I ran into a problem today; I was trying to connect to an external server via SSH, but the server kept dropping me. I narrowed it down to the idea of the server blocking my external IP address. I tried everything from SSH proxies to SSH web clients. The web client consoleFISH worked out sorta well, but it was slow and it didn’t give me the feel of Terminal’s “Homebrew” view.

Then I thought, “Wait a minute, what if I just changed my IP address?” knowing that I had a dynamic IP with my ISP. Turns out that it was the easiest solution, though it may not work for everybody. I read up on the subject and found that most cable ISP’s give you an IP address based on the MAC address of your router. It makes sense too if you think about it. Whenever I swapped out my router I noticed that we got a different IP address, and because the MAC address was really the only thing that changed (from a connection standpoint) it just clicked.

I found a nifty tool in my router’s firmware called “MAC clone”. It doesn’t really clone your MAC address, but puts a mask over it.

Yep. This was the answer to all of my problems. On mine I hit the “Clone Your PC’s MAC” to get the new MAC address, clicked “Save Settings” then wham and bam, I got a new MAC address. All I had to do from here was reset my router AND cable modem. I instantly got a new IP address and was able to connect to the external server.

So there you go, a short tutorial on changing your external IP address. I hope you had as much fun as I did.