Need help - ethernet

Hi there.

I got a nice shiny mac just before christmas that was going spare from my dads place of work. Over the Christmas period this has been happily online via a router along with my Laptop running Fedora Linux.

Fast forward a little bit, I am now back in my University halls. Now, my Linux laptop (which was the system I used to use in here) can still connect to the internet fine, I simply connect a bit of ethernet cable to a socket in the wall. However, my Mac cannot seem to connect at all. According to system preferences -> network, the machine is connected fine and has both a green light as well as an IP address etc etc. In other words it has managed to find all the settings automatically. However, there's no internet. Mail doesnt connect to server, Safari can't find any websites. Even MSN Messenger does not work.

At first I thought it was a faulty cable or something since I've not used the Mac here before, but I just plugged the same cable into my laptop and it too detected the settings. Except it is now connected and I can use the internet as usual on here.

Does anyone have any suggestions because I'm at a dead loss here? Please?

Silly question, but is the IP a 168.XX.XX.XX type thing? Check the laptop and see if the IP it pulls is in the same range as the one the Mac pulls out. Let us know...

Yep, the laptop and the mac both pull from the same IP range.

This is just a theory I have at present, but I seem to remember that my flatmate got a new Windows PC, and that doesnt work on the internet either, althought his original machine does. Is it possible that for some reason the network is restricting access to machines with certain mac addresses which are the ones supplied when you sign up? If that is the case I may have to talk directly to the ISP because I dont fancy paying a second time over and the halls staff are pretty technology-clueless...

luovik said:

Yep, the laptop and the mac both pull from the same IP range.

This is just a theory I have at present, but I seem to remember that my flatmate got a new Windows PC, and that doesnt work on the internet either, althought his original machine does. Is it possible that for some reason the network is restricting access to machines with certain mac addresses which are the ones supplied when you sign up? If that is the case I may have to talk directly to the ISP because I dont fancy paying a second time over and the halls staff are pretty technology-clueless...

Click to expand...

Yes, that is possible. Talk to your ISP and they can set it up so you should be able to connect both computers.

Agreed. If they asked you for Mac addresses when you signed up then that is likely the problem.

Seems odd that an ISP would ask for a Mac address though. Do many do this, I've never run into it before..

I've heard of many school using mac address filtering for their networks. My friend had to give the school the mac address of both his wired and wireless of his laptop to use both. But I'm pretty sure the filtering was done by the school, not an ISP, but I could be wrong. If it connects everywhere else but the school, it's probably some kind of filtering. I would sudjest talking to the school's IT department. They should be able to help you out.

I guess that you could try spoofing the MAC address of your laptop with your Mac. Just google for MAC spoofing on OS X, or something like that.

Well all is well now, the ISP got everything switched over for me so I'm now back online and loving my Mac once again

Turns out that this is all runs through Vaioni, who take your Mac address on signup because this is a managed network or something and they only allow access from permitted mac addresses. I'd never heard of such a thing either, but it's working now anyway.

Thanks for the help anyway guys!