Connecting Mac mini to internet through Xfinity router

This one took me a couple weeks to figure out, and I've seen a couple of similar posts in the forums, so I decided to post my findings here in the hope that it will help someone else.
Short version of the problem: I have a Mac mini (mid-2010 server version) that would connect to the Technicolor TC8305C WiFi router that was supplied to me by Comcast, but it would not connect "through" to the internet.
Details: The Mac mini connected automatically to the Wi-Fi (via DHCP) of the router, but nothing would connect "through" to the internet -- not Chrome, not Safari, not Mail, not the App Store, nothing. This was baffling because every other device in the house (3 laptops, 2 iPhones, and an Apple TV) all connected just fine. I checked all of the settings in the Network pane of System Preferences, comparing the Mac mini's against each of the laptops; all of the settings were the same (default, "out-of-the-box" settings). I thought maybe the problem was something at the OS level because the Mac mini was running Snow Leopard server and the laptops were not (two were running Mavericks, and one was running Leopard).
Here's where it gets weird... I connected the Mac mini to the router using an ethernet cable and everything worked normally for the wired network device. I was able to use the App Store to update the OS on the Mac mini to Mavericks. However, after I disconnected the ethernet cable, the problem came back and the Wi-Fi would connect to the router but not to the internet.
I double-checked that any "server" software on the Mac mini was turned off -- e.g., that it was not trying to serve as its own DHCP server. As I suspected, none of these services were on, so that wasn't it either.
In that same vein, I tried setting a static IP for the Mac mini in the router's control interface. Again: no luck.
Lastly, I got this weird idea that the only remaining difference that I hadn't tried was the pre-configured IP address prefix octets.
Solution: I reconfigured the router to use 192.168.x.x (like my previous router did) as the network prefix instead of the 10.0.x.x prefix that it uses by default. After I made that change in the router, everything fell into place and the problem went away. I never did figure out the reason this change was significant, but as I said -- it was the only thing that worked.

Interesting, thanks for the report/tip!

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