I am setting up a customized application server for a business in the USA and am at my wits end with Qwest Communications. My client called them to obtain a static IP address and they gave him the IP address, subnet and primary and secondary DNS server. And that's it. No gateway address. (They told him that the gateway is 192.168.0.1, believe it or not.) He told me that they refuse to give him the gateway address unless he wants a block of IP addresses. They won't give it out if he just wants one address. I said that's ridiculous; a static IP address can't work without specifying a gateway address. He gave me his "case number" and all of that rigamarole and I phoned Quest tech support myself. Sure enough. I told the guy who answered the phone what I want and he said that they won't give out the gateway address unless he gets a block of IP addresses. I said that as far am I am aware it is impossible for the customer to actually use his static IP address without a gateway, but that made no difference. No gateway. Qwest gave him some kind of a magical installation CD that set up his Windows XP computer to go online. And it is online, he can plug his Windows computer into that modem and browse the web and so on with no problem. Dandy. We can get the magic numbers off of this Windows machine. So I told him to run "ipconfig" and tell me what it says. IP Address is what he was assigned by Qwest, good. Subnet 255.255.255.0, good. Gateway 192.168.0.1 ---- ?!?!?! Honest to ghawd, that's what it says! Remember that in my original question I said that the Qwest tech support guy told me that the gateway address was 192.168.0.1. He wasn't lying, apparently. Well, you can't fight city hall so I said fine, let's put those numbers into the router and see what happens. But of course the router rejects that gateway as not on the same network. No surprise. I told him to run a "tracert www.sasktel.net" to see what happens there. He doesn't get any IP address reported that's on his network either. I tried a traceroute to his IP address. I have double-spaced this because my mail client wants to mess up the lines otherwise: 1 ws001.ltsp (192.168.0.1) 0.608 ms 0.716 ms 0.847 ms 2 142-165-95-254.msjw.static.sasknet.sk.ca (142.165.95.254) 9.756 ms 11.684 ms 13.663 ms 3 142.165.70.2 (142.165.70.2) 16.003 ms 18.292 ms 20.229 ms 4 142.165.60.182 (142.165.60.182) 23.621 ms 25.065 ms 26.798 ms 5 142.165.2.94 (142.165.2.94) 28.310 ms 29.954 ms 32.393 ms 6 67.69.244.254 (67.69.244.254) 34.396 ms 34.844 ms 37.138 ms 7 core1-regina-pos9-1.in.bellnexxia.net (206.108.101.57) 39.049 ms 9.933 ms 10.948 ms 8 core2-toronto12_POS9-3.net.bell.ca (64.230.144.25) 44.678 ms 47.065 ms 48.980 ms 9 core3-toronto12_POS6-0.net.bell.ca (64.230.242.201) 132.060 ms 132.313 ms 132.519 ms 10 core1-chicago23_pos13-0-0.net.bell.ca (64.230.147.18) 67.141 ms 69.134 ms 71.748 ms 11 bx1-chicagodt_POS6-0.net.bell.ca (64.230.223.42) 76.089 ms 77.465 ms 79.184 ms 12 Qwest_bx1-chicagodt_POS7_0.net.bell.ca (64.230.186.146) 81.117 ms 82.842 ms 85.031 ms 13 cer-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.139.149) 76.695 ms 54.154 ms 56.055 ms 14 * * * and so on. Whether he is online or offliine with that Windows machine, the traceroute stops at 205.171.139.149 as shown. And his network is not 205.171.139.x! I have absolutely no idea what's going on here. Can any of you offer any insight? The whole thing is an Alice in Wonderland thing as far as I can see, and the further I go down this rabbit hole the less sense it seems to make. I don't see how those settings on his Windows computer can work, and I don't see how the tracert results that he got can be possible either. But it does, and it did. And, as I said, nobody that we can actually talk to at Qwest can provide any information at all, other than run the CD and it will all be set up by magic. -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com
