He's full of BS.  The MAC is hard coded into the card. (But decent drivers,
and linux, allow you to change it).

Your machine "learns" MAC address's of machines on the local network (Local
network communication is by MAC address).  Do a /sbin/arp and see whats
there.

What was probably true is the MAC of your eth0 card was bound (in their
servers) to the MAC of the old cable modem.
A couple days of inactivity would probably have cleared it as well, but why
wait?

-dallas

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan England" <plug@the-arcanum.org>
To: <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2002 2:14 PM
Subject: MAC Addresses


>
> Our cable modem went out due to lightning this weekend and it was replaced
> today. When the cable guy put a new modem on the computer, it saw it okay.
> Our cable modems have to dialup first, then they get a new ip address and
> then you're on the net. But after he installed the new modem, it dialed
up,
> but afterwards the computer could not get an ip address.
>
> The cable guy said it was because their servers had attached the mac
address
> to the cable modem. He said the either they had to release it from the
> servers ( and he couldn't get ahold of anyone to do this as the servers
are
> in missouri?) or we could physically remove the nic from the comp and boot
it
> without the nic. Then shutdown again, replace the nic, and boot up and
that
> would fix it because the nic would loose the mac address of the cable
modem.
>
> I just nodded my head and agreed. But it didn't work. Luckily I have two
nics
> in the machine, eth0 for the cable and eth1 for the internal network. I
> switched them and everything is okay.  But now I have questions.
>
> 1) Is there any truth to what he said? Does a nic hold the mac address of
a
> modem or something that gives it an ip and only allow two macs in memory?
> (that's what he said, it would only remeber two macs)
>
> 2) If that's true, is there a way to release the macs from a nic without
> rebooting or shutdown the machine and removing the card?
>
> Thanks for any insight.
> Nathan
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