They brought their computer over to my house, and I tried setting it up using my Cox connection, which works fine, and I had trouble getting it to work using the HP EN1207D-TX PCI 10/100 Fast Ethernet Adapter (also called a NIC (Network Interface Card), Ethernet Card, or more specifically 10BaseT Ethernet Card) they had in their computer. This is not a picture of their card, but just a generic network interface card:

Apparently the Cox installer must have spent the entire 4 hours trying to use the network card they had in their computer, rather than installing a new one, or installing a USB adapter. On the face of it, this sounds like a reasonable approach, but by doing a Start, Run, and running WINIPCFG, I found that the card had not downloaded a valid Cox IP address.

I run Windows 2000 on my machine, not Win98SE like the Woods run, and on Win 2K the program that is similar to Win98's WINIPCFG is IPCONFIG, run from the DOS prompt.

It did display a valid COX IP address, so on the Wood's machine I went to Settings, Control Panel, Network:

and selected the Network Card, did a right click, and selected Properties:

I selected TCP/IP and clicked the Properties button and got the TCP/IP Properties screen

With Cox, the normal setup is to Obtain an IP Address Automatically (this is called DHCP), but since the HP NIC did not seem to be downloading a Cox IP address I clicked Specify an IP address, and put in the Cox IP address that my Win2K machine had been assigned. According to the above graphic that would have been 68.0.69.16 (actually Cox changes your IP address from time to time, and when I actaully did this test my IP address was 68.0.64.1, so that is what I really used). When making a change of this type you must reboot the computer, and when I did that, it came up with a warning message, indicating the IP address I had put in, was inconsistent with the hardware address of the NIC, which was 00:50:57:00:73:48.

There are two types of IP addresses: IP version 4 (IPv4) and IP version 6 (IPv6). IPv4 was initially deployed on 1 January 1983 and is still the most commonly used version. IPv4 addresses are 32-bit numbers often expressed as 4 octets in "dotted decimal" notation (for example, 192.0.32.67 or 68.0.69.16). Deployment of the IPv6 protocol began in 1999. IPv6 addresses are 128-bit numbers and are conventionally expressed using hexadecimal strings (for example, 1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A).

The Cox IP addresses are the old style IPv4 addresses, but obviously the HP Network Card not only had its own IP address hard coded into it, but it was also an IPv6 style address. The reason the HP NIC was not using DHCP to download an IP address, is that it already knew what its address was, but that address was not one of Cox's IP addresses, so Cox was not recognizing the card.

We tried calling HP Tech Support to see if there was anyway to disable the builtin IPv6 address, and thus allowing it to allow Cox's DHCP to assign an IP address, but the technician did not understand the question, and rather than asking someone else if they could answer the question, he made us go through a step by step procedure so he could "diagnose" our problem. Two hours, and a couple of calls to his level 2 techician later, he finally decided that there must be something wrong with our HP network card. He still did not understand that my original question had indicated exactly what was wrong with the card, and that all I wanted to know was how to disable that feature, but Vivian and I were so tired that we decided to just call it a day.

The next day I decided to heck with the HP NIC, and I would just install the USB adapter I use on my computer.

In less that 10 minutes I had their machine successfully accessing the internet. Had the Cox technician tried installing either a new 10BaseT Ethernet Card OR a USB adapter like I used, I am sure he would have had an equally quick installation.

Dale and Vivian called Cox out a second time to install the service, and the same tech came, along with someone else. They told the tech that I had determined that the HP NIC should not be used, and that I could explain why, but they were not willing to call me to find out why, and so they spent another couple of hours trying to get the HP NIC to work. Why are technicians so unwilling to admit someone else might know something they don't know, that they are willing to waste a couple of hours rather than ask someone else?

The techs finally decided the HP NIC must be bad, so they went ahead and installed with the USB adapter, and it worked fine, but for some reason they still told Dale and Vivian use of the NIC would be better, and urged them to buy a replacement NIC. I don't understand why they did not just go out to their truck and bring in their own NIC; when they installed my system they had both Ethernet NIC cards and USB adapters in their truck, and were willing to provide either one. We used the USB adapter because I had a NIC in my machine, but my technician recognized that it was intended for use in a LAN, and was inconsistent with use by Cox, and I did not have another available slot in my computer for a second NIC. I can't believe that Cox now expects their customers to have an unused NIC installed in their machine, for them to use.

One is tempted to ask: why would HP install an ethernet card with a built in IP address. The answer is clear if you realize that HP expected the NIC to be used to set up a local area network, and if you read Setting up a Win9x Peer to Peer Network it says "Select different IP address for each computer." One can do that with a NIC that does not know it's IP address, but if you do, then you must go to Settings, Control Panel, Network, and enter a different IP address in the TCP/IP settings for each card. HP obviously thought it would save it's customers that trouble, and by using IPv6 addresses there were enough distinct addresses that it could assign a unique address to every card it manufactured.

For more information setting up a Local Area Network see Setting up a Win9x Peer to Peer Network or How to Create a Simple Peer to Peer Network with Windows 98.

In a Local Area Network, you would need a Hub or a Router, and CAT 5 cables to connect each computer to the Hub or Router.

If one just wants a Local Area Network, a Hub is sufficient (and costs less than a Router), but if you want to share an intenet connection across all computers in the LAN, you will need a Router.

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