Cable Modem and MAC Address question

[Nightwatch]

My local cable company tracks it's service by only allowing certain MAC address access to it's services. I have a situation that I have 2 locations that I stay at that I would like to use my high speed internet services at. Is there anyway to fake this address and make it so I can have 2 modems on the network at one time?

Thanks...

 

[Bleep]

Just get a 1 port router and clone the MAC address to the router.
Bleep

 

[bobcpg]

Well, i think what he is saying is that he wants 2 cable modems with the same MAC address and that is something that is not possable. So to answer your question, No, but you could, i think, bring the modem with you and set it up at your second location if your second location is on the same network/subnetwork that your ISP is on.

-bob

 

[rw120555]

By 2 locations, do you mean 2 locations within your same house? If so a router can do the trick. If you mean 2 separate houses, I'm not sure how that works; are they both hooked up for cable but won't work until a legit machine is hooked up? I don't have a cable modem but I do have cable tv, and I thought they just had some way of cutting off service to my house from their offices. But maybe not.

What Bleep says may be true, but it seems like a heck of a loophole if it works. One person gets cable, 50 others spoof their mac address... You'd think they'd only allow one logon at a time or something.

Couldn't you just get in the habit of turning off or disconnecting the one you are not using?

 

[bobcpg]

Yeah but cable modems are hard encoded with the MAC addresses, and you are not gonna be able to find 2 cable modems witht the same MAC address.

-bob

 

[rw120555]

To further show my ignorance about cable modems -- I thought it was the MAC address of the pc the modem was connected to, not the mac address of the modem, that mattered. If it is the modem, then what happens if you get a new modem -- do you call the modem company, give them the Mac of your new modem, they disenfranchise whatever your old Mac was?

The traveling modem thing may work and may even be necessary -- but does that mean the 2nd location has to have cable hooked up but just lying dormant until a legit modem is connected? If it has a live connection, why wouldn't you use it, rather than bringing your own? I guess I'm surprised that their might be any way to make this work! But this is alien stuff to me.

 

[Nightwatch]

The cable company's policy is only one modem (MAC Address) per account. If they allowed multiple MAC addresses then I could set my whole neighborhood up with high speed internet access.

If I take the modem that is assigned to my account to a different location, it works fine. That is because my ISP allows that MAC address to access their network. I am trying to make it so I can buy an additional modem and get high speed internet access at work.

Now, the router idea, that may work but the cable comes into the modem first then to the router, then to the computer. How does the MAC address of the router make a difference? I have a Linksys 4 port hooked up right now and I have an additional modem as well, but I can't understand how that would work. Is it the modem??? or the router??? or the computer that the ISP gets the MAC address from?

There is a product called the Speed Demon 330, but I'm not sure if that's what I am looking for...

 

[rw120555]

Some ISPs will register the Ethernet MAC address of the network interface card in your PC when your account is first opened. They will then only accept traffic from the MAC address of that PC. Spoofing allows your router to masquerade as that PC by using its MAC address.

It sounds like your ISP doesn't do that, since you can move your modem around. But alas, if it is using the MAC of the modem, router spoofing won't help you. It sounds like a pretty good system to me, because even if you treated your cable access like a "book" (only one person using it a time) others might use it to have multiple people accessing from multiple locations.

Have you tried calling your cable company? If all else fails, see if they're willing to help you out. If there is a way to let only one modem be live at a time, they might go along (but I wouldn't get my hopes up.) Otherwise, you may just have to carry the modem around -- maybe you could buy a second power supply or something so you wouldn't have to carry so much around.