T1 With Bellsouth

Your routers LAN interface should have an IP address in the 74.xx.xx.97-127 range, your computers need to point to this IP address as it's gateway.

>IPs provided by Bellsouth
>IP range: 74.xx.xx.97 to 74.xx.xx.127
>Sub-Net: 255.255.255.224

The above is either a typo in your post, or your ISP goofed up the IP's they sent you, since .127 is the broadcast address (for a 255.255.255.224 subnet mask in this IP range).  
  Your usable IPs are in the range: 74.xx.xx.97-126 --> you can set your router to any IP in this range, & use this IP as the default gateway for your inside hosts.  It doesn't really matter what IP in this range you use for the router, but I suggest using .97 for your router's LAN interface, since it's common practice to have the lowest IP in the subnet for the gateway address.

cheers

Call BellSouth back, and ask what the LAN address of the router is.  The subnet 74.xxx.xxx.96/27 does have a usable range of .97 - .126 (not .127 as calvinetter pointed out), however one of those addresses belongs to the router.  You'll need to know this (and they should cough it up ASAP) so you don't assign a PC to the same address, and you can set the default gateway to that address.  Providers often use the first (.97) or last (.126) address, but it could be any of the 30.

Once you've done that, you should be able to set the PC's default gateway to that address and resume troubleshooting.  The WAN addresses are essentially useless to you; I've stopped giving my customers that kind of information, as it only serves to confuse them.  Once you've set a PC to a functional address, you should be good to go, but a traceroute will expose where any further problems lie.

You don't need to call Bellsouth about what IP to use for the LAN side - it can be any IP in that range of .97-.126.  All that Bellsouth needs to do (& should've done), is point a route for the 74.xx.xx.96/255.255.255.224 subnet to the WAN IP of the customer router.  
  At that point, it's up to the customer to decide what their router will use for the specific public IP on the LAN interface.  The customer has complete freedom with regards to the LAN-side IPs, but they *must* use the specific IP assigned them for the *WAN* side & WAN default gateway, in order to not interfere with the ISP.

cheers

Yes he does.  BellSouth provided the router, and is managing it.  Chances are, he doesn't have passwords to it.  Therefore, his interface into this connection is through the LAN port, for which he'll need to know the address.

Ah, got it (re-read original post) - managed by the ISP.  Correct, he'll have to call the ISP in this case.  I was referring to a customer-managed router where the ISP gives you a WAN IP, a public LAN subnet range, & says "have a nice day."  ;)

cheers

Actually he should not need to call them.  Unless they have configured the LAN side of the router not to respond to ICMP messages, he should be able to ping each valid IP address in the range.

I would try .97 and .126 first, my experience is that most ISP's will take the 1st or the last in the range, but it is easy enough to to ping .97-.126.

In fact he should have some type of documenation from the ISP that tells him what the IP address is.

True.  As someone who manages the IP portion of a telecom/ISP, I recognize that such documentation ought to be standard but isn't always.  And even if it doesn't respond to ICMP messages, a peek in the ARP cache will identify other devices on the subnet.  :)

Hi all,

I want to thank everyone for your suggestions, but after calling Hellsouth, they determined that the line had not been activated by them, once the activated the line all is working like a charm.


Thanks
RudyM

Points shmoints, but shouldn't points be awarded for the troubleshooting steps suggested by several folks?  One of the biggest challenges with service providers is walking the fine line between the information needed to make a service work and dealing with them not wanting to spend time holding someone's hand.  In this case, various individuals provided the steps necessary to navigate those issues (and subsequently be able to call the SP back with solid evidence that the problem was in fact their problem).

Will it be fair the Asker to loose his points after noone really helped here?

I guess what the rest of us typed were all useless drivel.

As I see it, I gave the asker the questions he needed to DEMAND his service provider answer, and set others straight when they didn't read the original post.  Even if the line wasn't ready/enabled yet, the asker needed to ask those questions to be able to use his connection, and needed to have the confidence to ask them intelligently so they wouldn't respond with "they do not provide assistance with networks (LAN)" (notice the direct quote from the original post).

I work for a service provider.  We provide managed equipment on 90% of the circuits we deliver.  I specifically wrote a handoff document for those circuits so the customer doesn't know about the WAN addressing, since it simply doesn't matter to the customer.  In this case, BellSouth isn't that smart, and doesn't do a sufficient job of documenting their handoff.  I/we helped the customer ask the right questions.  If that doesn't qualify, oh well.

Had I said that the above is useless?

You said no one helped.  At least someone typed, so therefore what was typed was apparently useless.

Based on the documentation on this site, a poster can request a refund if they answered the question themselves.  However, "Note that if it resembles one of the suggested comments," it's not likely that the request would be granted.  At a high level, our suggestions were to call the service provider, and that's what the OP did.

Under the options for cleanup volunteers, I see six options:

Delete - Refund: This question has comments, and I'd like to think that the comments have enough information to be called answers; therefore, it should not be deleted with refund.

Accept a comment: "One expert's comments led (or would have led) to a solution."  This question has comments that would have led to a solution, at least with regards to LAN connectivity and configuration questions, and would have led to the actual problem & solution (by calling the SP).

Split: pick this if you wish.

PAQ - Refund: The experts didn't abandon the question.  You can say that the user solved the question, but a question and answer that basically says "I called the service provider and they fixed their problem" isn't valuable enough to keep, so it should probably be deleted.

