All this morning the internet was down. I have Optimimum Online and I use a Linksys router to split the internet connection between a two windows machines and two linux machines. On this morning I was able to see all the machines on the network, but no internet. I called Optimum Online and the guy asked me if I had a Linsys router connected and I responded with an "Gee...I don't know, what's that?" and he began to describe it. I told him I didn't see anything that fit that desciption. He also mentioned that he could see that my cable modem was active and he asked me how many computers I had hooked up, and I told him just the one. (I figured he just sees one machine from his end, the router). He started taking me through the troubleshooting procedure, but I was very spooked by all this so I told him I had to go.
At this point I unhooked the router, and hooked in one of my windows boxes in directly (Windows XP). This wasn't able to reach the internet either. I then tried the other windows machine (Windows 2000 Pro) and to my suprise, it worked. Now I was really confused. What, after a year and a half with this setup has caused it to stop working, and futhermore, what causes the cable modem to talk to this one machine and not the other? Does it make a difference that the MAC address the router was spoofing was the same address as the computer that is now able to talk to the cable modem? And what's with this guy asking me about a Linksys router? Can he see the machines on my network behind the router or is he just trying to bluff information out of me?
Any ideas or similar experiences, please post. Thanks in advance.