Comcast seems to be using some kind of security settings, which on the telephone they will swear do not exist, apparently for the purpose of preventing people from hooking routers up.
Their usual sleight-of-hand is as follows: they ask you to plug your computer directly into the modem. When this works, they claim that the service is operating properly and then quite happily direct you to talk to the company that manufactured your router. I know this for absolute fact, having talked to them myself. Afterward, I took the "malfunctioning" equipment and tested it on a known good network. The "broken" router always works perfectly.
My assumption is that this is to stop people from running many computers off of one connection. That is valid, I guess. Technically, it is against the EULA for the customer to do that. However: with the amount of viruses and worms and all the other baddies that are out there, I believe it important for everyone to use some sort of firewall if at all possible. It is a condom for the Internet.
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