Thursday, April 29, 2010

Fix Your Internet Connection by Cloning Your MAC Address

This problem is all too common, and I’ve actually had to use this for some of my clients a few times myself. But only with Verizon.

They may tell you it is incompatible with your Internet Service. Your router is not incompatible with your Internet service. Your router’s MAC is simply unknown to your ISP.

Force Your Internet Connection to Submit; Clone Your MAC
If your Internet service is down because you are using your own router, you can bring it back up within seconds by cloning your computer’s MAC address to your router. The process of “cloning” your MAC address to your router is quite simple:

Log into your router and clone your computer’s MAC address.
Restart your broadband modem.
When the system reboots, your ISP asks for a MAC address, and your router responds with the MAC of your computer instead of it’s own.
Your ISP thinks it’s talking directly to your computer, and restores Internet access.

Broadband Reports has instructions and illustrations for the cloning process on a number of popular router brands, such as Linksys, D-Link, SMC, and Netgear.

To access your router’s administration panel, you must start up your web browser and type an IP into the address bar.

Here are the addresses for a few popular brands:

Linksys: 192.168.1.1
Netgear: 192.168.0.1
D-Link: 192.168.0.1
US Robotics: 192.168.123.254
SMC: 192.168.2.1
Siemens Speedstream: 192.168.254.254

These are the default IPs for these devices so it may not hold true in all cases if you or someone has changed this.

Computer Repair Lakeland, FL
863-521-1079