linksys BEFSR41... & cloning MACs....

[Smokey0066]

well now that i've got my cable modem running correctly i really need to get a router so everyone at my house will stop complaining about not having net access... I will be picking one of these up tonight hopefully...

so upon doing so research on these boards i've come to the conclusion that i should just enter in the MAC of the nic i have registered with ATTbi at the moment; BUT after going to linksys site to confirm that there is MAC cloning I see they explicitly say that you should avoid using the MAC of a piece of equipment you'll be using already.. IE the nic and router having the same MAC being used on the same network...

SO... the million dolla question is... is this alright to do or should i call in and actually register the MAC of the router... you guys are the brains which is why i decided to come here and ask the question.

Smokey

 

[dakata24]

i cloned my nic mac address to my linksys befsr41 router and havent had any problems with attbi... of course, other than the 1.5Mbps cap, but that's not related to the mac address cloning..

is registering the mac address something new? i never had to register the router mac address (even before cloning my nic mac address) with attbi/@home. it always worked without any hitches..

 

[mycaputmundi]

I have the same router and same ISP. I haven't cloned the MAC address of the original nic. When I first got the cable modem service I only had it setup on one computer. I thought there would be a problem after I connected the router and my other pc, but so far I haven't had any problems (it has been setup this way for about a month now). I don't plan on using the MAC cloning option. Hope this helps.

-Caput

 

[namux]

You don't need to register the mac of the router. The cable provider only needs the mac of your cable modem. Some cable modems cache the mac of the first device that accesses it. So if you connected your pc directly to your cable modem then you will see the mac of your pc nic in the cable modem. You can probably look at the configuration files of your cable modem using http://192.168.100.1. This will access the internal webpage of your cable modem (if your cable modem supports this). This works on 3com and motorola modems that I know of.

The only reason why I mention this is because this causes problems sometimes when you connect to your router for the first time. The router won't grab IPs correctly because of the cached mac in the cable modem. This has to be cleared out first. Sometimes I have to call into the cable provider for them to clear this mac out so a new one can be cached. This is why cloing of your pc nic on the router is a good idea. It allows you to go between your router and pc interchangeably (sp?) without any problems.

I have my pc nic cloned at home on my linksys router and everything works fine.

 

[Smokey0066]

i think you are wrong there.. why is it that i have to call in and give them the MAC of my nic before i can access the net then? when i tried to move the cable modem between pcs they told me that i could only have the modem on one pc; the pc with the registered nic mac... i had to call in before the move would work...

well anyways.. i'm gonna pick up this router tonight.. since it doesnt look too bad... we'll see how much trouble i run into.. hehe

 

[namux]

They must do it differently for ATT. I am with Charter and this is not the case with me. You can verify that your MAC is cached in the cable modem by accessing its internal webpages. When I told Charter that I am moving between a router and a PC, they said they would have to clear out the cable modem because the old MAC's device is cached. I have verified this by looking inside the cable modem. Switching between the PC and the router did not work for me. After I cloned the MAC on the router, I was able to switch back and forth without a problem.

Good luck with your router.