I've been running RH 7.1 for quite a while with a Rogers connection for quite some time now. I had it running through my Linux machine (as a gateway) and feeding my network using IP Masquerading. One day it stopped working, and was informed that they started using the MAC address of the NIC card. I tried it using just my Windows machine hooked up to the cable modem and it works fine, renews and release's the IP perfectly. Unfortunately I can't get my RH 7.1 machine to obtain a leased IP. It keeps coming back with "timed out waiting for a valid DHCP server response".

Anyone have any ideas?

sounds like you need to get your nic of your linux box reprovisioned to get it working.. might have to call your ISP for more details on if you can have more than one provisioned at a time to work or you can feed the net to your linux box then set that up as your router or whatever to feen the net to your windows box.

I was thinking of just taking the NIC out of my windows machine and putting it in my RH 7.1 machine and getting it working that way.

What do you think?

that would work too i suppose, beats calling up @home.

Tried calling them, all I get is a busy signal.

Swapping NICs so that the card that has the correct MAC address is the one connected to the cable modem would do it, but have you tried simply pulling the power to the cable modem for a bit, and then repowering it. When you change NICs, the modem won't read the new NIC's MAC address unless you do that. Of course, if they're trying to the exact MAC address of the card they installed, this won't work.

Yes I've tried powering off the cable modem for five minutes but still nothing. They must have recorded the exact MAC address of the NIC card when they installed it but just didn't implement it until just recently.

i'm currently connected to roger via cable on rh7.2... DHCP should be the same in 7.1... BTW, rogers does remember your mac address and maps it to your ip, so switching NICs might work...

i connected to the service with win98 first, everything worked. then, after releasing the IP, i swithed to linux using default dhcp and it worked instantly (fresh install). i noticed that it changed my hostname (?). i did have to make sure that my linux box was not 'listening' to the same interface that the cable modem was on with dhcpd... they don't like that.

I switched the NIC cards from my Window's machine to my Linux machine and everything worked fine.