I have a Belkin router, and about a year ago, I suddenly lost my internet connectivity from Comcast. The internet worked fine when I plugged it right into my laptop, so I just ignored it. When I moved to another apartmnet I eventually took the dive and called tech support. The tech told me to clone my MAC address which completely fixed the issue.
Now I know what a MAC address is and I've read what MAC cloning is. What has bothered me since is that I don't see how this fixed the issue. As I have understood MAC address cloning, it has the router pretend it has the same MAC address as my computer. Here is why I don't understand why this fixes my issue:
I have used several different computers with this router. Cloning the MAC address fixed it for ALL of my computers. The laptop I first used with my ISP was not the one that I eventually had connected when I cloned the address.
Furthermore, I didn't have any problems for quite some time after I stopped using the first computer. It wasn't like the internet suddenly stopped working when I changed which laptop I was using Now it occurred to me that maybe there was some sort of expiration? Except...
Which MAC address did it clone? It was just an option in the router administration page. Did it just pick whichever computer was connected to it? If my ISP still wanted the MAC of my first computer, how did some other computer's fix it?
As mentioned earlier, why did this problem seemingly stem from nowhere?
Anyway, I don't have any current problems so this is more just out of general curiosity. If anybody can explain it, it would be appreciated!
