> I don't know if Comcast is still doing this but they used to require you
> to provision your cable modem to get it to run.  That meant telling
> their tech support what the MAC address of the cable modem and the
> MAC address of the computer behind it was.  I think there was a serial
> number for the cable modem too.  So if you used your laptop to test the
> connection when the cable guy was there, then moved in your firewall
> box, you had to call tech support to change it over before it would
> work.  

FYI, Comcast allows any DOCSIS 1.0/1.1 compatible cable modem on their
network now. It's got something resembling a captive portal where you
have to punch in the information on a web page, then you're 'activated'.

Until you activate, the cable modem is locked at 128kbit up/down, and
the only thing that can hit the internet is DNS queries. (quite useful
if you want to do any TCP-over-DNS tunneling in a pinch)

New computers are automatically added to your account, although you might
need to reboot the cable modem once to clear the old mac address.

> 
> That's my best guess.
> 
> Nate
> Hoping that Charter Cable doesn't give me nightmares.

Charter has more of that home town feeling, ie, less pains with corp. policy,
but also less clue when it comes to fixing things or allowing ports though.

-- 
Matthew S. Hallacy                            FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified
http://www.poptix.net                           GPG public key 0x01938203

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