I woke up this morning, and my home computer wasn’t connecting to the Internet. My dear wife called the folks at Comcast support. They had her do some stuff which ended with her computer not going through the router but being online with the modem connected directly to her computer. Presto! It’s not us, Comcast, it must be Linksys. (It’s always the other guy when you call your Internet Service Provider.)

Fortunately, I just went through actual router hell at work and have come to know the symptoms of a bum router. Mine at home just didn’t look the part. Fortunately, I found this post which described very accurately the interaction between my wife and Comcast support. That was followed by finding this Yahoo Answer with very much the same sort of solution as the original link suggested.

Basically, it involves figuring out what MAC address your computer is using to identify itself to Comcast. Then going into your router configuration and having your router basically identify itself as that computer with which Comcast is playing nice. Then, switch your computer to the router, router to the modem, and presto! Internet! Saved myself $100 or whatever for the router Comcast said was the problem.