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Both RR and Earthlink High speed prohibit the connection of user-owned cable modems to their lines. You are required to lease equipment from them. Both RR and Earthlink use Toshiba cable modems exclusively. It used to be common knowledge that you could simply buy a Toshiba cable modem and connect it to RR without paying a monthly fee since RR did not do any sort of equipment authentication. However, in the past year RR has started implementing security procedures that records the MAC address of your cable modem each time a request is made for a IP address from their DHCP servers or each time an external DHCP request is monitored through their routers.
In the past, TW also provided basic cable TV free with their RR service, but have since stopped offering this service free to RR only subscribers now that they have the ability to block alll cable TV service at the CO to non-subscribers which was previously impossible to do. In the past, blocking cable service for RR only subscribers required a field service call and the installation of a bypass filter at the installation site. These were not cost effective so TW basically did not install them and RR only subscribers could get free cable TV.