Ahhh, thanks Ron. That would most likely cause you to get a new IP address from Comcast, which would usually get around any RBL issues.
I would not advocate users to willy-nilly assign new MAC addresses to their routers without talking to Comcast tech support - because if you inadvertently choose one that someone else is using, things will break. It's usually safe to use the MAC address of another device on your own network that you own - and that is on a different subnet - (provided that device isn't then going to DHCP off the device you've just given that MAC too - because that will break not only DHCP, but other low level ethernet traffic too - and it should be in a different subnet).
The other thing is that Comcast typically has to have the MAC address registered on their system to allow you access to their network.
As far as I know, there is no way for say OrchidBoard to use a MAC address to block you over the internet. MAC is a low-level ethernet protocol address thing, whereas the Internet uses TCP/IP, replacing MAC with IP addresses - i.e. MAC doesn't make it on to the Internet, although your LAN subnet is full of it!
One thing that sometimes really confuses people is the talk of MAC addresses when they're using PCs "But I don't own a (n Apple) MAC"!
MAC = Media Access Control, not a model produced by Apple!
---------- Post added at 06:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:19 PM ----------
Thanks Marty - Howard (BikerDoc) has recently reported (on that facebook thread) that his home router seems to be blocking OB somehow (i.e. if he hooks his PC directly up to the cable modem, life is peachy) - this may be a common problem whereby certain home routers decide to include a site (or its IP) in a blocklist on the router for no apparent reason.
I'm not entirely sure why such behaviour would then manifest in packets being able to get most of the way to OB before dropping; normally a firewall would drop that packet straight away because it's addressed to OB's IP to start with, but there may be some part of tracert I don't understand right (I thought it worked by decreasing the TTL and seeing what reported back whilst still keeping the destination IP intact). However, a content filter might work differently and when something comes back saying "orchid" it might get blocked on the return. Still not sure why it would affect ping/tracert that are IP based and don't care about domain name or content.
Of course, it's not outside the realm of possibility that we've seen both problems occuring to one person (IP block from hosting and local user network filtering/firewall issue), making troubleshooting particularly irksome!
---------- Post added at 06:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:25 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by ronaldhanko
Hi James,
The changes they made were not in the firewall but in the mac address. I'm not very savvy about these things but that much I remember.
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Just to make sure that was the MAC address on your Netgear router and NOT your Comcast modem?
In which case, it baffles me why that would fix anything, but sometimes, tech, it is weird that way (like the magic/more magic switch)...
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