Solved: Belkin router getting WAN IP from Ubee Modem (Charter ISP)

Here is Rochester, Minnesota we have only one cable service provider and that is Charter Communications. I wish there was at least one other alternative available just to keep pricing in check but the service we have been getting the past 12 years has been excellent.  Cable TV is good, clear and crisp with lots of HD channels and the internet service is almost always available and fast.

Tonight, after I tucked my lovely wife into bed at approximately 11pm, I decided to log onto my old Dell Inspiron 1300 (Pentium M w/ 2GB memory) running a 32 bit Fedora 18 LXDE desktop.  I was doing some Googling as usual and all of a sudden I got a page error when I did a search from the top Google result page.  I did not think nothing of it but I could not obtain an IP address from any of my 3 wireless routers (one is primary the other two are just glorified access points).

My first course of action was to go down and recycle the cable modem, primary wireless router and the 8 port Linksys switch.  That took only about 10 minutes and when I got back up stairs I was connected to the primary router (a TP-Link TL-WR841N) that I purchased 2 of a couple of years ago at Amazon (the second one is out in my workshop as an access point).  I was able to continue my Google searching and after about 30 minutes, my connection to the primary TP-Link router failed again.  Another recycle fixed it but then after the third time, it was time to replace the router.

I had a cheapo Belkin wireless router that I purchased a couple of years ago and my daughter was not longer using.  I thought I would replace the problematic T-Link router with the Belkin router and figure out if the TP-Link was dying or just needed a firmware update.  I was not expecting problems but of course there was one pesky problem I had to overcome.

Here are the steps I followed thinking it would only take at most 20 minutes.  It ended up being almost 2 hours.

1. Connected Belkin router to my Fedora 18 laptop with ethernet cable and no wireless.
2. Changed the private subnet from 192.168.2 to 192.168.0 (there are other servers and wireless devices like our Tivo and Internet radio device just to name a few).
3. Created a new SSID similar to the old one with a 2 at the end and gave it the same WPA/WPA2 passphrase.
4. Tested the wireless connection and all worked.
5. Unplugged the TP-Link router from power, cable modem and all 4 ethernet cables going to various other devices in our home (office, shop, third router, bedrooms).
6. Plugged the cable modem into the proper RJ-45 port on the Belkin router (yellow female RJ-45 port vs 4 white colored ports).
7. Unplugged the cable modem and Linksys 8 port switch and waited a couple of minutes then powered on cable modem and then the Belkin router and switch after the cable modem likes came on.
8. Laptop could access the Belkin wireless and give me an IP address and I could ping the router and all the other devices on the home network.
9. I could not access the internet.
10. The Belkin router web gui showed a message at the top indicating Internet connection was not available.
11. Checked the router settings and there was no WAN IP address, network mask or DNS servers listed. Everything was 0.
12. Tried switching from Dynamic (DHCP connection to cable modem) to static IP but nothing seemed to return a WAN IP address and the rest.
13. I checked the Router logs and I did find the following message many times:
    
    DHCP Client: [WAN]Could not find DHCP daemon to get information
    
14. Looked like to me that the Ubee wireless modem that we rent from Charter Communications was not doling out DHCP addresses. 
15. I remembered something a Charter technical support person told me in order to get a more complete reset of the cable modem.  The trick was to unscrew the coax cable from the Ubee machine and wait 5 minutes and recable and power on the cable modem and router.  Of course, this did not solve the problem.
16. Good my employer provides me a Verizon Android phone that has a built in Wifi hot spot.  I used it to connect my laptop to the Internet so I could Google issues with the WAN and the DHCP message above.
17. I found that one person thinks Charter is blocking certain routers and of course Belkin was one manufacturer that was supposedly being blocked.  The solution was to use the Belkin web gui to clone the MAC address of my laptops ethernet port to the router.  The MAC address/ID identifies the manufacturer so I thought this would be my solution.
18. Cloned my laptop ethernet port to the Belkin router and rebooted the router.  Still no WAN info in the Belkin web gui and I still could not access the internet from my laptop that was back connected to the Belkin router.
19. Searching for the DHCP error message above and adding Belkin to the Google search argument, I came a cross this web page that said some cable modems only issue on DHCP address.  I checked the Ubee cable modem and it had a reset switch so I gave it a try.
20. I unplugged the ethernet cable to the Belkin router and pressed the reset button in for about 30 seconds.  The Ubee cable modem shut off all but one light and then it took about 3-4 minutes before all 5 lights were one (one was orange instead of green but I think that is normal).
21. Re-connected the wireless on my laptop to the Belkin wireless SSID.
22. I opened the Belkin router web gui and low-and-behold I now had a WAN IP address, network mask and DNS servers.
23. I could now ping www.google.com and all was good.

I am not certain if it was a combination of cloning the MAC address of my laptop ethernet port onto the Belkin router AND the Ubee modem reset button that got the DHCP address to be handed out from the Ubee router.  I think I would have be OK if I would just had pressed the reset button on the Ubee cable modem.

It late so now that I got this information saved somewhere safe, I can now go to bed.  Tomorrow, I will try to resurrect the TP-Link router.