Comcast: Changing ip's

[Joel Hammer]

Just to share a frustrating experience and maybe gather enthusiasm for a
class action lawsuit or something.

I use the local cable monopoly for my ISP, comcast.

I use linux, obviously. 

I used dhcpcd to get my dynamically assigned ip address. The last time (in
fact every time) I have gotten an address from comcast, the lease has been
infinite, at least I think that a lease time of:

LEASETIME=4294967295
RENEWALTIME=259200
REBINDTIME=3758096383

is infinite in the unix world.

As a result, dhcpcd, instead of starting and staying a daemon, watching for
the server to reassign the number, always exits after getting this lease
time, saying that the lease was infinite, and so why bother running.

Last night I lost my cable connection. I could see local traffic but nothing
else.

I finally called comcast 18 hours later, and was told, after many hours,
(really, about three hours) that they had disconnected me. They had
reassigned my ip number and since I had  a static setup (third party
software according to one service person) I was not allowed on their
service and "one more incident like this and they would discontinue my
account permanently." I did point out that I wouldn't mind that at all.

I tried to explain, but, of course, this was not possible. After begging,
they allowed me to obtain another dynamic ip number. That was nice of them,
since I am a paying customer. It was nice of them to just d/c my service
without notice. It was nice of them to cause this mess by assigning me an
infinite lease to begin with.

Sigh. They, being a monopoly, like best to deal with another monopoly,
windows.

But, after hours of work, all seems to be working again. Gaadd. What a
bother.

I wonder how those lindows computers will fare with this sort of hostile
environment to linux?

Joel