I decided to give AT&T their cable modem back to save the $10/mo. charge. Checked around on the Internet to find out that many people tried to do that and failed to connect. AT&T does not tell you, and the cable modem installation books don't tell you, that you cannot simply switch modems and go back to business as usual. The physical changing of modems with Ethernet connections is very simple, but you have to register your modem's MAC address with AT&T. How you do that is that you switch modems, then you go directly to http://www.sas.2r.attbi.com. This is the only connection to their network that you will be able to make with a new modem. Here the site extracts the MAC address and whatever other info it needs from your new modem. Then you are required to enter your AT&T account number (which is on your monthly bill), and your registration code (you probably don't know what number that is, but by calling AT&T twice I found out that it is the last 9 numbers of your account number). Then you are asked if you want to replace your old modem with the new one. Click replace and restart your computer. After that you're on the network. Try to find this information on AT&T's new website, or anywhere else that you'd be likely to look for it. I spoke to 4 different people at AT&T's tech support HQ before I found out. I suspect that most cable Internet providers have some similar procedure to register your new cable modem, but the above applies only to AT&T (www.attbi.com), formerly the provider here in California of now bankrupt [log in to unmask] A good place to buy an AT&T supported cable modem is www.compuplus.com. I bought the RCA DCM245r for $114 from Compuplus, replacing the AT&T provided RCA DCM215, which AT&T had offered to sell to me at installation time for $198.00. Compuplus threw in second day air for $14.95, and no sales tax. I ordered it online on 1/23/02, and it was delivered to my office before lunch on 1/25/02. I had never ordered from them before, but they were excellent, at least this one time. I had to do a Google search to find a seller of cable modems, and even had to refine it more to find AT&T supported modems (they have a list of supported modems on their web site).
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