IP adress question

[dafoe]

I have cable internet through Time Warner Cable. I connect directly to my PC- no router. Well one day I was IP banned from a site for no apparent reason. I racked my brain trying to figure out what I did wrong. Eventually I just gave up. I figured it was just a mistake.

Then one day I had the modem connected to my laptop and just for the hell of it I connected to the site and I was able to login with no problem. So I figured they had realized and corrected their mistake and the problem was solved. Until I tried to connect on my PC and was still IP banned.

Eventually I figured out that I was getting two different IP addresses with the two computers. Now I'm no computer expert. But how is this possible? It's quite a pain having to use the laptop every time I want to go to that site. If I reformat the PC will I get a different ip address? I just don't get it.

Any help would be appreciated

P.S. I even shut the wireless off just to make sure I wasn't somehow connecting to somebody's internet in the neighborhood

[Moontrash]

thats kind of odd...first off if u wanna get into that site and they've banned your ip, just use a web proxy..there are many out there and they have different ip's...ofcourse the site thats blocked you more than likely has blocked some web proxies but you'll be able to get back in with another..they can't block all of em

go to this site with your laptop and desktop and see if the ip addy is the same

http://www.lawrencegoetz.com/programs/ipinfo/

if not then i'm not quite sure why its doing that unless you have cookies enabled and its using your cookie info etc...empty temp internet files and restart pc and see what that does

[Nelson37]

Yea, that is VERY odd as the ip address seen by the outside world belongs to the modem, not the PC. Even more odd that you use a login name and apparently that was Not banned.

The IP's on your internal LAN usually follow one of a few set patterns and hundreds if not thousands of PCs would have the same internal address. It has to be something unique to the particular PC, I agree with the above to delete all your temporary files and try again.

I would do this manually and make sure and get ALL temporary files, google for the proper procedure. Just make sure you are deleting the contents of a TEMP directory.

You can also call Time Warner and request a change of IP address at the modem, tell them you suspect a possible Internet stalker or some such.

Wouldn't hurt to do a thorough virus scan, also.

[Vidd]

What you described is not odd and is perfectly normal. In fact, if it did not change there would be a problem.

Most people have a router between the modem and computers. The MAC address of the router is given an outside IP address. When you connect computers to the router you are given an internal network number for each computer, but have the same outside address. But by connecting the computers direcly to the modem you get a new outside IP address for every new computer you connect.

As long as you are not locked to a static IP by your ISP, you are assigned a new IP address if the MAC address changes. The MAC address uniquely identifies the network card so internet traffic can be routed.

If you continue to use your laptop and keep your PC disconected from the cable modem, your DHCP lease will eventually expire and the MAC address will disassociate from the IP address. Meaning your PC will get a new IP address. Reformatting the PC will do nothing. What matters is the MAC address of the network card in the computer.

[SLK001]

Try logging onto that site using a proxy server.