IPCOP Install Help Needed

Since my first post I simply did a reinstall of IPCop hence the difference in IP addresses. I think you may be onto something with the IP address not being registered with charter.

I did some reading last night and discovered that my red nic is using DHCP and it should be '' but someone wrote that this was actually a ' ' i.e. a space chart was in the DHCP address. I'm going to look at that as well.

Charter uses the Mac address of my ethernet card installed on my PC to authenticate me on login. How can you change the MAC address on the IPCOP machine to this MAC address and will it cause any conflicts on the Xp side of things?

Funny thing about cable modems. You have to shut them off for a min of 15 seconds and if that fails, use a paperclip and reset the dange thing so it obtains a new IP address. From talking with my friend, who btw is a network tech, he recommends shutting them off for at least 5 min. He also told me that Charter doesn't actually use the MAC off the Nic. It uses the cable modems MAC. So that answers my latest round of questions.

:lol: It's ALIVE!!!!! Took me 5 days, but I finally successfully installed IPCOP 1.3.0 and configured it. For the first time since I have been on Charter Highspeed, I am now fully protected behind an excellant firewall. (OK total time I spent on this was maybe 12 - 15 hours total time, but this was a huge learning experience for me). First time I actually got to install a firewall.

For those of you with cable modems who are using Charter Highspeed, you will need to clone the Mac address of of the nic card you are currently using to connect to the web with. The Mac address you have to change is the RED nic's MAC address.

Before you change it, make sure you do an IFCONFIG and write down the original MAC address. You will also need to know what the DNS Server's ip addresses, but the ipcop install manual should help you with obtaining this information.

I did a Green + Red install
[internet]==>[cable modem]==>[IPCOP]==>[PC]

Many thanks to GertDelPozzo, and Dalight!! Both of you put me onto the path of enlightenment and I am very grateful for the help.

Glad to hear it's now working OK, Brownarola. I've just got a question about the MAC address cloning. You said you managed to clone your XP machine's MAC address onto your IPCOP's RED NIC. I wasn't aware you could do that with the default IPCOP installation. Did you actually change the RED NIC's MAC address, or did you just register it on your ISP's website. And if you did change the RED NIC's MAC address, how did you do it?

I actually was able to clone it. IPCOP of course is Linux based and cloning a MAC in Linux is a piece of cake.

First you have to have the MAC address of your PC's nic card which is easy to obtain. From the start/run you run the IPCONFIG/ALL and write it down. i.e. 0E-01-0C-4D-5Z

Then you switch to your IPCOP machine. Login as Root. Run an IFCONFIG to get the MAC of the RED nic. This really isn't necessary but I like having the orignal MAC address. If you are not sure which NIC to use, you simply login to IPCOP under the SETUP user and look at your network configurations. In my case red is ETH1.

After I wrote down the original MAC of the red card, I logged in as the root user on the IPCOP machine, and ran the following commands.

IFCONFIG ETH1 DOWN HW ETHER 00:00:00:00:00

replacing the zero's with the MAC address of my PC's nic.

The final step was to bring the ETH1 card back up.

IFCONFIG ETH1 UP

Once I did that I powered everything down. I.e. the PC, Cable Modem, and IPCOP and then waited 1 minute. Then I started the IPCOP machine, and the cable modem.

After the cable modem and IPCOP machine came up, I started my PC and logged in. I then clicked on the my Firefox shortcut and I the web came right up and I was able to browse the web. Before I cloned the MAC, I could only see IPCOP's configuration screen, but after I cloned it, the web came right up.

One thing I did not do was change the MAC address on the PC's Nic, so the PC's nic and the IPCOP RED nic have the same MAC Address, but this is a standalone PC so there should be no harm or foul.

Probably an easier solution to this entire issue would have been to simply remove the PC's NIC Card and installed it as IPCOP's RED NIC and taken the RED NIC on IPCOP and installed it on my PC. This way you don't have to clone the MAC address.