PAQ - No Refund: of importance here is the comment "If the question has enough information to be called an answer, then someone's comments should be selected"; I'd certainly argue that it does have enough information to be called an answer.

Delete - No Refund: pick this if you wish.

pjtemplin,

That is why it is called a suggestion. We all are human. :)
After rereading - yeah - I saw that this was the advice. So this will be an award. Want to help to determine who get points?

I'd have to step back and say it'd be a conflict of interest.  I'd like to say that my first post was the first to properly address the customer's scenario, and had all of the information needed to troubleshoot the problem at hand.  calvinetter had good comments but they weren't aligned with the customer's scenario (they assumed the customer managed the router, and calvinetter did realize this upon a nudge).  giltjr's comments are a bit in the dream world - we had already established that the SP had not provided clear documentation of the exact settings; otherwise the question wouldn't have been asked.

pjtemplin:

No we had not established that the proper information was not provided, infact if you read the post the information was provide.  Where do you think he got the IP addresses from?

What was established is that when he called the ISP he could not get help on how to configure his equipment on the LAN side.  As he assumed that is where his problem was.

You told him to call Bell and demand what IP addressed he should be coding on his side, which he clearly already had.  That had nothing to do with verifing that status fo the T1 or the WAN side interface.

We were all focusing on the LAN side of the problem and there was NO problem with his LAN side.  We all assumed, just as he did, that the ISP WAN side and router were all up and functioning.

Nothing we did directly helped him.  Nobody, that I can see, said, "Call your ISP and make sure your WAN side is up."

Take a pill.

He didn't have the gateway address.  Therefore, the documentation was insufficient.  He had the WAN information, which was useless, distracting, and counterproductive.  Therefore, the documentation was misleading.

There was a problem with the LAN side.  Fixing the LAN problem would have allowed us to see that his connection was up and happy, or provide additional troubleshooting to fix (or arrange for a fix) the WAN side.

Structured troubleshooting is the smartest path to rapid, effective solutions.  We had no reliable way to ping the WAN addresses until we had a way to ping to and through the gateway of unknown address.

I occasionally get calls from customers saying "My T1 is down!  Not only that, when my friend at XYZ traceroutes to my IP, it doesn't even get into your network.  Why is your network so broken?".  Folks, fix the layer 1 problems first.  What these people don't realize is that my network is dynamically routed.  If the T1 is down, our router doesn't tell the rest of the network where those addresses should be routed.  When someone outside traceroutes to those addresses, it gets to our edge router and dies, as it should.  Because the upstream link is "owned" by the upstream, it's set up with IP addresses and reverse DNS PTRs assigned by the upstream, and therefore doesn't appear to be "our" network.  Should I troubleshoot the traceroute first?  No.  I should get the carrier to fix the T1, and then reassess whether the customer has resumed full functionality.  The same thing applies here: get proper LAN functionality, and then reassess WAN functionality.

We don't know what documentation he was provided.  We only know what he provided us.  We don't know if he had the LAN's IP address tested it with it and it did not work so he tried the WAN IP addresses and did not tell us.

Knowing the the router's LAN IP address would not have help if the LAN interface was down.  Bell South (along with other ISP's) used to leave the LAN interface down until after they completed a series of tests on the WAN side.  It is possible that they had not completed the tests when he was testing or had forgot to enable it.  They used to provide you with a date when the router should be operational, call and test with you once they tested the WAN side, and then turn the router over to you for use.  The LAN interface was down until they called to test with you.

Unless he is purposly hiding information from us, nothing we did helped him.  If the responses posted do not help it is up to the asker if he awards points for the effort or if he askes for a refund.

Some people pay for the points, this person may pay for them and he feels that nothing here helped, he does not have to award points.  This is the only question they have ever posted, so there is no history to see if he has a habbit of asking for point refunds.  

Knowing the router's LAN IP address would have helped.  If it was down and he knew the address, he could call the SP and have them investigate, but he wasn't at that stage yet.

Even if he is purposely hiding information from us, you have no way to know if our comments didn't help him.  You don't know if giving him the confidence to ask the suggested questions got him past the first-level "we don't help you with your LAN".  You don't know if giving him the help we did got him to call the SP when he'd otherwise be futzing with local settings or feeling that he'd have to call a consultant.

And after all of the explanations I've made to justify why points should be awarded, let's try a totally different angle: what good would this site be if our only suggestion was to tell everyone to simply call their service provider?  Or how would you earn points if everyone posted questions, got answers, then picked up the phone for the first time to call the SP and the SP helped with the entire problem; thereby causing a refund on every question.  If the asker wants the points back, he should have spoken up about it by now.

I see you are new here.  Hang around for awhile and see how this place works.  In this instance he posted what the resolution was, the service was not active (we have no idea what part).  One of the very overworked and under apperciated volunteers reviewed this question and based on their review they determined that the response here did not directly result in resolving the problem, in my humble opinion this was correct, in yours they are wrong.

He, the volunteer, makes the recommendation to one of the site admins, who will then may re-review and close it with point refunded or close it and aware points with a forced accecpt.

This type of thing happens here more often than you would think and definitily more often that it should, that is askers not closing out the questions.

Go ahead, refund the points.  It's not worth my effort anymore.

While you're at it, please update the documentation so none of us have to hang around for awhile to see how this place works.

Whether askers don't close questions isn't the issue, the issue is if the asker wants a refund they should close the question.  If they don't, those who took the time to answer should be rewarded, not beat up by others suggesting they be shafted.