you on your welcome pack a decade or so previous. Thus you only have limited access to VM servers but not the rest of Internet.!!

(In fact on corporate LANs MAC address's were often similarly used for security)

To avoid this (as problem affected many cable ISP's worldwide) then most (but not all) router manufacturers began incorporating firmware over the years that allowed the NIC MAC on the WAN side to be changed (or cloned).

The idea being if you originally registered with your ISP using a specific PC (with it's unique MAC) then you could "clone" that MAC address onto the WAN port of the replacement router. Almost virtually giving you a "hot replacement" facility (but not quite<g>). The CM would still be addressing the same MAC address at the lower physical media level of the ISO stack and and essentially would not be able to detect any difference.

Unfortunately (for reasons debated ad nauseam over the years) Apple Airports Express/Extreme (utilised within a TC) etc have not included this functionality!. AFAIK they haven't' yet produced hardware/firmware version to provide this either - but who knows in the future?.....

Now if VM's "auto-registration" process works as intended this should only be a minor (almost seamless) inconvenience.
However if like me you do get involved in the rare occasional "hiccups" that requires temporarily removing a router and cabling a PC/workstation to CM directly to diagnose an intermittent problem then you should be aware of this limitation.
If like me you don't suffer fools gladly then you won't tolerate some undertrained idiot in Mumbai telling you to reboot your modem because it potentially will promptly overwrite (wrap) some or all the existing error logs...thus loosing valuable forensics as the CM goes thru it's cold start/re-IPL initialisation process.

Hope this clarifies a little better...

[caph]

Originally Posted by horseman

Except of course the OP may have difficulties in "cloning" a MAC address on WAN side so that depending on (old) franchise area and how well VM's auto-registration process is standing up there can be some "logistical/technical" inconveniences first setting up your quaintly named Time Capusle or Capsule....
Not insurmountable obviously.... but for that (and other) reason I tend to use mine mainly downstream from my primary router.

Cloning was from a bygone era and only applied to broadband through set-top boxes. You can safely forget about all that now that VM use standalone modems.

Breeda was just saying that the OP could just plug his existing time capsule router in to the modem and there would not even be any need for any VM router. Sounds like a good idea to me.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by horseman

sometimes find yourself in a restricted "Walled garden" with a web page requiring you submit a userid/account number and password that NTL/TW/BY sent to you on your welcome pack a decade or so previous. Thus you only have limited access to VM servers but not the rest of Internet.!!

If you are in the walled garden then you will only have a private activation IP which will only give you access to the activation screen and nothing else.

If you cannot get out of the walled garden on a new installation using your postcode and account number or if the system drops you into the walled garden, then you have to call technical support who can then manually remove you from the walled garden and you will then need to reboot the modem at least once in order to receive a public IP address.

We never had this process on the Telewest side as it was originally only a NTL foible now both sides have the walled garden for activation purposes.

[Web-Junkie]

Posting this via OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.4 on my Hackintosh

Been using OSX for a few months on my Virgin connection with the Netgear WGR614 router, no problems at all. Wired Ethernet and Wireless work fine! STEAM also works as I've downloaded all my Half Life 2 games for MAC now and they play fine as well.

OSX only cost me £23 from Amazon, far far cheaper than Windows 7

[The PIT]

I use Linux and a mac as well as mine window pc's.
Really upsets tech support when they say it must be spyware or a virus. I then tell them a Linux box and a Mac is effected as well. Out goes there script.

[Lord Nikon]

I hate to think how many operating systems I have connected to the system here.

Reminds me - laptop to reinstall, hard drive password to remove heh.

[horseman]

Originally Posted by Masque

I....

We never had this process on the Telewest side as it was originally only a NTL foible now both sides have the walled garden for activation purposes.

I'm obliged for the historical correction....

[foddy]

Originally Posted by Web-Junkie

OSX only cost me £23 from Amazon, far far cheaper than Windows 7

... but illegal?

Not necessarily - could have been a Marketplace seller offloading an unwanted copy of an earlier version of OSX. I've got rid of all my older iterations of the OS via eBay.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by horseman

I'm obliged for the historical correction....

No idea what you mean as only NTL had the Walled Garden and now everyone has it.

[Web-Junkie]

Originally Posted by foddy

... but illegal?

Nope, not illegal. It's the full retail box with install media: OSX 10.6





The version I got was the later 10.6.3 version. What might be illegal is running it on non-mac hardware though?