Internet Connection Issue

[r8500]

Ok, this is gonna be weird, but here it is, everything was fine, I was hooked to my router, and connected to the internet through my cable connection, and no issues. In the middle of using it, I lost a connection.

I tried everything, the router could see the internet, and I had an ip from the router, but no luck.

Then I bypassed the router, and rebooted, and everything worked fine.

I still can't get the connection to work throught the router, but if I hook another computer to the router, it works first time.

Does anyone have any thoughts what could be wrong?

[BipolarBill]

Most routers have a MAC address clone feature. Find out the MAC address of a PC that works (IPCONFIG shows it) and set the MAC on the router to the same.

Also, you can unplug the modem from power for awhile and try again.

[r8500]

Bill:

If I find the MAC address of a pc that works, how do I clone that into the router. I thought you could only clone the pc you were controlling it from.

I have tried reseting the modem also.

Thanks

[BipolarBill]

Look in the router setup. A cloned MAC address is entered manually. You can put in whatever you like.

[r8500]

Bill, you are the MAN. I cloned the mac address from my Linux box, and restarted everything, and poof.

Now its all better again.

If you could, please explain one thing to me, what does the correct mac address have to do with the way my connection through the router worked.

[BipolarBill]

The ISP and modem look for a familiar MAC addreess for two reasons:

1. The ISP wants you identified

2. The DHCP service uses the MAC address as a "permanent" address and seeks it after disconnection

Normally, powering down the modem for a few minutes allows the DHCP server to erase the "lease" you have for your MAC address and a new lease can be initiated with another MAC address (in case you changed your NIC).

Sometimes, resetting the modem fails. It still seeks the old MAC address. Here's where the clone feature in networking equipment comes in really handy.