Easily change your IP on cable connection

Many people who have cable connections end up having trouble with various file-hosting services out there, such as RapidShare, Megauplod, and so on, when uesing their "free" service(s). When you go to download the next chunk of a multipart download, you end up with a 2 hour (or more) wait.

If you change your IP, however, you won't have to wait to d/l the next chunk. Thing is, just unplugging your modem doesn't work; your ISP keeps an IP lease a long time, (again) often more than 2 hours... So what do you do?

Here's a way to generate a new IP address whenever you want, as long as you have a cable connection AND a halfway-decent router:

• 
  # Unplug your cable modem.
  # Go to your router's setup page (usually, 192.168.1.1 but can vary) and find the MAC address setting, which is generally under "WAN Setup" or something similar. This feature is meant to allow a router to "clone" the attached PC's MAC address, for ISPs that require one specific MAC to be registered per account. Luckliy, this is rare, and we can use it for our purposes.
  # WRITE DOWN the MAC address that's already present, just in case you need to restore it later.
  # Change the MAC address. Any change will do, but remember, it's in hexadecimal (base 16, 0-9 and A-F as numerals, F=15).
  # Turn your modem on. Once your modem has finished its power-up cycle, you'll have a new IP address!

Of course, you'd do this after you'd finished an RS download, not during the transfer. Luckily, the entire procedure takes only 30 sec.-1 min. each iteration...

This is also handy for avoiding IP-bans

What about with cable companies that restrict your modem's use by MAC address? Comcast did this to me once, and it was either change the MAC back to the original or call them on the phone to give them my updated MAC address.

Why would anyone want to do that? It's a hell of a annoying work and a pain in the neck, besides Rapidshare made some changes to their waiting time algorithm so now when I download multiple 100Mb parts I never wait more than 30s - 45s. On top of that, it's 50eur/year - I wouldn't call that a fortune.

EDIT: Essential Clix - to change your IP address just call your ISP provider and ask for a new one. It's few bucks maximum.

@ 3 kings - I just decided to get an additional connection in the house. DSL "lite" from AT&T is only $20/month and works fine for IM related stuff. I get a new IP everytime I connect.