Mediacom Support

When Mediacom Online established high speed Internet service, InterNIC provided us with a large block of IP addresses. IP addresses are a finite resource which InterNic maintains and administers. They identified an available "Class A" address block, which they agreed to allocate to the Cable Industry, based on need. Mediacom Online obtained blocks of addresses for each existing region from that range of addresses.

Mediacom Online's network engineering group divided those addresses among our active hub sites and allocated reasonable blocks of IP addresses to areas served out of those hubs. When demand reaches the point where we are using 90% of the available addresses, we split the area and allocate a new block of addresses to the new area.


How the IP Address Renumbering Procedure Works:

We first divide the heavily populated area into two distinct areas using Ethernet switch VLAN technology. We create a new VLAN, move half the nodes from the original area into this new VLAN, and finally trunk that VLAN to a new router port that has been configured with a new subnet. Once the nodes are connected to this new router port, we reboot the affected system area. This forces your modem to re-boot and request a new configuration file on the new subnet. Once your modem is connected, your computer is able to re-negotiate its "lease." The DHCP server answers that request, and based on the source address of the requesting packet, the DHCP server issues a new address, to the PC, in the new subnet.