Comcast blocking MAC

[guartz]

Long story short, moved, got comcast's interwebs and had self started kit delivered.

Docsis 3.0 modem arrives, hook it up directly to desktop. Everything works A.O.K


Hook up Router, NOPE.

After screwing around some, I ended up cloning PC's mac id to get router to function.

Naturally, I was curious, but fuck if I can't get a straight answer from comcast. I called them twice and had to slam the phone in frustration. The Online chat was pretty lulzy too (got the transcript for memories)

So, I turn to you BG. What the fuck, why are they blocking my router's MAC?

[Pikarya]

Just curious, do you have no competing ISP's in your region vs. Comcast?

[guartz]

a bunch, comcast is cheaper.

[SnickySnacks]

It's pretty simple and not "really" their fault.

When you activate cable internet, it authorizes 1 device to pull IPs.
If you authorized it with your PC, that MAC will be the one that can pull IPs.
At that point, you need to clone it to your router in order to use the router properly.
Alternatively, you could have activated the service with the router hooked up which would have authorized the router in the first place.

Using your PCs MAC on the router doesn't hurt anything afaik, but I suspect if you hooked up a laptop or something directly to the modem, it wouldn't work either because it's only the PC's MAC that's authorized.

[aers]

Uh..did you reboot your modem after hooking it to your router? You have to reboot your modem for it to register that it's connected to a new MAC addy and pull a new IP. Not rebooting modem = no work unless you clone the MAC of the device the modem was first connected to.

@Snicky - they authorize the modem, not the device connected to the modem.

[octopus]

I have verizon fios, and for them it simply had to do with the IP lease time have to be over. Unless you explicitly release the PC ip address, the PC would hold that IP address until the lease time is over (so the router cannot get the IP address because the PC already have it)

[guartz]

Thanks, all pretty helpful replies. I did reset the modem, fyi.

Probably what Octopus said is true, ip lease has to be up.

At any rate, I think I'm more pissed off that comcast tech support thought I was talking about setting up a wep password and insisted I'd be redirect to my manufacturer's router support, since its not a comcast router, they can't help me.