Amazing coincidence. I am facing the problem that my daughter has just moved in with four others to student lodgings in a house with a freshly installed NTL cable modem, which is working well to the single XP machine that has been plugged into it and configured by NTL's CD.
I spent a frustrating afternoon trying to connect other machines, including my daughter's FreeBSD box, to it. Having now googled, I am sure I failed because the modem is tied to the MAC address of the first machine to connect.
It would presumably be in theory possible to set up ICS on the single working machine for the others to use - better from my POV to set up NAT on the FreeBSD box for the same purpose, with a wireless card to share the connection - but the physical constraints (lodgers not allowed to drill holes and my daughter's room being one floor above the hallway where the connection is) mean the only viable solution will be to upgrade the cable modem to a wireless router.
But NTL's website doesn't mention wireless routers.
Is there anyone with an NTL cable-connected wireless router?
If I buy a wireless router independently, is it easy to connect it to the cable modem in place of the current XP machine? Any recommendations on a suitable wireless device? Can I persuade the cable modem to accept the router's MAC address? Will the router, which presumably expects an ADSL input, be readily configurable to the cable modem's ethernet connection?
And what are the chances of me managing this operation by telephone from a hundred miles away?
As mentioned by others you allow connection on other devises by simply unplugging power and ethernet. Replacing power, allowing the lights to stabalise and plug back in the ethernet cable connected to the correct devise.
I had my network managed using an dlink cable wireless router, simply case of plugging modem into router and away you go, cable and ethernet option.
If your daughter can use free bsd she should manage this fine.
Ben