India's super hub

[Preston]

My cable modem stopped working this morning, I was on the phone for hours to India trying to resolve the problem. They said it was to do with my firewall settings and they don’t get involved with that, I had to connect another laptop directly and prove to them while on the phone, that it wasn't my firewall settings. They said they would send me a new super hub, probably won't get here till after Christmas.

I took it apart shook it, cleaned it, put it back and it works fine but the router won't work and my family is driving me crazy, they have no internet.

I have another super hub that I found in an empty building on site, but the mac address is different and it won't work. I don’t suppose anyone knows how to change the mac address to make it work with my ISP?

 

[nev]

dont know what its got to do with India, but I am guessing you mean Virgins super hub? Never had anything to with cable but a quick google gets this...
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Wir ... -p/1425370

does that work/ make sense?

 

[Preston]

Thank you Nev, I was a little frustrated having to talk to India on my mobile phone for two hours and then finding I have to wait until after Christmas for a new hub and internet access.

I have tried Google, they are talking about changing the IP addresses and illegal things. All I want to do is change the Mac address of the super hub I found, so I can have access to the net until the new one comes. in other words change the MAC address on the new device so that it matches the address of the original device.

I have been playing with computers from M S Dos times, even before there was any GUI or a mouse, but this problem is a challenge, maybe I don’t have the patience I used to have.

 

[Graham Orm]

You can buy pay as you go dongles from most phone stores. We did this when we had a prolonged problem with connection. It gets you back online for essentials...bank...forum etc.

 

[morfa]

I have tried Google, they are talking about changing the IP addresses and illegal things. All I want to do is change the Mac address of the super hub I found, so I can have access to the net until the new one comes. in other words change the MAC address on the new device so that it matches the address of the original device.

A MAC address is a unique number assigned to the hardware in the super hub. It is possible to change it, but that's pretty hard to do. It's akin to grinding the VIN numbers off your car (just not as illegal).

A quick google suggests that you can't change your MAC address on current Virgin Super Hubs. So the one that you've got is pretty useless.

BTW, changing your IP address isn't illegal. I'd love to know about the other things that you think are 'illegal'. I doubt that they are. The law around what you can and can't do on a PC still isn't very well developed.

Worth asking a neighbour to piggy back their internet connection for a few days?

 

[Preston]

Thanks Grayorm a dongle would have done the job, I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Morfa, asking the neighbour for a piggy back is a good idea but I'm not that bold.

Anyway we're back online now and everything is back to normal. Just goes to show these VM people don’t know everything, they said there was no way to get back online before Christmas other than a dongle.

 

[morfa]

What did you do to get it working in the end then?

 

[Preston]

I was going to say:

I typed http://192.168.100.1/ Enter the Super Hub's administration username and password root, root. Once logged in, clicked Super Hub Settings and changed it to the Modem Mode.

Then I attached a separate wireless router to the Super Hub, then changed the MAC address of the newly attached router.

After I changed the MAC address of the Router, I turned off the Super Hub for 20 seconds, switched it back on and everything was fine.

But if I did say that, it would be lying.

What really happened was just before I did the above I used the hoover to suck all the dust from both the old hub and router and everything worked again.

 

[Preston]

I take back all my bad thought about VM, I just received a parcel with the new Virgin Super Hub.

 

[Silverbirch]

.

.What really happened was just before I did the above I used the hoover to suck all the dust from both the old hub and router and everything worked again.

Well done!
Always best to go for the hi tech solution first :wink:

 

[Preston]

If the hovering hadn't done the job. I believe the above method would have worked.

While an actual physical MAC address cannot be changed in hardware, the address can be emulated in software, so that it matches the address of the original device. This process is called cloning.

Many broadband routers today support MAC address cloning as an advanced configuration option.

The emulated MAC address appears to the service provider identical to the original hardware address.

 

[tekno.mage]

Yes, you can change the MAC address of a hub or router - you've been able to do this for at least 10 years. I used to have broadband via cable (NTL - who are now Virgin) and wanted to use my own cable router instead of simply plugging a single computer directly into the NTL box (which was what they expect you to do) and they wanted to know the MAC address of the computer I wanted to use in order to set up their end when I first took the service, so the only MAC address that would work with their system (supposedly) was the one I'd first used from my computer. However, when I bought my Netgear cable router, I made sure I got one that was able to use a "cloned MAC address" and simply set the router up to provide the MAC address I told it to the NTL system - which worked fine and let me use the router so I could connect more than one computer to the NTL system. A couple of years after I did this, NTL provided instructions for doing something similar on their help pages!

 

[Preston]

How to connect a router to the Virgin Media Hub/Super Hub

http://www.unofficialguidetolive.co.uk/ ... -super-hub