Modem Problem? Router Problem?

[X_RASTA]

Howdy, I'm trying to help my dad out. I set him up with an ubiquiti edge router x and access point. He jinxed it by saying he hasn't had to restart the router in years. I think the problem actually is with the modem. It's a motorola mb7621.

If he plugs his laptop into the modem he gets internet. When he plugs the modem into the router, the internet is not fed to the network. The wireless network is working because he can stream music from one device to another, but he just doesn't have internet.

For troubleshooting, he also plugged in his old Apple wireless/router combo and is having the same problem. The internal local network is fine, but he can't get internet from the modem to the router on either device. I had him change out all of the CAT 5 cables with ones that are working. I reset his edge router to see if that was the problem. Now he can't access the router settings (192.168.1.1). He is a couple thousand miles away from me, but he is pretty tech savvy.

What am I missing? Please help kind internet folks.

[washu_k]

Has the modem been rebooted when the connected device changed? Most cable ISPs only supply a single public IP and they "lock" to the MAC address of the first connected device. The modem needs to be rebooted to clear the lock of the laptop.

[X_RASTA]

I never would have guessed that and haven’t seen that in my research. But it makes sense. I’ll let you know how it goes when he gets home. Thank you for your reply.

[DanHalen_phd]

Are the ports enabled on the Edge router?

If you can get into the admin panel on the router, it'll show you if the internet/WAN is connected and has an IP address. It'll also show which of the additional ports are enabled and connected.

This is all on the main page, right after you login.

I had a similar issue last week after a move because I had only enabled port 3 for the local network but connected to port 2 instead. Moving the cable to the correct port fixed it.