Connecting Motorola SB6121 Cable Modem and AirPort Extreme
I moved into a new house a couple of days ago so of course the first thing that I needed to do was get the home wireless up and running. My ISP is through Comcast. I purchased my own cable modem (Motorola SB6121) instead of renting and used my own AirPort Extreme as the wireless router.
First, if you're purchasing your own cable modem, you will need to contact your ISP and provide them with the HFC MAC ID on the cable modem. Once you've gone through the motions, you will be able to connect your Mac (in my case Macbook) directly to the modem via ethernet cable and access the internet.
Issue:
When I connected the SB6121 to the AE, I could connect wirelessly to the AE, but I did not have access to the internet. So, basically the SB6121 and the AE were not talking to each other despite being physically connected via ethernet cable.
Solution:
After days of searching for online answers and forums (and trying different solutions) I was able to successfully get everything up and running. Make sure that you have 2 ethernet cables available.
Here are the steps.
- I restored my AE to factory settings just to keep everything simple. Here are instructions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3728 Once you've restored your AE, make sure that both the AE and the cable modem are unplugged from their power sources.
- Plug in the power to the SB6121.
- Connect your SB6121 directly to your laptop via Ethernet cable. Test to ensure that you have internet accessibility by going to any website.
- Remove the ethernet cable from your laptop and plug it into the "internet in" jack in the back of the AE.
- Power up the AE.
- Connect your laptop to the back of the AE using ethernet cable #2.
- Launch a browser. You should now be able to successfully connect to any website.
- Assuming that you reset your AE to factory settings, it should just be broadcasting the generic "Airport Extreme" SSID. Disconnect the ethernet cable and connect using wireless to the SSID. Launch a browser and you should be able to connect to the internet.
- You can now use the AirPort Utility to configure the AirPort settings.
I assume that this solution would work with any of the base stations.
AirPort Extreme (4th Gen)-OTHER