How to set the Ethernet-port IP address on your Alcatel SpeedTouch Home/Pro ADSL modem?

How to set the Ethernet-port IP address on your Alcatel SpeedTouch Home/Pro ADSL modem?

This document describes how you can set the Ethernet-port IP address on an Alcatel SpeedTouch Home/Pro ADSL modem.

Disclaimer & Warning

Messing with the software settings of your modem and/or messing with the registry or internal settings of your operating system can render your modem or operating system useless. Read the whole article and manual before you do any changes. Following these steps might work for you. It did for me and for many others, but that does not necessarily mean they will! I take no responsibility for anything bad that might happen to your OS or modem, and since you’re on your own – Do not ask me for help! It’s your modem!

Applying this hack will definitely VOID WARRANTY! If you are not experienced with tricks like these STOP NOW! Besides, some ISPs might stop supporting you if they find out that you messed up with your modem.

Setting the IP address

The modem offers a unique method to supply an IP address to the modem’s Ethernet port.

This method, called the Ping-of-Life, allows to provide the modem with an IP address without affecting other configurational settings.

The principle is fairly simple: a special ping packet will deliver an IP address to your modem.

Generally the procedure is as follows:

  1. Pre-configure the intended IP address and a special MAC group address in the ARP cache of one of your PCs.
  2. Power cycle the modem, and allow the POST to end (this takes about 30 seconds).
  3. Ping this same IP address within 60 seconds after the modem ended its POST.
  4. If everything goes well, the modem has assimilated this IP address.
  5. Save the new IP setting via the modem pages.

Most TCP/IP packages support the ARP and PING command. The Ping-of-Life can be executed from any PC on your local network.

Note: Make sure that the intended modem IP address and your PC share the same IP network ID. If not, the ping will be submitted with the MAC address of the default router instead of the special MAC group address.

Proceed as follows:

  1. Turn off the modem.
  2. Open a command-prompt (CMD.EXE in NT, W2K and XP, COMMAND.COM in Win98) window.
  3. First, clean the computer’s ARP cache:

​C:\WINDOWS>arp -d
  1. Then at the command prompt execute: 

​C:\WINDOWS>arp -a
No ARP Entries Found

This allows you to overview the current entries in the ARP cache (which should be empty. If not, clean it again).

  1. Add a static entry to the ARP cache, according to following syntax:

​C:\WINDOWS>arp -s  01-90-d0-80-01-01

<IP address> is a placeholder for the IP address to be assigned to the modem. It can be any address within your subnet as long as it is not used by any other member of your local network.

Note: Copy paste the above line. The MAC address should be exactly the same as written above.

  1. To verify whether this step was successful execute arp –a a second time:

​C:\WINDOWS>arp -a
Interface: 10.0.0.100 --- 0x4
Internet Address Physical Address Type
10.0.0.145 01-90-d0-80-01-01 static

(10.0.0.145 is used as an example, use your own preferred IP address).

  1. In the entries list, your arp –s command entry should be added.
  2. Initiate a continuous pinging, by executing following command:

​C:\WINDOWS>ping 10.0.0.145 -t
Pinging 10.0.0.145 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

… and so on …

(10.0.0.145 is used as an example, use your own preferred IP address).

  1. Turn on the modem.
  2. After the modem finished its POST, it will configure the IP address <IP address> you are pinging.
  3. You must clear the entry in the ARP cache by issuing the following command:

​C:\WINDOWS>arp -d
  1. Verify connectivity by pinging the modem a second time:

​C:\WINDOWS>ping 10.0.0.145
Pinging 10.0.0.145 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.0.0.145: bytes=32 time