Kacang Bawang

About one week ago my internet provider started blocking 3rd-party/user-provided/own DSL modems. The symptom is that the router does not get an IP from the DSL modem, yet all the proper lights on the modem are on. I even called the main office and asked if the were blocking. They said no. But if you run OpenWRT, you can examine the PPPoE negotiation logs and will see that solicitations from the DSL modem are never answered.

One the other hand, if you plug in the provider’s router/DSL combo the connection is quickly established. Here it would be nice to get a wireshark dump of the negotiation, but let’s just check something first. What if we change the MAC address of our WAN interface to match that of the provider’s router? This can be easily done via

Let’s try connecting again. Sure enough, we’re in.