kleinbl00, have you ever seen Carnival? As I recall, you come from a family of dust-bowl era Okies. You'd dig it. -though I'm pretty sure I recall conversing with you about it in the past .... Maybe not tho.
Not yet. This notification came through 2 minutes after Comcast activated my account in Seattle and 2 minutes before they told me it was only temporary because they've decided my MAC address belongs to someone else so they're turning it off again after 48 hours and I need to buy a new modem. The Comcast adventure begins.
1) I didn't think of that, because the MAC address is printed next to the serial number. 2) As it turns out, you can't do that anyway, but I appreciate the suggestion. I wish I had thought of that last night. 3) Much as I enjoy hating on Amazon, they did refund me the money, 11 months later. So I have a new-in-box one showing up tomorrow, which should be soon enough.
If you're not using a router + modem combo, you can change the MAC on the router to whatever Comcast expects it to be. The modem can be set to act as a bridge and just forward along packets from the router. I discovered this in August after plugging my laptop directly into the modem. Two routers later, it's still set to lappy's MAC address.
I shoulda asked you guys first. Unfortunately the only viable computers at the moment are Macbook Airs, which have no ethernet ports (and the modem isn't a router, nor is it wireless). Fortunately, Amazon is sending me a new one. Comcast doesn't give a rat's ass about the router anyway, it's the modem they hate, and all sorts of internet warfare tells me that the SB6141 has an unalterable MAC address.
Stupid thing is I've got a FIOS box on the house. Unfortunately Verizon sold their operations here to Frontier, which will charge you $59/mo for 30mbps and won't refund your money when your internet stone cold stops for hours at a time. Comcast's hinkyness notwithstanding, at least it's on.