Router, cable modem, and fooling corporations

This may be a question more for my ISP (though I don't know if they would like it), but if I were to connect my laptop and desktop through a router to my cable modem would the ISP be able to keep me from connecting both computers? I have spoofed the MAC address on the laptop to match the desktop, which is what the service was ordered under. The ISP offers home network service for a bunch of money, and the charge an extra fee if you add more computers, but I was thinking with the spoofed MAC I could bypass the crazy fees (bill is already over $100, including cable and phone).

 

if you plug in the router, and then the two computers... i think from the outside it just would look like a single computer plugged in... that sounds more like extortion than typical business practices to me. i say find a way around their ridiculous demands.

of course, they've got access to all your traffic anyways... but the router is basically just another computer that relays data and plays "match the port numbers" to send packets to the right computer. would be interesting to hear some networking experts talk about this.

 

All the ISP sees is the MAC address the router is using, which you can set to spoof the MAC address of one of the machines on your LAN if that's convenient. You don't want two machines on your LAN sharing the same MAC address so un-spoof your laptop. It sounds like the "home networking" service they're offering is for the utterly clueless, who are probably making lots of expensive support calls so I guess that's fair.

If you share your cable modem connection with someone outside of your household, THAT they'll get cranky about if they find out, but otherwise they're not going to care that you have multiple machines hooked up.

 

Cool, thanks. Would I spoof the MAC of the router with the same software I used to spoof the ethernet in the notebook? Or some other way?

Edit: I mean, would the softare read the router and then I just select it through the menu?

 

On my router (Belkin) there's a configuration screen which allows you to copy the MAC address from the connected PC i.e. to make it spoof the mac address of the PC which the ISP is expecting to see.

See if your router supports this function.

 

Thanks for the help. I just thought you guys might find it interesting, I emailed the tech support for my ISP, just to see what they would say, asking if it were possible to use my own router to network and connect through the modem without ordering their service (which involves them sending a guy out here to hook up one of their routers and charging $200 for it, plus more monthly fees). They sent me an form letter linking me to sites I had already read about 4 times, that tell me how to buy networking service (not only that, the links were dead). There was a survey link that you could use to tell them if they helped you, but it was set up so that you would basically be blaming the guy who sent the email, and this is a company problem, not an individual one. Anyway, just thought I would throw that out. (I don't really want to name the company as I feel they aren't a bad service in other areas, and I don't want to look like I'm bashing them).

Edit: Oh, I forgot. I responded to the email saying basically this is a form letter and I know it, that wasn't helpful, and they sent me another form letter, pretty much saying thanks for telling us you had a problem, but they didn't fix the problem. I hope they didn't jump on the tech guy...